Ukrainian Traditional Folklore

Modern Everyday Wear

Today, everyday wear is usually a purchased dress for women and purchased trousers and a shirt for men. All married women wear a kerchief, at least in villages. Embroidery is widely popular and equally widely practiced. More and more people wear ukraiins'ke on more and more occasions. Ukraiins'ke is worn more and more often to weddings. It is also popular to wear ukraiins'ke to festivals. For example, at the Ivan Kupalo rite celebrated in Berlozy, Kozelets'ky region, Chernihiv province, all of the performers wore ukraiins'ke. The costumes chosen adhered to traditional age categories. Thus, the young girls dancing around the tree called the Marena all wore embroidered shifts and belts. Their hair was loose. The older, married women who sang in the choir wore skirts and headgear, as well as shifts. Men wore embroidered shirts. Even the effigy called Kupalo was dressed in ukraiins'ke. It was a figure made of sticks dressed in an embroidered shirt with an enormous wreath for a head.
Modifications to the traditional heavy linen shift with red and black embroidery are also popular. Modifications tend to be of two types. One is to use traditional fabrics, but non-traditional threads and colors, as in the dress from Lytviaky shown above. The other is to use traditional colors on more modern garments, garments made out of a finer, thinner fabric and with a slimmer, more figure-fitting cut, such as this blouse. Sometimes old, worn garments are taken apart and made into modern clothing, such as this tank top. Urban men in the 19th century, if they wanted to be nationalistic, wore embroidered shirts with their suits instead of a shirt and tie. This is again becoming fashionable, in villages as well as cities and men wear embroidered shirts with their suits on dress occasions.