Our ancestors’ clothes were very harmonious and sophisticated. Each element of clothing revealed specific features of everyday life in different counties. They had not only fancy and casual costumes, but also different garments depending on the season, way of life, welfare, and marital status.
Women in Moscow Governorate wore a shirt that usually fully covered their arms. It was draped around the neck and fixed with fine embroidery. You could see people in streets wearing clothes of different fit. Garments with straight poliks, or shoulder pads, that were attached to the weft were usually worn with a trapezoidal sarafan. If poliks were attached to the warp, the garment was worn with a buttoned down sarafan.
Headwear also reflected the marital status of a lady. Before marriage, girls wore different kinds of headbands, crowns, and towels. However, the top of the head always remained uncovered. The ritual of initiation into the married life always took place after the church wedding. Girls unbraided the bride’s hair and then made two braids placing them on the head in the form of a crown. This crown was then topped with a low one-horned kichka headdress.
Women in Moscow Governorate wore a shirt that usually fully covered their arms. It was draped around the neck and fixed with fine embroidery. You could see people in streets wearing clothes of different fit. Garments with straight poliks, or shoulder pads, that were attached to the weft were usually worn with a trapezoidal sarafan. If poliks were attached to the warp, the garment was worn with a buttoned down sarafan.
When a woman’s marital status changed, she also changed her clothing. When girls matured or got married, they started wearing a poneva wool skirt. This ancient female garment was fixed at waist height with a decorative rope. Later on, a poneva was replaced with more modern items – skirts and sarafans. Ladies living in towns started sewing sarafans earlier than countrywomen – already back in the 16th century. This garment was named after a man’s kaftan tunic.
Women in Moscow Governorate loved sarafans. Kumashnik was the name of a popular trapezoidal sarafan. It could be with buttons or closed at the front. Later on, women started wearing straight strap sarafans, in Moscow Governorate such model was called a round sarafan, while in other regions it was dubbed a Moscow sarafan.
After giving birth to her first baby, the lady changed her headwear again. Instead of a one-horned kichka which she had the right to wear after marriage, she could now put on a head garment with a high horn or a decorated crown on a wired basis. This accessory showed that its owner proved her ability to give birth to a child. Women in Moscow Governorate had several types of headwear depending on where the lady lived. The simplest garments were in the Zvenigorod county where women wore kokoshnik and soroka headdresses.
Women and men wore the same kind of shoes. The most common footwear until the first half of the 20th century was lapti bast shoes – casual and sometimes festive footwear. While citizens of the Moscow county had already started wearing leather boots and koty fur shoes instead of lapti, peasants in the Serpukhov and Ruza counties continued wearing lapti with wool socks.
