Fashion History

by Linda Welters,Abby Lillethun

  The Constantinople of Justinian’s time (527–565) supported an open social system in which it was possible to elevate one’s social standing. Justinian himself was the son of a farmer. His wife, Theodora, had been an actress and a courtesan, the lowest class of society. Justinian had to change a law to marry her. Life in the capital offered excitement. The hippodrome and amphitheater were a vital part of urban life, with chariot racing the leading sport. Special factions, designated by color, organized the teams of charioteers. The Blues and Greens became the most powerful, functioning like a local militia. Procopius, a Byzantine historian of the sixth century, wrote a sarcastic, vitriolic volume titled The Secret History ca. 550 that describes infighting between the Blues and the Greens. The following extract shows that the Blues followed the same motivations as any twenty-first-century subculture by setting themselves apart from the dominant Roman culture and aiming for shock value in their appearance:

  First the rebels revolutionized the style of wearing their hair. For they had it cut differently from the rest of the Romans: not molesting the mustache or beard, which they allowed to keep on growing as long as it would, as the Persians do, but clipping the hair short on the front of the head down to the temples, and letting it hang down in great length and disorder in the back, as the Massageti do. This weird combination they called the Hun haircut.

  Next they decided to wear the purple stripe on their togas, and swaggered about in a dress indicating a rank above their station: for it was only by ill-gotten money they were able to buy this finery. And the sleeves of their tunics were cut tight about the wrists, while from there to the shoulders they were of an ineffable fullness; thus, whenever they moved their hands, as when applauding at the theater or encouraging a driver in the hippodrome, these immense sleeves fluttered conspicuously, displaying to the simple public what beautiful and well-developed physiques were these that required such large garments to cover them . . . . Their cloaks, trousers, and boots were also different: and these too were called the Hun style, which they imitated. (Procopius of Caesarea: Chapter 7)

  This passage reinforces the fact that fashion in Byzantium was not monolithic across time and space. Styles were introduced in the capital and from regions far from the center. The fashion for turbans, for example, came to Constantinople from Cappadocia in the twelfth century (Ball 2005). Further, regional preferences developed. Citizens living in the western part of the empire during Late Antiquity wore the Roman-influenced tunic and chlamys, while those in the eastern section were more likely to wear the front-opening robes that derived from the coats of the nomadic herdsmen of the Central Asian steppes.

  Trade allowed goods to move through the empire. People with the resources could pick and choose from among a range of products to fashion a unique look. For instance, in the mid-twelfth century, David Komnenos, governor of Thessaloniki (a city in modern Greece), was chastised by a bishop for wearing tight pants held up by a knot in the back, “new-fangled shoes,” and a red Georgian hat (Ball 2005: 58).

  Ball (2005) studied the dress of what she called the “borderlands” of Cappadocia (in modern Turkey) and Kastoria, then part of Bulgaria, but now part of modern Greece. She found that the Cappadocians wore a kavadi, translated as “kaftan” or “coat.” Worn over a tunic, it opened in the front. The kavadi was sometimes decorated with tiraz (embroidered bands). It evolved from the robes of honor first worn during the Sassanian period in Persia (224–651), made of patterned textiles. Nearly a thousand miles away in twelfth-century Kastoria, wealthy women wore long draping sleeves with points that nearly touched the floor, like those popular in Western Europe. Kastoria was a trading hub occupied briefly by Normans, and it was also near an area settled by Armenians and Georgians who had fled their homelands. Thus, residents of Kastoria wore both European-influenced tunic styles with long pointed sleeves and Central Asian coat styles.

  As the western parts of the empire were lost, Byzantium looked east for style innovation. The ceremonial robes worn in Central Asia gradually displaced tunics. The patterned silks that constituted a major commodity along the Silk Road were often destined to be sewn into Byzantine robes. These patterned silks were woven in Sassanian Persia and China. Later, Byzantium became famous for its own magnificent silks, the best of which were produced during its Golden Age in the tenth and eleventh centuries. It did not start out that way. When Justinian came to power in the mid-sixth century, silk fabrics were in great demand in Byzantium. Most fabrics were imported from the East, from the Sassanians, who exacted high tariffs. Byzantine weavers had mastered draw-loom weaving (first developed in China), but they needed silk yarns to weave their own cloth. Silk was sometimes not available during Byzantium’s frequent conflicts with Persia. Justinian was looking to sidestep these problems.

