Serbian National Costume - History

History

Serbian costume is also known for the variety of textures and embroidery. The Jelek is a Waistcoat made from wool or velvet while women's jackets are lined with fur. The peony embroidery design often found on aprons, socks and elsewhere is colored bright red, symbolising the blood lost at the Battle of Kosovo. Characteristic features of Serbian dress include opanci, footwear dating back to antiquity.

Traditional Serbian female dress consists of opanci, embroidered woolen socks that reached to the knees and nazuvice. Skirts were very varied, of plaited or gathered and embroidered linen, with tkanice serving as a belt. An important part of the costume were aprons (pregace) decorated with floral motifs. Shirts were in the shape of tunics, richly decorated with silver thread and cords was worn over the shirt. In some areas it was replaced by an upper sleeveless dress of red or blue cloth, knee-long, richly decorated and buttoned in front (zubun). Scarves and caps bordered with cords were worn as headdress. Girls also wore collars, or a string of gold coins around their throats, earrings, bracelets, and their caps were decorated with metal coins or flowers. Young people do not wear this kind of costume nowadays. It can be seen on elderly villagers, as tourist attraction, or in museums. From the 19th century on, Serbs have adopted the usual European way of dressing.

In medieval times, rulers, the nobility and senior churchmen brought many of their fabrics from Dubrovnik. The most common fabric for ordinary Serbs was sclavina or schiavina, a coarse woollen fabric. Linen was also made within Serbia while silk was grown at the Dečani Monastery as well as near Prizren. Few secular garments have survived from the medieval period the most notable being the costume worn by Lazar Hrebeljanović at the Battle of Kosovo. More decorated vestments have survived from the period.

The typical Serbian costume comprises shirts, trousers, skirts, sleeveless coats called jeleks, ordinary coats, jubun, socks, belts and head-gear, often called oglavja.

The designs of civil clothes were developed from ancient times, to Roman then Byzantine, and later under Turkish (Oriental) influence, and in towns of the Pannonian area and the Adriatic coast, primarily under European influence. Under the influence of the mentioned factors certain common wearing elements within the wider cultural and geographic zones were created, such as Central-Balkan, Pannonian, Dinaric and Adriatic zones with their own particularities.