Byzantine Clothing and Appearance: Dress, Status, and Daily Life
Tunics and cloaks continued from Roman dress into Byzantine clothing. Shorter garments allowed movement during work or military service, while court ceremonies prescribed particular colours and ornaments. Silk became an important material for costly dress, and the jewelled loros identified imperial figures in ceremonial portraits.
Dress changed over the empire’s long history. Contemporary portraits and textiles document decorated borders and rank-specific garments. Religious images also used inherited costume conventions for sacred figures, so they provide different evidence from portraits of named patrons.
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From Roman tunics to Byzantine layers
The basic garment for both sexes was the tunic or long chiton. In the early empire, the Roman toga remained a formal male garment, but by the age of Justinian it had largely given way to the tunic and to heavier or more elaborate outer garments. Women commonly wore a long stola over an undergarment. Men and women could add cloaks, belts, and other layers, creating clothing that was practical in changing weather but also provided opportunities to display rank.
The chlamys was a semicircular cloak fastened at the right shoulder, leaving the arm free. It could be hip-length or extend nearly to the ankles; its longer form was also called a paludamentum. A fibula, or metal brooch, secured the cloth. Men outside court life and soldiers could wear simpler oblong cloaks, especially when freedom of movement or access to a sword mattered.
The dalmatic was a heavier tunic worn especially by men but also by women. Its borders, sleeves, and vertical bands could be decorated with embroidery or contrasting fabric. The scaramangion, an open-front riding coat of Persian origin, normally reached the middle of the thigh, although imperial versions could be much longer.
Materials, colour, and the cost of clothing
Linen and wool supplied ordinary textiles. Decorated fabrics could combine a linen ground with wool embroidery. Merchants imported silk yarn, while sericulture expanded within Byzantine territories during the sixth century. Workshops continued to obtain imported material alongside local supplies.
Wealthier garments could be woven or embroidered with elaborate patterns, while resist-dyeing and woodblock printing offered less expensive ways to decorate cloth. Borders and narrow bands were especially common. They could mark the edges of a garment, run down the body, or encircle the upper arm. Their colour, material, embroidery, and jewels could communicate rank as well as wealth.
The cost of cloth encouraged prolonged use and reuse of garments. Rich fabrics and complex ornament required greater resources than plain household clothing. Purple held particular imperial associations; other colours and decorated borders identified some offices and ceremonial groups.
Silk production and luxury clothing
Imperial workshops produced textiles for court dress and gifts to foreign rulers or favoured subjects. Other centres made cloth for sale. Repeating animals, plants and roundels in woven patterns drew partly on Persian designs.
Silk manufacture linked the supply of raw material with the preparation of yarn, weaving, dyeing and embroidery. Specialised workers and merchants handled different stages, while regulations attempted to control valuable cloth and its buyers. Access to silk thus depended on both purchasing power and the rules governing particular grades, colours and uses.
Byzantine Silk Production: From Imported Fibres to Imperial Workshops
Women’s clothing and modesty
Women generally wore long garments that covered the body from the neck or shoulders to the ankles. A plain undergarment lay beneath the main dress, and a stola or similar outer robe could be belted at the waist. Wealthier women might wear brocade and richly decorated borders, while court garments could include a V-shaped neckline or a heavily ornamented shoulder collar. By the tenth and eleventh centuries, sleeves that widened dramatically at the wrists became fashionable for a time; working women are shown tying or raising their sleeves to keep them out of the way.
Women commonly covered their hair in public with cloths, caps or veils. Representations include several forms of wrapping, with longer veils appearing in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The extent of face covering is less certain because texts and images distinguish it unevenly from covering the hair.
Women engaged in work did not necessarily look like court ladies. Scenes of spinning and weaving show long, modest garments with covered heads and little visible jewellery. Dancers, by contrast, appear in specialised clothing with shorter or sleeveless dresses, broad belts, and skirts designed to move as they turned.
