---
node: garment_stola
type: garment
slug: stola
title: "Stola"
lead: "The stola is the long dress of the Roman married woman, worn over a tunic as the visible sign of respectable wedded status. It was the female counterpart of the citizen's toga."
published: 2026-08-09
updated: 2026-08-09
image_file: stola.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roman_Marble_Statue_of_Empress_Livia_Represented_as_Goddess_Ceres_(Demeter),_c._15-45_AD_(28204398362).jpg"
image_author: "Gary Todd from Xinzheng, China"
image_license: "CC0"
---

## Overview

A stola is a long, sleeveless or short-sleeved gown reaching the feet, suspended from the shoulders by straps and worn over an inner tunic. It marked a woman as a matrona, a lawfully married Roman wife, and only such women were entitled to wear it.

## How it is worn

It is put on over the tunic and belted, sometimes twice, to fall in long folds to the instep, with the palla, a large mantle, drawn over it out of doors and often over the head. The whole announced modesty and married respectability.

## History

The stola was proper dress under the Republic and early Empire; disgraced women and prostitutes were barred from it and wore the toga instead. As Roman dress grew more uniform in late antiquity the distinctive stola gradually disappeared.