ÿþ<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD><TITLE>"Explorations in Folklore 4: Two Urban Costumes"</TITLE> <META content="text/html; charset=windows-1252" http-equiv=Content-Type> <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us"> <META content="MSHTML 5.00.2614.3500" name=GENERATOR> <META content="Russian, 19th century, Ottoman Empire, folklore" name=Keywords> <META content="" name=Description></HEAD> <BODY bgcolor="#E0E0E0" link="blue" vlink="black"> <div align="center"> <center> <table bgcolor="#F8F8FF" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="2" width="800"> <tr><td colspan="5" width="100%" align="center"><img src="images/sitemainoceanjasperbluered.jpg"></td></tr> <tr><td valign="top" width="18%" colspan="1" height="100"><hr color="#B3B3B3" width="100%" align="left"><br><FONT face="arial, sans-serif" size="2"><B><A HREF="index.html">HOME</A><br><br><A href="Blog.html">BLOG</a><br><br><A href="OtherWriting.html">OTHER WRITING</A><br><br><A href="PhotoGallery.html">PHOTO GALLERY</A><br><br><A href="AboutMe_&_FAQ.html">ABOUT ME&nbsp;/&nbsp;FAQs</A><br><br><A href="Contact.html">CONTACT</A><br><br><A href="Links.html">LINKS</A><br><br> </font><br><hr color="#B3B3B3" width="100%" align="left"></td> <A NAME="top"></A> <td width="62%" valign="top" colspan="1"><P><FONT color="black" face="Arial, Verdana, sans-serif" size="2"><br> <p><H1 align="center">EXPLORATIONS IN FOLKLORE 4:</H1> <H1 align="center">Two Urban Costumes</H1></p> <H3>By Karen Bennett</H3> <H5>[<I>Written in September 2010. Published in the October 1, 2010 issue of the Ontario </I>Folk Dancer<I> and in the January 2011 issue of </I>Let's Dance!<I> magazine, the organ of the <a href="http://www.folkdance.com/">Folk Dance Federation of California (North)</a>.]</I></H5> <p>I'd like to talk about two styles of urban costumes I ve come across: one from Russia and one from the Ottoman Empire.</p> <p><img src="images/Russian_blouse.jpg" align="right" width="260" border="1" hspace="10" vspace="10" alt="Russian blouse">In May 2007 I was browsing on eBay when I found this listing: "Antique Russian embroidered folk costume blouse, embroidered front and back and on the sleeves. There are hammered brass sequins on the front and back panels. The ground fabric is red and blue cotton, with inserts of colourful crocheted lace."</p> <p>It's almost impossible to find original Russian costumes; I have two modern reproductions, but I'm always thrilled to come upon older things, especially when they're embroidered.</p> <p>The embroidery on this blouse was cross stitch and running stitch. It was an extremely fine and finicky item, some of it sewn by machine but most of it by hand, with the initials "MF" (in Roman letters, not Cyrillic) embroidered close to the bottom of the front panel.<img src="images/Russian_apron.jpg" align="left" width="240" border="1" hspace="10" vspace="10" alt="Russian apron"> "MF" had been a slim but not tall woman, I later discovered when I tried on the blouse.</p> <p>Some time after that, I saw a listing for a lone apron, also advertised as Russian, of linen embroidered in red, blue, yellow and white, with a hem of white crocheted lace, the waist tied with red and white machine-made ribbons. This apron didn't go with the blouse&#8212;except in my head. "I spy a theme," sez I; "a recurring style." A look through my costume books having proved inconclusive&#8212;the apron resembled one belonging to a costume from Belarus, but the blouse matched nothing&#8212;I put the pieces away in a trunk. For the next two years, my research on this front advanced not an inch.</p> <p>In September 2009 the theme reappeared:<img src="images/Russian_blouse-front.jpg" align="right" width="140" border="1" hspace="10" vspace="10" alt="Russian blouse--tailored"> a three-piece ensemble described as "Antique 19th-century three-piece dress/costume loaded with folk embroidery and fine intricate lace." The plain red skirt matched nothing else in the set in terms of material, hue or adornment, and seemed to be a replacement for the original. But the apron matched the fitted blouse (see photo at right), and both had been made by a professional tailor. "What we have here," sez I, "is an urban costume."</p> <p>A month later, I hit the jackpot: a complete ensemble with the original skirt as well as a fourth piece, a bib-like front panel.<img src="images/Complete_Russian_Costume.jpg" align="left" width="200" border="1" hspace="10" vspace="10" alt="Russian four-piece costume"> The seller listed it as a "Vintage Possible Victorian-Era Russian Folk Costume." A copy of a photograph was included in the auction, supposedly of the original owner; it indicated that she was a Madame Pasca, a French actress who had performed in Paris and at "the Court of Russia" in St. Petersburg. ("Madame Pasca" was her stage name; she lived from 1835 to 1914 and reached the height of her fame in 1875.) So: possibly a costume used to perform in.</p> <p>"A very interesting piece," an anonymous eBayer had commented on this listing. "It is not actually a folk costume, but an outfit made by a city woman for use for 'ethnic' occasions. It is, as you said, basically a Victorian outfit embellished with folk embroidery and lace. This was very popular among city people in Russia at a particular point in time. Nothing like this was ever worn by a peasant, however."</p> <p>Alas, in the final 15 seconds of the eBay auction I was outbid for the ensemble ("I found it! I lost it!"), but I printed the listing and saved one photo, thinking, "Well, at least I've discovered what it is. Thank you, nameless commenter."