The Power of Fashion in the Roman Empire

At a time when fashion and staging the self demand more attention than ever, antiquity opens new perspectives on the ways – then and now – we view ourselves and each other.

The exhibition The Power of Fashion in the Roman Empire is based on the museum’s extensive research on the colours, dress, jewellery, perfumes and fashion of the ancient world. This ambitious special exhibition, extending over more than 1,000 m2 is a first in Denmark and internationally. Fashion and identity are closely linked. Our clothing can be read as a language that communicates our identity – gender, age, cultural background and social status, as well as political and at times religious affiliations. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we communicate our identities to others through our clothing, just as we ‘read’ other people on the basis of what they wear. This is also the way it was in ancient Rome. Most of the fabrics of antiquity have sadly been lost to time, but we still have marble and bronze sculptures portraying men and women in different forms of dress. What stories are hidden within the folds of their garments when we see them with contemporary eyes? And what do they reveal about identities in antiquity – and fashion today? Antiquity continues to be relevant. Then as now we see clothing, fashion and the way we look as a means to signal identity, status and power, and the sculptures remind us that staging the self is far from a new phenomenon.