“Many there are, who seem to slight all care. And with a pleasing negligence ensnare; Whole mornings oft, in such a dress are spent, And all is art, that looks like accident.” ----Ovid (43 B.C. – A.D. 17) With so much of Western civilization built from the heritage of ancient Greece and Rome, it’s instructive to look at some essential dress features. Right away, it becomes clear that men took the lead in fashion, leaving women to assume a relatively standard form of dress that left them covered from neck to ankle. And yet, as you can see from the quote above, the ancients already understood the beguiling nature of artful dressing. The Greeks idealized the masculine body, apparent to all those who study Greek art or visit the recently refurbished Greek and Roman Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. From the Archaic Period kouros figure to the Hellenistic era gladiator, the nude male body is rendered by artists with beauty and clarity. Yes, there are lovely female statues, but the emphasis is on the aesthetic of the perfect male body. Roman society followed suit, although its masculine citizens draped themselves in the voluminous toga. The mighty Roman Empire was created by soldiers who eschewed trousers and thought them fit only for the barbarians they subdued. This attitude would slowly change over time. And Roman women were expected to drape themselves modestly, especially in public. And this might be the crux of the matter. Men played out public roles while women were expected to perform their duties behind the closed doors and walls of their homes. We even hear mention of men as dandies, from Greek leader Alcibiades to the incomparable Julius Caesar, but no female equivalents are known. For the Greeks, the garment we recognize as the tunic was initially a peplos, and then became the Doric or Ionian chiton, and it was often covered by cloaks or shawls. The Roman swathed himself in his toga, but his lady usually had to drape three layers around herself: an under tunic, a stola, or outer tunic, and cover them all with a palla. And so a pattern became established early on…