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"Ukrainian National Costume as a Witness of the Past"
Reported by Natalya Poklad
Materials Supplies by Larysa Hodlyma
Chief Curator of Pereyslav-Hmelnytsky
Historical & Cultural Preserve
380 (4467) 54-103
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In the Ukrainian
town of Pereyaslav-Khmel’nytsky there is a museum of Ukrainian
traditional, national dress. It is housed in an eighteenth-century
building and has in its collection about 1500 shirts, blouses and other
embroidered items, about 200 woman’s adornments, over 200 belts, aprons,
head-dresses and other pieces of traditional Ukrainian costume plus a lot
more. The layman comes to the museum to gaze at the exhibits in wonder and
admiration, and the historian comes to study the changing styles, types of
dress, and through them better understand Ukrainian culture and everyday
life of the past.
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NOSTALGIA
FOR THINGS TRADITIONAL
In the whirl of changes Ukraine
finds itself in now, one feels a sort of nostalgia for things that seem to
have gone forever never to come back, and yet it turns out they linger on
in dress, customs, songs and dancers. There are still a lot of people
living who remember the way the traditional religious holidays and
festivals were celebrated in the rural Ukraine. Some of these people even
would say: «Oh, I’ve seen the real celebrations of Christmas, the real
wedding reception» and so on, meaning that these occasions were celebrated
differently from the way they are celebrated now.
«Real» in this sense
is tantamount to traditional, time-honoured. One of the integral parts of
«traditional» life is dress, woman’s dress in particular. A great care was
taken to have every item of the dress in full correspondence with the
requirements of custom and tradition. The occasion and the season
determined what kind of dress was to be worn. The wedding dress epitomised
the beauty and expectation of the youth; it was resplendent with
decorations and adorned lavishly with embroidery. In winter, when the
quiet of Christmas Eve was gaily broken by Ukrainian merry kolyadka’s
(sort of Christmas carols), young women and girls, who were singing them,
were supposed to be wearing white sheepskin coats and multicoloured bright
headkerchiefs.
One can’t help feeling nostalgic but one dons her
grandmother’s dress and as if in a time machine one is taken back to the
time which seems to be so distant and yet poignantly recent. This dress
from the grandma’s trunk helps one find the link between now and then.
Cinema and theatre occasionally remind us —not so frequently though as one
wishes they would — of the splendour of the Ukrainian traditional national
costume.
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DRESS
REFLECTS CLIMATE AND MENTALITY
National dress of any
nation, of a big one in particular, the one with a history and
culture that span more than a thousand years, reflects the
geographical situation of the country this nation occupies, the
climate, mentality, levels of economic and social development and a
lot more. The Ukrainian national costume is not an exception in this
respect. An historian of costume remarked that the traditional
woman’s dress alone — in all of its varieties of course — would be
sufficient to give one a comprehensive picture of historical and
cultural features of life in the Ukrainian village of the past.
NATIONAL DRESS OF CLASSICAL TYPE
If one can apply the word
«classic» to the national dress one can say that the Ukrainian
Midland in the basin of the Dnipro river is the area where the
Ukrainian national dress acquired features which can be regarded as
«classical», that is very typical of Ukrainian traditional costume
in general.
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It is there that the
ancient Rus-Ukraine dress had gradually become specifically Ukrainian as
it is known now. The national dress throughout Ukraine shows the same
«classical» features, though each distinguishable geographical and
cultural part of Ukraine has some differences in dress, particularly in
embroidery patterns. In some cases slight variations can be observed even
in the dress worn by people living in the neighbouring
villages.
SHIRT — AN
ANCIENT SLAVIC GARMENT
In addition to being
just an article of clothing the shirt (or, probably, more properly
«blouse» if applied to a woman’s garment) had a special, sometimes
symbolical meaning for those who wore it. It was not too long ago that
some village girls who wanted to put an amorous spell on a lad they
fancied, would wear a «magic» shirt when they went through an «enchanting
ceremony», and this shirt had to be the one they had started making on the
Ivan Kupala’s night — an ancient heathen holiday celebrated in summer
which in Christian times was incorporated into the calendar of Christian
holidays.
