CORSET TRÔNE

THE ORIGIN

Constantinople. For seven hundred years the Byzantine emperors and empresses did not simply dress for ceremony — they were assembled into it. The central garment was the loros: a long band of silk so densely worked with pearls and gemstones that it lost all softness and became a shell, wound around the torso and fixed in place. It was too rigid to fold, too heavy to wear unaided and it belonged to no one. It was kept in the palace treasury and issued for the day. Macedonians, Komnenoi, Palaiologoi — different families, different centuries, the same encrusted casing closing around a new body each time. Constantine VII wrote down the rules for it himself in the tenth century. Theodora stands wearing one in Ravenna.

The dynasty was the garment. The person inside was temporary.

THE MOTIF

Pearl worked to the point of rigidity. Red beneath ivory — the reserved colour, permitted to one house at a time. Crown at the centre field.

The imperial loros, Constantinople — 9th–15th century.