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Pink, perfume and power: Inside Copenhagen's new exhibition on ancient Roman fashion

A new exhibition at Copenhagen’s Glyptotek museum is exploring the colourful world of ancient Roman fashion - and how clothes, jewellery, hairstyles and perfume were used to signal identity, wealth and power.

READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2026/10/05/pink-perfume-and-power-inside-copenhagens-new-exhibition-on-ancient-roman-fashion

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00:00Music
00:16We have looked closer into these Roman portraits investigating the colours of their dress,
00:23not just their skin, hair and eyes, but also of the clothing they wore.
00:27We have examined a portrait statue of the Emperor Tiberius, and he's only dressed in a mantle.
00:34And our analysis of the sculpture has shown that this mantle was painted in a light, delicate pink colour.
00:43So that's quite surprising in a way, at least from a modern perspective,
00:47where we think of light pink as something feminine, we call it in Danish like a baby pink colour.
00:55But that was not the case in the Roman Empire.
00:58Music
01:10Textile represented a great wealth.
01:12It's not like today's fast fashion where everybody can buy a T-shirt for 10 quid in H&M, for
01:19example.
01:19It represented wealth in a way.
01:23No matter if it was a whole toga, for example, that would represent really quite a lot of money.
01:28Music
01:35Today, obviously, often fragrances are marketed very much masculine or feminine,
01:41and masculine is often the more heavier fragrances, women more the floral and light ones.
01:46And that was the opposite back then.
01:48There is written proof that men were suggested to wear lighter fragrances like lily rose, etc.
01:56Whereas women, they should wear the heavier fragrances, frankincense, cedar wood, that was longer lasting.
02:04So the complete opposite of what we say today.
02:07Music
02:15Music
02:17Music
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