A Kashubian Folk Costume Highlight

Hello everybody, Isabella from Prytire here and today we are doing something very, very different. This is a folk costume, a national, regional clothing from the Kashubian district in the north of Poland where I grew up. I was not born here, I was born in central Poland really, but that's where I spent most of my childhood and my teen years, and a little bit later as well, and that's what I visit every year. So I thought it'd be nice to have a look at the costume and at the same time use the beautiful museum, folk museum in Wzydze. I'll get some photos later for it. Now, important things first, the whole folk costume, as most of the folk costume in Europe, is just a take on a traditional peasant dress really, and you can see the same elements repeated in most of the countries, mostly because that's what was functional. So you have the usual boots, stockings, cotton petticoat, wool dress, you've got a corset or a bodice or stays, depending on the century you're looking at, and chemise or a blouse, and in some parts you also have a little bit of a jacket or a bodice. The headdress changed a lot, but usually a full cap like this one enclosing all the hair was reserved for married women, whereas unmarried women were just a decorative band with lots of flowers and ribbons. This is obviously a more ornate version of an everyday outfit, and you can see how, for example, these bits are really reminiscent of the baroque or renaissance skirts that you see in Germany, in Slovakia, and in Poland, and all over the country, all over the continent actually, so that thing sort of what must remain. For the Kashubian region, the embroidery is the typical and outstanding part of decoration, obviously an ornate costume like this one would not be worn every day to work, it would be too expensive, and the first, I think the beginning of the specific embroidery started in the baroque times, where nuns and cloisters were embroidering bits and pieces in gold or silver thread. The coloured version started appearing in the beginning of the 19th century, and the colours were different, the colours signified different things in the Kashubian region. Three different blues from the sky for the lakes, and something that is blue, possibly lay flowers in the sky, sky lakes, anyway. Yellow for the sand, it's a very sandy ground here, but also Kashubia goes all the way to the coast, and amber, same thing. Greens for fields and forests, reds for the soil, quite fertile soil, and red for the blood we shed for our country, and that is the important part, because in the 19th century there was no Poland. We have partitions in the very end of the 18th century, from 1772 to 1795, and after the last partition, there was no Poland per se. This part of the country was occupied by Prussia, or what we call nowadays Germany, so obviously the regional language, regional customs, regional dress, were being quite suppressed, and people spoke German, and that's why the importance of the continuity of the folk costume was being really backed up by private education, or sort of stealthy education, because otherwise it was not really permissible, and that's why it sort of stayed, and it was the same for all of the country. It varies a lot from much more colourful than striped scarves for the middle of Poland, or different styles of clothing in the south of Poland, and in the mountains. Similar elements, different decorative bits, different colours, but the significance was the same. It was the national costume, it was our costume, and it was not enforced by the people who were partitioning Poland at the same time. So we come to language a little bit later on, because people here do not really speak Polish as well, but there is a traditional dialect or separate language called Kashubian dialect in it as well. It is established as a separate language. I can't speak it, I understand some words, as you will see that our names are in two different languages. Some letters are different, pronunciation is different. For me it's a different language, I would not be able to understand it, although I sort of lived here most of my life, and I learned a little bit during my student years. I don't remember much of that, but that's again a part of the national identity. So nowadays it is officially established as a national language here as well, and taught in some schools I suppose as well. So we're going to have a look what's in the museum, and see what part of the culture we can see, I can show you. Thank you. It's a lovely undie. So I'm just going to have a look at the stays that I've reworked from the given pattern. I'm going to remove the apron, again a more ornate version that you'll be wearing for your Sunday best, and again beautiful hand embroidery as you can see. And that's what the little sort of bastardised Elizabethan stay sort of ended up as. They turn up a little bit too big because they don't offer any reaction whatsoever, they're quite loose, and I didn't really have enough of those really small lacing rings to lace to the very end of it, but I might adjust that in the future. I'm quite pleased with these, and it looks quite cool. Colt comfort, and obviously in the 17th or 18th century if I was working here I'd be wearing a similar bodice, maybe not as adorned as this one, and an earlier shirt, because this blouse is very much end of 19th century, so modernised. I would have a standard shift, possibly with a drawstring, so I could loosen out this drawstring and sort of incitingly try to get some customers for a pint or more.