Diadochian dress
Diadochian dress has evolved over the centuries but it is quite conservative in nature. In Diadochia, clothing is divided into two distinct types, modern western clothing, and traditional Diadochian dress. This article refers to the traditional dress of the Diadochians.
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Imperial costume
The major garments worn by both Emperors and Empress were the Imperial crown and a jewelled toga like garment called the loros, in the old days before the Imperial Court adopted western fashion in the 1700s. The loros was worn by the Emperor and Empress as a quasi-ecclesiastical garment.
The loros was and still is occasionally donned by the most senior officials and the imperial bodyguards. The Emperor and the Empress usually only wore the loros on Easter Sunday.
A men's loros was a long strip, dropping down staight in front to below the waist, and with the portion behind pulled round to the front and hung gracefully over the left arm. While the female version of the loros was similar at the front end, but the back end was much wider and tucked under a belt after pulling through to the front again.
Jewels and embroidery adorned the robes of the Emperor and enamelled plaques, sometimes dipicting saints and other religous images were sewn into the clothing of the Imperial family. Sleeves were generally close fitting to the arm nad the outer dress often came to the ankles.
The Emperor often wore a imperial collar, really a cloth of gold studded with gems and heavily embroidered, with drop pearls sometimes placed at intervals. The collar came over thee collarbone and was over top a portion of the upper chest.
The Emperor also wore cloaks with a gap at the front, dalmatic garments, stockings, purple or red slippers and gold and jewelled gloves. During military expeditions the Emperors wore gold breastplates, red or purple boots and a crown usually with a Pendilia.
Court dress
From the very start imperial court life was like a play with single person having a role; each person having a specific attire and dress to perform this role. During state occaisions like the Emperor's nameday or easter members of the imperial court performed ceremonial dances, dressed in the old colours of the factions of the Hippodrome of Atlantis. The Blue faction wore a blue and white garment with short sleeves and gold bands and rings on their ankles. While their great rivals the Greens wore a garment of green and red, split with gold bands. The colours represent the old four factions that are now merged into two, the conservative Blues and the liberal Greens.
Military costume
Clerical dress
Men dress
During the fifth and sixth centuries, working class men often went barefoot; even now some in rural areas still do. They often wear short woolen tunics held in place by belts inserted into a strap passing over the left shoulder. In cold weather commoners wore long coats.
Men often substitute short, close fitting tunics for longer more flowing ones. The skirt of te short tunic is slit at the back where a triangular strip of fabric is inserted to give the garment width; at the neck there is usually a small collar.
In the eleventh century the emperor adopted a very short version trimmed with gold to use as their riding costume. By the next century men begin wearing hoses that reached to the knees. In the following centuries men begin wearing more western clothing, introducing revealing doublets, codpieces, Jerkins, breeches all by the sixteenth century.
Female dress
From the sixth century onward, until western dress was adopted, the empresses and their ladies followed the example of the emperor and his court wearing close fitting silk tunics, over which they wore a dalmatic embroidered at the shoulders and hem; above this they wore a pallium, with a circular cut for the head to go through. The back extended to form a train that could be pulled forward and carried over ones left arm.
The costumes of middle class women is inspired by their male counterparts, consisting of a tunic and robe, that can be draped around the wearers shoulder and pulled over her head.
The robes are usually made of linen, silk, cotton or even sometimes transparent fabrics; which for centuris angered the Church.
Women of the Imperial Court, noblewomen and common women often wear robes of the 'princess shape'. Before heels became a fashion craze in Diadochia, women of the imperial court wore heeless shoes, jeweled gloves, little circlets on their heads.
Women of all classes of the empire, pluck their eyebrows to form a long straight and narrow line and they often are heavily made up with heavily rouged lips and makeup.
Shoes
For centuries men as well as women have been very interested in fashion. By the seventh century men were fascinated by the oriental styles and started wearing shoes of an eastern style in summer and switched to soft leather boots in winter.
The Emperors to this day wear silk slippers or boots the color purple or bright red with double headed eagles on them.
Hats
For centuries most men of Diadochia went without hats, except the Emperor who often wore extremly elaborate headdresses in the middle ages. By the middle ages and into the present era extravagantly large hats were worn as part of imperial court dress. By the 13th century wide brimmed felt hats were worn; later on small caps with or without fur brims were worn in the manner of the russian Tsars.
Many different types of hats were worn in the empire, before western dress was adopted by the imperial court. These hats include:
- Phrygian cap: popular in the Province of Phrygia
- Pileus : A brimless felt cap, popular among the peasants
- Petasos: A sun hat mainly worn in Thessaly with a chlamys cape
- Toupha: A plumage of exotic animals, used to decorate the emperor's crown.
- Kausia: flat hat popular in the province of macedonia
- Kalyphta: Pyramid shaped hat with Turkish origins
- Kalimavkion: cylindrical head covering worn by monks
Hair
From the earliest days of the empire, most men of Diadochia wore their hair short, appeared clean shaven. However in the sixth century, during the reign of Emperor Cassander III of Diadochia (563 AD–601 AD), the members of the blue faction, the precursor of the modern conservative party of Diadochia, begin wearing beards and moustaches and growing their hair long in the back in the asiatic styles. Emperor Cassander VI of Diadochia (697 AD–714 AD) was the first Emperor to wear a beard in over two hundred years.
By the ninth and early tenth centuries the Diadochian Orthodox Church expressed its approval of beards and long hair, because in the churches view it helped to distinguish their male wearers from the palace eunuchs, wildly employeed in the the imperial bureaucracy. In fact even earlier then this most court titles were divided into three classes, those for the "Bearded ones" (βαρβάτοι from Latin barbati, i.e. not eunuchs), the eunuchs (ἐκτομίαι) and women.
