The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek’s exhibition The Power of Fashion in the Roman Empire opens in Copenhagen on 1 October, bringing 171 objects together to explore how clothing and bodily adornment worked in Roman life. The museum’s largest show about antiquity in its history places its celebrated statues alongside rare garments and new attention to sculpture’s original colours. It argues that Roman dress was not simply practical clothing: images of what people wore could communicate status and political authority.
Revisiting the Glyptotek’s classical collection
Opened in 1897, the Glyptotek was shaped by its founder, brewer and collector Carl Jacobsen, whose enthusiasm for classical antiquity favoured large, striking works. The new exhibition makes that legacy part of its approach, asking visitors to look again at monumental sculptures through the details of dress. Among them are a statue of Emperor Tiberius and a portrait of Fundilius Doctus, a freed slave shown in an elaborate toga; both date to the mid-first century AD.
Curator Cecilie Brøns’s framing distinguishes the clothes represented on statues from garments worn in everyday life. Sculptures can tell viewers how Romans chose to picture power and social position, rather than provide a straightforward record of what someone wore on an ordinary day. That distinction shapes a show built around both the Glyptotek’s imposing collection and objects that offer a more direct connection to ancient textiles.
Rare garments meet monumental sculpture
Three Roman tunics from the British Museum are among the exhibition’s loans. The museum says none has previously left its collection, making their appearance in Copenhagen a rare opportunity to see actual garments in a display otherwise centred on how dress survives in art. A Byzantine textile fragment from the Glyptotek’s own holdings adds another material point of comparison.
The show also brings in fragments from a colossal sculpture of Emperor Septimius Severus. The Burdur Museum in Turkey is lending two large sections of legs and the head; the museum is 125km inland from Antalya. Their placement in a display about footwear connects an imposing imperial image with the dressed body, while the British Museum tunics give visitors a different kind of evidence: fabric once worn, rather than clothing carved or painted to convey an identity.
Recovering colour in Roman dress
Colour is central to the exhibition’s interpretation, building on the Glyptotek’s research into polychromy in ancient sculpture. The mantle on the statue of Tiberius now appears off-white, but it was originally a pinkish purple. The source describes this family of hues as purpura, a valued colour associated with dye made from Mediterranean snails. A digital image offers an approximation of the mantle’s earlier appearance.
Research also indicates that Fundilius Doctus’s toga was once painted red or orange. The colour matters because the figure’s identity as a former slave gives the garment’s appearance social significance. Taken together, these reconstructions challenge the familiar impression of classical sculpture as uniformly pale stone, while keeping the focus on what colour and clothing communicate about the people represented.
Clothing as a language of power
A statue of Emperor Trajan as a military commander illustrates the gap between historical clothing and political image-making. He is depicted in a pleated tunic, leather doublet, elaborate breastplate and paludamentum, the large ceremonial cloak associated with Roman military officers. The exhibition questions whether Trajan wore that combination in battle—or whether a real commander would have dressed that way at all.
The point, in Brøns’s interpretation, is that the statue presents Trajan to his subjects as a commander. Clothing in these works can therefore be read as an instrument of statecraft: its importance lies not only in practical use, but in the authority and status it makes visible. The objects and reconstructions in Copenhagen invite visitors to weigh those meanings against the limited evidence of surviving ancient garments.
Dates and venue
The Power of Fashion in the Roman Empire runs at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen from 1 October to 29 March 2027. Its 171 objects bring together the museum’s ancient sculptures, the British Museum’s three tunics, a Glyptotek textile fragment and loans from Turkey’s Burdur Museum.
That range gives the exhibition its central method: place garments and textile evidence beside statues, then ask what each can—and cannot—show about Roman appearance. The result is a presentation of antiquity in which colour, fabric and the staged image of dress become part of the story of imperial and social identity.
Takeaway: With 171 objects, the Glyptotek’s exhibition treats Roman fashion as both material clothing and a visual language of status and power.
