Watching Paris Fashion Week this fall, I was eager to see if any designers were channeling their inner Juno again in their Spring-Summer 2026 collections. I had hopes of perhaps catching a few drapey, stola-inspired fall dresses or pleated, warrior-style winter skirts. This seemed reasonable after looking at pictures of Dior’s Spring-Summer Ready to Wear show from last year, featuring divine, flowy, goddess-like dresses and sparkly gladiator sandals that even Venus would covet. Wondering what elements of ancient Roman fashion might influence today’s designers, I began reading more about our perceptions of fashion from that era and learned that what we often imagine as typical of antiquity is not so "classic" after all.
Much of how we picture the ancient world comes from the moving pictures of cinema, and as Harvard Classics professor and history consultant for the original 2000 Gladiator film Kathleen M. Coleman explains that a lot of that is not historically accurate. In her book, The Pedant Goes to Hollywood, Coleman explains that movies tend to meet audiences where they are in terms of their understanding of the world: “Most of the historical distortions in cinema are probably [...] conscious decisions based upon esthetics, pragmatism, or an estimation of the public
The Symbolism of Love and Death in The Colosseum by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Winter 2025 · Torch: U.S. · THE ROME WE FASHION
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The Rome
We Fashion
Sophie Abendroth
New Trier Township High School, Illinois