  According to Byzantine historians, the practice of sericulture was introduced to Byzantium during Justinian’s reign. Procopius related a story about two monks who obtained silkworm eggs from eastern destinations along the Silk Road, hiding them in hollow bamboo canes for the trip back to Constantinople. Upon arrival, the eggs hatched and were fed mulberry leaves. “Thus began the art of making silk from that time on in the Roman Empire,” observed Procopius. Scholars question the veracity of this story because sericulture already was known in Sassanid Persia in the third century and Syria in the fifth century. Regardless, sericulture and silk weaving picked up speed in Byzantium in the following centuries. Peasants cultivated mulberry trees, fed the leaves to the silkworms, collected the cocoons, and sold them to a cartel, which in turn sold them to Byzantium’s weavers and dyers. Byzantine workshops produced a wide variety of silk textiles, and silk became an important sector of the economy by the tenth century (Laiou and Morrisson 2007).

  Workshops in Constantinople, Syria, Egypt, Tyre, and Beirut produced patterned silk twil ls, often with roundel motifs. Fabrics were patterned with rows of paired animals, hunting scenes, or charioteers. Favorite animals included lions, eagles, and griffins enclosed in roundels. Purple was the imperial color; known for over a thousand years in the eastern Mediterranean, it was obtained from the glands of a shellfish, and large amounts were needed to dye even a small amount of silk. Embroidery was another technique employed to create patterned textiles, with gilt and silver metallic threads predominating.

  The silk business was tightly controlled through a guild system, as spelled out in the Book of the Prefect, a historical source that describes five separate guilds. The emperor got the first pick of the purples from the imperial workshops, but often he needed more and purchased them from private workshops, who sold their wares in stalls and at fairs (Laiou and Morrisson 2007). Byzantine silks were prized in the Latin West, particularly Italy, but also in Russia and Bulgaria. They were sent as state gifts, and some have survived in European church treasuries where they wrapped remains of saints or relics associated with saints.

  As the above discussion reveals, fabric was important, and this is an area where innovation occurred. Jewelry was another status indicator, and many fabulous pieces survive. Crowns, earrings, necklaces, rings, cuffs, and bracelets attest to the skills of Byzantine artisans. The portrait of a splendidly dressed family who donated funds for an eleventh-century church in Kastoria shows the wife wearing large basket-shaped earrings and no fewer than fourteen rings on her fingers (Ball 2005).

  Both men and women concerned themselves with personal appearance in Byzantine times, especially the hair and face and personal aroma. They dyed their hair, applied ointments to prevent hair loss, removed unwanted facial hair, and used a variety of cosmetics to reduce wrinkles and accentuate features. Physicians concocted hair dyes, face creams, and perfumes for patients’ use. Much of their knowledge came from Roman sources, particularly the work of Criton, who wrote a four-volume tome called Cosmetics in the second century, which every respectable home owned (Lascaratos et al. 2004).

  Recipes for various ointments included such pleasant sounding ingredients as maidenhair (an herb) and anemone flow
ers as well as some not-so-nice substances needed to produce the desired chemical reactions, such as dried animal dung and urine, which also figured in recipes for finishing cloth. Hair dye was a popular product according to the physician Alexander of Tralles, who wrote in the sixth century: “Many great personalities desire to change the color of their hair not only to dark but also to red, blond, or white and sometimes oblige us to provide dyes” (Lascaratos et al. 2004: 399).