</p> <p>In November 2009 I found an item from an eBay seller in California who regularly features stunning museum "deaccessions": an exquisite blue-green-silk Ottoman costume that dated from the 1920s, the seller said. It had four pieces: a soft, fez-style gold-tasselled hat embroidered on top with the cipher (<I>tura</I>) of the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed VI Vahideddin, whose rule ended on November 1, 1922; a bolero-style jacket with slashed sleeves that reminded me of the fashions of 1850s and 1860s Western Europe; what appeared to be a skirt on first glance but was really voluminous harem pants (<I>_alvar</I>); and a sash or girdle from which depended many long gold fringes.<img src="images/Ottoman_four-piece_city_costume.jpg" align="right" width="310" border="1" hspace="10" vspace="10" alt="Ottoman four-piece urban costume, front and back views"> The original <I>gömlek</I> (chemise) was not included. This had to be an urban costume of a rich woman (and a petite one; the jacket doesn't fit me), most likely living in the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople (renamed Istanbul in 1930). The owner could even have belonged to the Westernized court of the Sultan&#8212;his daughters Princess Fatma Ulviye Sultan, born 1892, and Princess Rukiye Sabiha Sultan, born 1894, are candidates as owners.</p> <p>As early as 1835, the adopted daughter of a Sultan's sister was wearing a gown "of light green striped with white and edged with a fringe of pink floss silk; while her jacket, which was the product of a Parisian dressmaker, was of dove-coloured satin, thickly wadded and furnished with a deep cape and a pair of immense sleeves, fastened at the wrists with diamond studs" (quoted in <I>Women's Costume of the Near and Middle East</I> by Jennifer Scarce [London: Unwin Hyman, 1987], p. 78).</p> <p>In addition to heelless slippers, fans, jewellery and cosmetics, such "a costume would not have been complete ... without an appropriately elaborate hairstyle.... adorned usually by an assortment of scarves wound around tasselled caps in many variations and proportions" (Scarce, pp. 78&#8211;79).</p> <p>By the 1870s, Scarce says, Turkish women's dress was, "at least in the main cities, giving way steadily to more European fashions. This is reflected at various levels in Turkish clothes, ranging from substituting European garments such as the Parisian jacket [mentioned above] for Turkish garments, careful alteration of existing wardrobes in an effort to bring them up to date, curious amalgams of European shape with Turkish decoration, to sophisticated European clothes either commissioned from Paris by those of sufficient means such as the princesses of the Ottoman court or copied by enterprising Levantine dressmakers in the Pera quarter of Istanbul" (Scarce, p. 81).<img src="images/Ottoman_city_costume_detail.jpg" align="right" width="140" border="1" hspace="10" vspace="10" alt="skirt detail, Ottoman four-piece urban costume"></p> <p>Thinking back to the tasselled hat, I spent some time researching Turkish sumptuary laws in case I could discover which women had the right to wear the Sultan's cipher embroidered on their hats. I never did find out, but something else turned up that disturbed me. I own a book on the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul, which possesses a large costume collection. On p. 11 of <I>The Topkapi Saray Museum: Costumes, Embroideries and Other Textiles</I>, which was translated, expanded and edited by J.M. Rogers from the original Turkish by Hülye Tezcan and Selma Deliba_ (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1986), it says, "The collections contain almost 2,500 pieces.... [which] are virtually all men's clothing: the clothes of the ladies of the Court and the Harem have nearly all vanished without trace."</p> <p>My odd assortment of Russian urban costume pieces is reposing peacefully in my home, giving rise to not so much as a twinge of guilt that they're inaccessible to the public except through the medium of this webpage.</p> <p>But perhaps I should consider sending "the Istanbul costume" across the Atlantic to where it seems to belong&#8212;the Topkapi Museum. Yet I have furnished a trace, now. Treasures may vanish, but they do, sometimes, reappear.</p> </font></td> <td width="20%" colspan="1" valign="top" height="100"><hr color="#B3B3B3" width="100%" align="left"> <P><B><FONT face="arial, sans-serif" size="2" color="black"><A href="FantasticToronto.html">FANTASTIC TORONTO<br>SURVEY</A><br><br><a href="RecentChanges.html">RECENT CHANGES<br>TO SURVEY</a></font><br><br><br><hr color="#B3B3B3" width="100%" align="left"></P> </td></TR> <tr><td align="center" valign="top" colspan="5" width="90%"><hr color="#B3B3B3" width="70%"><br><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif" size="-1" align="center"><B> <A HREF="index.html">HOME</A>&nbsp;&nbsp;||&nbsp;&nbsp;<A href="FantasticToronto.html">FANTASTIC TORONTO SURVEY</A> <br><br><A href="Blog.html">BLOG</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;||&nbsp;&nbsp;<A href="OtherWriting.html">OTHER WRITING</A><br><br> <A href="PhotoGallery.html">PHOTO GALLERY</A>&nbsp;&nbsp;||&nbsp;&nbsp;<A href="Contact.html">CONTACT</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;||&nbsp;&nbsp;<A href="AboutMe_&_FAQ.html">ABOUT ME&nbsp;/&nbsp;FAQs</A>&nbsp;&nbsp;||&nbsp;&nbsp;<A href="Links.html">LINKS</A> <BR> <P><FONT face="Arial, sans-serif" size="-2">Copyright © 2011 by Karen E. 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