European costumes

Polish Folk Style

Edward's recent thread about the lack of English national costumes raised interesting questions about the local costumes associated with European peasant...

Original Henry Art Gallery collection catalog number: P6228.4 PH Coll 380.A1151

Hello all, Today I will return to Hungary, to talk about one of the most famous costume and embroidery traditions in that country, that of Mezőkövesd. This town is the largest of the three settlements of the Matyó people of northeastern Hungary. These also include the villages of Tard and Szentistván, each of which has a distinct costume. You can see Mezőkövesd in the southern part of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county. Mezőkövesd costume and embroidery has become as iconic of Hungary in general as…

Hello all, I received a request for some information the traditional clothing of Switzerland, especially of the area around Luzern, so I will give a very short overview of this information. Switzerland, as is well known, is a multilingual nation which strongly identifies as one ethnicity. This is extremely unusual, and is rooted in the fact that the Swiss Confederation was voluntary on the part of its citizens, at least at first, and as it grew, that was still mostly true. Here is a…

Hello all, Today i am going to talk about the costume and woven ornament of the Vilnius region. Not all sources even recognise such a region, which had me wondering where it came from. After a bit of research, i found out that this is a historical region, being an administrative province which predated the establishment of the independant state of Lithuania in the 20th cent. Here is a good article on the history of this region. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilnius_Region Here is a map…

Historical Turkish male and female costumes from the european part of the Ottoman Empire. The costume history by Auguste Racinet, 1888.

A white dress, veil, something borrowed, old, new and blue - these are all the pieces essential to a traditional western wedding gown. And as with every tradition, there's an explanation for every detail in the wedding ceremony. And though we are all used to see white tones on a wedding dress, you don't have to look very far for an entirely different approach to the bride's attire. And as the cultures and wedding ceremony traditions vary from country to country, so does the unique dresses…

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