Circassians - Culture - Traditional Clothing

Traditional Clothing

The Adyghe traditional clothing (Adyghe: Адыгэ Щыгъыныхэр) refers to the historical clothing worn by the Adyghe people.

The traditional female clothing (Adyghe: Бзылъфыгъэ Шъуашэр) was very diverse and highly decorated and mainly depends on the region, class of family, occasions, and tribes. The traditional female costume is composed of a dress (Adyghe: Джанэр), coat (Adyghe: Сае), shirt, pant (Adyghe: ДжэнэкӀакор ), vest (Adyghe: КӀэкӀ), lamb leather bra (Adyghe: Шъохътан), a variety of hats (Adyghe: ПэӀохэр), shoes, and belts (Adyghe: Бгырыпхыхэр). Holiday dresses are made of expensive fabrics such as silk and velvet. The traditional colors of women's clothing rarely includes blue, green or bright-colored tones, instead mostly white, red, black and brown shades are worn.

The traditional male costume (Adyghe: Адыгэ хъулъфыгъэ шъуашэр) includes a coat with wide sleeves, shirt, pants, a dagger, sword, and a variety of hats and shoes. Traditionally, young men in the warriors times wore coat with short sleeves—in order to feel more comfortable in combat. Different colors of clothing for males were strictly used to distinguish between different social classes, for example white is usually worn by princes, red by nobles, gray, brown, and black by peasants (blue, green and the other colors were rarely worn). A compulsory item in the traditional male costume is a dagger and a sword. The traditional Adyghean sword is called Shashka. It is a special kind of sabre; a very sharp, single-edged, single-handed, and guardless sword. Although the sword is used by most of Russian and Ukrainian Cossacks, the typically Adyghean form of the sabre is longer than the Cossack type, and in fact the word Shashka came from the Adyghe word "Sashkhwa" (Adyghe: Сашьхъуэ) which means "long knife".