  Byzantine empresses were expected to have a pleasing appearance to go along with their rich purple mantles and cloth-of-gold gowns. One empress became involved in making her own perfumes and ointments. Her name was Zoe, and she lived a fascinating life. She was “born to the purple” in 978, meaning she was a member of the imperial family. She was betrothed to the German king Otto III when she was 22, but he died while she was on her way to Italy for the wedding. She had to wait until age 50 until another appropriate marriage could be arranged. Her first husband died a few years into the marriage, purportedly with her help, and she went on to wed twice more, enduring many intrigues in the process.

  According to the Byzantine chronicler Michael Psellus, Zoe was considered more beautiful than her sisters with golden hair, large eyes, and dark eyebrows. Even in her later years,

  there were few signs of age in her appearance: in fact, if you marked well the perfect harmony of her limbs, not knowing who she was, you would have said that here was a young woman, for no part of her skin was wrinkled, but all smooth and taut, and no furrows anywhere. (Psellus Book 6, chapter 6)

  Psellus tells us that she had a cosmetics lab in the palace:

  The thing on which she spent all her energy, was the development of new species of perfumes, or the preparation of unguents. Some she would invent, others she improved. Her own private bedroom was no more impressive than the workshops in the market where the artisans and the blacksmiths toil, for all round the room were burning braziers, a host of them. Each of her servants had a particular task to perform: one was allotted the duty of bottling the perfumes, another of mixing them, while a third had some other task of the same kind. (Psellus Book 6, chapter 64)

  Zoe obtained exotic plants from India and Egypt to make her concoctions. While scholar Carolyn Connor (2004) suggests that this production may have been used for church offerings, Zoe managed to retain a youthful aura into old age. Psellus, who had seen her himself, stated that “although she had already passed her seventieth year, there was not a wrinkle on her face. She was just as fresh as she had been in the prime of her beauty.”

  One image of Zoe survives—a mosaic in the church of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul—which depicts her as having a round face, prominent eyes and eyebrows, and an aquiline nose (Figure 6.1). Mosaic artists did their best to achieve realistic portrayals of their subjects and their clothing. Regal in her imperial attire, Zoe, who died in 1050 at the age of seventy-two, was the epitome of Byzantine beauty.

  Figure 6.1 Empress Zoe (1028–50) holding the deed from the endowment of the church, Byzantine mosaic, eleventh century. Hagia Sophia. Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY. The Byzantine Empress Zoe had her own personal cosmetics lab in the palace.

  To form advantageous political alliances, Byzantine emperors sent their daughters as brides to foreign courts, as evidenced by Zoe’s engagement to Otto III. For the same reason, foreign brides emigrated to the capital. Irene of Hungary (1088–1134) was one of those brides. Her mosaic at Hagia Sophia features a much different style than Zoe’s, although it was created less than a century after Zoe’s (see Figure 6.2). Most obvious is that she wore her thick red hair in braids, a hairstyle seen in the West on female figures on the portals of French cathedrals ca. 1200. The fact that she did not cover her hair, as Zoe did, represents a change in fashion. Another new feature is her long trail ing sleeves, not the older closed sleeve worn by Zoe. Her sleeves bear decorative bands, not the pearl roundels seen on Zoe’s gown. Irene’s image is the first to show a Byzantine woman in the capital wearing such a dress (Ball 2005).

  Figure 6.2 Empress Irene, a Byzantine mosaic in the interior of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul. 1118–22. Photograph and © by Anthony McAulay. 2011 / Shutterstock.com. The Hungarian princess Irene married into the Byzantine Komnenos family in 1104 and became an empress. Her Eastern European braids became fashionable in Constantinople.

  As the Byzantine Empire declined, Italian city-states advanced in the luxury market. Italian textiles borrowed motifs and techniques from Byzantium and points east, not to mention the workers themselves through forced removal from weaving centers in Greece. Venice became a wealthy city, and their traders commanded respect on the Silk Road. Marco Polo (1254–1324) was one of those traders. He accompanied his father and uncle on a return trip to China and visited the court of the Yuan dynasty emperor Kublai Khan. Marco entered his service for seventeen years. After returning to Europe, he dictated a romanticized version of his travels while in a Genoese prison titled The Travels of Marco Polo. His book received wide readership and reportedly kindled European interest in exploring sea routes to east Asia (Tortora and Marcketti 2015).

