This women’s suit was called ‘pair’ because it consisted of two items: a jacket and a skirt. It was worn in the late 19th – early 20th century. These suits were usually made of silk or cotton fabric.

Matching outfits consisting of a skirt and a jacket appeared in Russian villages only in the last third of the 19th century and became popular throughout Russia in the early 20th century. They were inspired by urban fashion and replaced the traditional women’s costume: a sarafan dress, a shirt, a belt, a sleeveless jacket, and a headdress (a shamshura, kokoshnik, or soroka). Sarafans were sewn from different fabrics: chintz, cashmere, cotton, and others. In cut, they could be straight, tunic-like, with a yoke and oblique.

For a long time, the “pairs” were the festive costume of young women and girls. Holiday clothes were treated with care, worn for years yet occasionally, and commonly passed down as an inheritance.

The “pair” from the Nevyansk Museum exposition consists of a peplum jacket, which emphasized the waist, and a long wide skirt. The jacket is fastened at the front with buttons, the collar is decorated with lace ruffles and a guipure insert.

The jacket and skirt were traditionally sewn from materials of the same color and texture: chintz, satin, velvet, batiste, wool, cashmere. Both in large industrial centers—for example, in Perm and Yekaterinburg—and in remote factories (for example, in Alapayevsk or Nevyansk), ladies followed European fashion, ordered outfits in Saint Petersburg or from local tailors who worked on patterns from French fashion magazines. Women not only followed the latest trends but also knew how to dress in accordance with the rules of good taste. Seamstresses sewed outfits by hand or using a Singer sewing machine.

Over time, “pairs” evolved from formal wear to casual and became a late version of the traditional Russian costume. But it was hard to preserve the full suit. Skirts wore out and deteriorated faster than blouses, or they were modified by subsequent generations – they were altered according to the new fashion, repaired or adjusted to fit.