ABSTRACT
When I tell people that I study dress and adornments in late antiquity, they often look at me quizzically and ask, “What is there of scholarly value in dress?” From the ensuing conversations it becomes clear that the realm of fashion has been so fi rmly associated with frivolity and even wastefulness that, to many, it seems misguided to devote a serious work of scholarship to the topic.1 It is my contention, though, that such a disposition toward dress is the product of an effective rhetorical campaign of the early Imperial period that aligned elaborate displays of dress with notions of triviality, leisure, decadence, and impiety and that linked all of the above to femininity. It is precisely because these signifi cations-and the trivialization of those realms presumed to relate to the feminine-remain in force still today that we ought to study late ancient dress.