  Ottoman style

  The growing power of the Ottoman Turks, who had settled in Anatolia, finally toppled what was left of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. Mehmed II, the Conqueror, set out to reshape the crumbling city. Christian Constantinople became Muslim Istanbul. The great Byzantine church built by Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, Hagia Sophia, was converted to a mosque. The mosaic portraits of Zoe and Irene were plastered over, not to be rediscovered until the mid-nineteenth century. Mehmed II constructed the Grand Bazaar, a covered shopping area, in the merchant quarter; he built Topkapi Saray, the sultan’s palace, on a promontory overlooking the Bosporus. Here are preserved the robes of all of the Ottoman sultans, from the rule of Mehmed II (1451–81) to that of the last sultan, Mehmad Reşad (1909–18) (Tezcan 2012). Kaftans and other clothing belonging to the sultans, sultanas, and their children were wrapped and labeled with the wearer’s name. The approximately 1,550 artifacts in the Topkapi Palace have been regularly inventoried, cleaned, and rehoused over time, even after the palace was no longer the residence of the sultans (Tezcan 2000).

  The over 500 kaftans in this collection show little change in structure from century to century. Worn over an inner shirt and a type of trousers called salwar or salvar, they demonstrate remarkable adherence to tradition. Yet, despite the constancy of form, it is the fabrics that demonstrate changing tastes expressive of fashion.

  The Turks inherited Byzantium’s textile workshops, but they immediately shifted production to appeal to Ottoman tastes. In the late fifteenth century, the workshops under Mehmed II and his immediate successors initially utilized designs long established through Silk Road trade, such as Chinese-inspired elements, arabesques, and geometric patterns. An Istanbul-based artist named Baba Nakkaş was the chief practitioner of this so-called international style (Denny and Krody 2012: 17). Popular in the fifteenth century were crescent and star patterns as well as çintemani designs, which consisted of two wavy lines and three balls. The latter design was possibly acquired from contact with Timurid Persia (1370–1507) (Tezcan 2000).

  When Süleyman I (1520–66) came to power, the Ottoman Empire entered a classical phase during which it enjoyed economic, political, and military dominance. This period saw fast-paced stylistic innovations in court workshops, which culminated in a distinct Ottoman style. First, a court designer who had emigrated from Tabriz, named Shah Kulu, created the saz style of undulating leaves, rosettes, lotuses, and mythical Chinese animals. Then rapid growth saw the state workshops divided into two branches, one populated by Anatolian designers, the other by non-Anatolian (mostly Persian) designers. Out of the Anatolian workshops emerged a talented young man named Kara Memi. He eventually headed all state workshops. He is credited with creating a highly original style based on floral designs around 1550 (Denny and Krody 2012). Its vocabulary consisted of tulips, carnations, hyacinths, rosebuds, and honeysuckle. Variations on this flora
l style soon appeared in ceramics and bookbinding as well as textiles. The floral style became enormously popular: supply could not keep up with demand. Production spread to weaving and embroidery workshops in other urban centers. From these outlying workshops, its diffusion continued to small towns and villages throughout the Ottoman Empire and beyond, as far away as Hungary, Russia, Egypt, and Persia, where it was incorporated into clothing and household textiles. It is an example of a style that moved horizontally across higher status consumers and vertically through layers of social strata (Denny and Krody 2012).

  Figure 6.3 is a section from a late-sixteenth-century garment, probably produced in Istanbul. The characteristic Ottoman layout features medallions in a lattice of ogives on a dark red ground. The medallions are filled with carnations, rosebuds, and tulips, making it a rare early survival of this uniquely Ottoman style.

  Figure 6.3 Fragment of a floral serenk from a robe, probably Istanbul, late sixteenth century. The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C., 1.57. Acquired by George Hewett Myers in 1951. The floral style seen in this fragment appeared in the Ottoman court in the early sixteenth century, and can be attributed to a single artist. It eventually became popular throughout the Ottoman Empire.