Fashion Jewelry Rome
Q.I am helping out with a photo essay on ancient fashion. My job is to get pictures of fashion that uses low-on-the-hips belts, skirts, etc. The pictures have to be of real artifacts, not "artists conceptions." I know there are some pefect ones for this from ancient Eqypt, and maybe elsewhere, maybe Minoan Crete, I can't remember. After a good while on the net I found two but they were tiny. Could someone here direct me to a place with the pics I am looking for?
A.I looked into that for years. I don't remember exactly what started it but it was probably mention of cross-dressers (males servants of goddesses, eunuchs, run of the mill perverts) in Roman times and I wondered how. And from the images which have survived, how? Everything appears to be guided by the shape the clothing covers rather than the clothing itself. (I have not found any suggestion of fake breasts.) I could find essentially no clothing style which was unique to either sex. Provocative posings, bared shoulders for women but put the clothes back in place and no difference. Maybe if there were a collection of styles from a single location and time frame there would be fashionable differences. But looking back from today's perspective nothing appears unique to either sex except for soldiers. Then I was reading on Islam and Mohamed prohibiting silk and gold for men. In his day there were no Abayas and the veil was optional so the clothing difference had the same problem as with Rome. This was only a few months ago so I don't have much corroboration yet but that has never stopped me from speculating. I suggest the difference was not in the the style of the clothing but in the fabric. Finer weaves (thus thinner) and silk and maybe linen for outerwear for women and of course jewelry. Images and statues don't show much that can be attributed to the type and weave of cloth but maybe the number of folds or the draping may give a hint to a more discriminating eye than mine. I understand there are written references to Roman women and silk but not to silk clothing for men. The women's silk was unwoven as imported and woven into much finer cloth, fineness being a status symbol. Certainly there are "provocative" images of women with bare shoulders and all but put the clothing back in place and it looks little different from men's clothing. The only major difference otherwise is women never being portrayed in short skirts while men are. And mostly soldiers so don't smirk. But jewelry in writing we have only mention of the signet ring for men, the larger the better. For women jewelry is everywhere and somewhat on the delicate side in surviving examples but also commonly in the european "clunky" style still popular in Italy and Greece. Also references to color of cloth appear to limit men to not dyed at all unless red or purple for official clothes of office. Women are not limited to those colors nor are they symbols of rank except for the royal purple.
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