Men’s clothing, hats, and footwear
Men of high status usually wore long tunics and outer garments, except when military service, riding, or manual work demanded shorter clothing. The tablion was a coloured or decorated panel attached to a chlamys. Its position changed over time, and its colour, embroidery, and jewels could help indicate senatorial or official rank. The paragauda was a thick, often gold-worked border that also conveyed status.
Many men appear bareheaded in surviving votive images, a pattern that may partly reflect the conventions of religious portraiture. In the later empire, officials could wear strikingly large hats as part of their public identity. Byzantine headgear varied from caps and felt hats to turban-like forms, and late imperial hats were carefully recorded by western artists who encountered Byzantine delegations in the fifteenth century.
Footwear included sandals, slippers, shoes, and boots. Archaeological finds, especially from drier regions, supplement images in which long robes conceal the feet. Workers might wear sandals or go barefoot. Soldiers used sandals tied high around the leg, wrapped foot coverings, or boots suited to marching. Colours could carry official meaning: red or purple footwear marked the emperor in ceremonial representations, while blue and green shoes could identify particular high offices.
Work, movement, and military dress
Clothing had to accommodate physical activity. Workers are shown in short or simply constructed tunics, sometimes with the sides tied up at the waist. A fisherman, shepherd, farmer, or craft worker needed clothing that allowed bending, walking, lifting, and exposure to outdoor conditions.
Military clothing preserved elements of the Greco-Roman pattern while changing with equipment and military needs. Officers could wear armour over a short tunic, with strips called pteruges hanging below the cuirass and around the upper arms. Boots or high-laced sandals protected the feet and lower legs. Military manuals placed particular emphasis on serviceable footwear, since armies depended on marching. Ordinary soldiers’ clothing was closer to that of working men than to the elaborate costume of officers or imperial portraits. A cloth head covering, sometimes called a phakolion or maphorion, could be worn beneath a helmet and protect the neck.
Imperial and court costume
The emperor and empress wore crowns and the loros, a jewelled ceremonial band derived from Roman triumphal dress. Senior officials and some guards also had permission to wear forms of it. Imperial portraits frequently showed the garment, although it was worn on particular ceremonial occasions.
The imperial ensemble could include gold cloth, enamel plaques, pearls, gemstones, embroidered borders, and richly coloured boots. A decorated shoulder collar, often called a superhumeral or maniakis, covered the neck and upper chest and was sometimes imitated by elite women. Imperial portraits could also show the ruler in military dress, combining armour, purple garments, boots, and a crown to present the emperor as both sovereign and commander.
Constantine VII’s Book of Ceremonies describes prescribed garments and colours for officials at court. These identified rank and assigned each participant a place within a formal occasion. The capture of Constantinople in 1204 disrupted the resources and institutions supporting this ceremonial practice.
The sixth-century mosaics at San Vitale in Ravenna depict Justinian in purple with a jewelled crown and Theodora in richly ornamented dress and a heavy necklace. These imperial donor portraits connect court costume with the church’s liturgical setting.
Clerical dress and sacred figures
Clerical clothing gradually developed from ordinary dress into specialised garments for worship and office. The bishop’s omophorion, a broad band worn around the shoulders, identified his rank. Other vestments developed distinctive liturgical uses, and several Byzantine forms remain recognisable in Eastern Christian practice.
Religious images commonly show Christ and the apostles in a chiton tunic, a large himation cloak and sandals. This inherited convention differs from the dress used for contemporary donors. The Theotokos (Mary) wears a maphorion covering the head and upper body, a garment also associated with married women and widows.
Hair, grooming, and appearance
Surviving representations suggest that men generally wore short, orderly hair for much of the Byzantine period, sometimes arranged in carefully formed curls. Beards became common among many lay men and clergy, while monks were associated with longer hair. Elite women often wore their hair up and may have arranged it in curls or elaborate styles, although public representations usually show it covered.