Xicolli

Aztec priests were routinely described and depicted with skin and hair darkened by soot from the copal incense burned constantly in temple ritual, and the xicolli's characteristic black or dark coloring extended that visual language into the garment itself, marking the wearer's body as given over to a life of ascetic self-denial, regular bloodletting and constant proximity to sacred fire and smoke. Sahagun's informants describe priests as deliberately unkempt in ordinary appearance, hair matted and uncut, skin blackened, a visible contrast to the more elaborately groomed and brightly ornamented dress of Aztec nobility and warriors, reinforcing that the priesthood's status rested on discipline and religious devotion rather than on ordinary display of wealth or rank.

The xicolli's sleeveless, fringed cut left the arms and much of the torso visible, practically suited to a role that involved frequent ritual bloodletting from the arms and body, while its simple tied front closure distinguished it clearly from the more elaborate wrapped and pinned garments worn by nobles and rulers on ceremonial occasions.

Much of what is known about the xicolli in specific visual detail comes from the illustrations accompanying Sahagun's Florentine Codex, produced under his direction by Nahua artists working from living memory and older pictorial conventions in the decades after the conquest, which depict priests of different ranks and different deity cults wearing recognizably varied versions of the garment, some plainer, some marked with additional painted or woven elements signaling a wearer's specific office or the god he served. These variations indicate that the xicolli functioned as more than a generic priestly uniform, carrying finer distinctions of rank and specialization legible to contemporaries even where the surviving textual descriptions do not always spell out every distinction explicitly.

As with most specifically religious Aztec dress, the xicolli did not survive as a living garment past the disruption of the temple system that produced it, and its detailed reconstruction today depends on the colonial-era textual and pictorial record rather than on any continuous tradition of manufacture and wear.