The woman’s shirt — or a blouse, if you want — worn in the
area of Poltava was a long one, with embroidered sleeves; the one from the
Chernihiv land was the longest among others. The shirt to be worn on
weekdays differed, naturally, from the one that was worn on Sunday. Every
woman was supposed to know how to make a shirt, and teenage girls at the
age of about 12 were taught how to do the needlework and whatever else
that was required for being a good housewife. A woman of some means had
about 15-20 shirts, and a bride from a well-to-do family was expected to
have no fewer than 50-60 shirts in her dowry. The number of shirts, their
quality, type of embroidery were good indicators of what the girl was as a
potential housewife.
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NEEDLEWORK
The thread used in
adorning shirts with needlework was dyed with natural dyes and the actual
technique of needlework varied from place to place, and from century to
century. The stitches used also varied — from very intricate to rather
simplified. In the early twentieth century cross-stitch gained
predominance over other types of stitches. Even if the colour scheme was
limited to two contrasting colours, the patterns themselves in combination
with the colours never failed to produce a powerful visual effect.
PATTERNS OF
ADORNMENT
Girls and women, bent
over their needlework during the long winter nights in the snow-bound
houses, lit inside only by a small oil-lamp or a candle, adorned their
shirts with all kinds of embroidery patterns: stylized floral, animal and
purely ornamental designs. By far the most popular one was that of a
broken tree which happens to be one of the modifications of the universal
symbol the tree of life, a symbol found virtually all around the world in
art and on household items. Solar symbols and purely geometrical patterns
are also widely used in embroidery.
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SKIRTS,
BELTS, VESTS, HEADKERCHIEFS
Each article of
clothing had a special name and as there were quite a few of these
articles in woman’s costume it would be unreasonable to list all of them
here. A couple will suffice. Plakhta and zapaska were two kinds of skirts;
the usually chequered plakhta was the more cheerful looking of the two and
consequently was worn on festive occasions, and zapaska of subdued
colours, made of durable cloth, was an everyday garment.
Belts had to
keep the skirts in place but besides this purely technical function they
had a role to play in the general arrangement of the dress. Some of the
belts were long strips of fabric, wound several times around the waist
(thus they served also as a support for the spine and protection against
injury). Belts, usually red in colour, were, like the rest of the costume,
adorned with floral and geometrical embroidered patterns.
All kinds of
vests were of varying length, modestly or lavishly adorned with needlework
and other decorations; elder women, naturally, preferred quieter ones in
tone and decoration, and young women and girls chose to wear the brighter
ones and more richly adorned.
In summer girls and unmarried women did
not wear hats or bonnets and walked about bare-headed, with their hair
usually braided. The hair was taken good care of, as it was a matter of
pride for every girl to display long braids, adorned with bright ribbons
or wreaths made of dry or freshly-picked flowers. Married women did not
braid their hair and never displayed it in public. They tucked their hair
under an ochipok, a sort of close-fitting scull-cap made of silk, brocade
or chintz. It was considered indecent for a married woman to be seen
bare-headed. The ochipok was to be worn all life long with the hair hidden
under it, and there was hardly a greater shame for a woman to have her
ochipok pulled off her hair by someone in public (probably it had
something to do with the belief in magic qualities of hair).
Headkerhiefs and shawls came to be used widely only at the end of the
nineteenth century, and the occasion and means available determined what
kind of headkerchief or shawl was to be worn.
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EARRINGS,
NECKLACES, RINGS
It’s hard to imagine a
woman indifferent to earrings, necklaces, rings and other decorations and
to be sure Ukrainian women wore all kinds of ornaments. Coral necklace was
an especially highly prized item but they cost a lot and only relatively
few could afford them. As recently as about 70-80 years ago for a price of
a coral necklace one could buy a cow. The poorer had to be content with
glass beads, the richer sported necklaces made of gold and silver coins.
The costume would not be complete without a good pair of boots which
were red, black, yellow and green in colour and worn mostly to church or
on some special occasions as the footwear was expensive. Boots were put on
bare feet; girls could have high heels and married women had to do with
low heels. As soon as the weather was warm enough, heavy winter boots were
stowed away and the female folk walked about mostly barefoot.
Winter
coats for the most part were made from sheepskin and were of various
lengths and degrees of adornment. Some of the ornamental patterns
definitely had symbolic meaning.
A dress can be not only beautiful —
it can tell an exciting story, if you know what to
ask.
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"Welcome to Ukraine" Magazine, Issue Number One, 1997
Kyiv, Ukraine, http://www.wumag.kiev.ua
Not for reproduction or distribution,
FOR PERSONAL and ACADEMIC USE ONLY
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