Clothing
Women's clothing
After the 2nd century BC, other than tunics, women would wear a simple garment known as a stola and typically followed the fashions of their Greek contemporaries. Stolae usually comprised two rectangular pieces of cloth connected at the side by fibulae and buttons in a manner allowing the dress to drape freely over the front of the wearer. Over the stola, women often wore the palla,which is a kind of shawl made of an oblong segment of material that could be worn as a coat, with or without a hood, or wrapped over the left shoulder, under the right arm, and then over the left arm Girls' clothing Roman girls usually wore nothing more than a tunic dangling below the knees or lower, with a belt at their waist and very simply decorated, most often white. When a girl went out she occasionally wore another tunic, longer than the first, sometimes to the ankles or even the feet. Official clothing The dress code of the day was complex and needed to reflect the wearers’ position truthfully in the social order, one's gender, and one's language. Two examples were the angusticlavia and the laticlavus. The angusticlavia was the official tunic of the equestrian order and the laticlavus was what senators wore. Togas The differences of clothing worn in Rome were similar to the outfits worn in Greece at the same time, with the exclusion of the traditional Roman toga. The difference between rich and poor was made through the quality of the material; the richer people wore thin, naturally colored, wool togas while the lower-classes wore coarse material or thin felt. They also differentiated by colors used: • The toga praetexta, with a purple border, worn by male children and magistrates during official ceremonies • the toga picta or toga palmata, with a gold border, used by generals in their triumphs • trabea – toga entirely in purple, worn by statues of deities and emperors • saffron toga – worn by augurs and priestesses, white with a purple band, also worn by consuls on public festivals and equites during a transvectio. Religious ceremonies • laena – worn by the king and the flamens at sacrifices • crocota – saffron robe worn by women during ceremonies to Cybele |