=73. Styles of Arranging Garments. Fullers and Cleaners.=--With garments so simple in their sewing as togas and stolas there is little call in Rome for exclusive tailoring establishments or for fashionable makers of “gowns.” Practically all purchased clothing, however costly, is “ready-made,” although the shifting styles in girding, arranging the folds, buckles, etc., are infinite. For example, there is a special arrangement of the toga in peculiarly ample folds known as the “Gabinian cincture,” and this form is practically required every time a man joins in an important sacrifice. If, nevertheless, the dressmaker’s skill is simple, there is constant demand for that of the _cleaner’s_, whose art is brought to great perfection. The huge squares of fine woolen seem continually going to or coming from the fullers’ establishments. The fullers pass for peculiarly jovial, friendly people, and the “jolly fuller” is a stock character in comedy. Soap is a Gallic invention and it is just coming into fairly common use. Garments are still cleansed, however, with “fuller’s meal,” a kind of alkaline earth. Wherever you go around the humbler parts of Rome you hear a monotonous song being trolled over and over, and coming usually from a pungently smelling establishment. It is the fullers’ _tripudium_ (“three step”), sung as they tread out the clothes in the great vats all day long. After the direct cleaning, a fine garment has to be recarded to bring up the soft nap, then it is carefully smoothed in a large wooden press with powerful screws.[38] Every household can do its own laundry work, but in no later age will the “cleaner” reign with the supremacy which he enjoys in Rome. His justification comes when, at great public assemblies, thousands of togas and stolas veritably shine under the Italian sun like newly fallen snow. =74. Barber Shops. The Revived Wearing of Beards.=--Rome, too, is a city of barbers. Their shops abound everywhere and are great places for lounging and gossip. Most men have their hair clipped quite short, although a good many dandies delight in wearing fringes or rows of short crisped curls (as did Nero) often reeking with pomatum. People who dislike appearing old sometimes use black hair dye; and not a few elderly senators are said to wear wigs. [Illustration: SCENE BEFORE A BARBER SHOP.]