About the calendars of "Bulgarian roots"

The Bulgarian traditional costume

Clothing occupies an important place in the folkore culture. Undoubtedly, its utilitarian application, but in pre-industrial societies it has another not less important function - ethnic. Through its fabric, color, cut and decoration, the clothing shows the nationality, residence, gender, age, marital status, occupation, social affiliation and religion of the wearer. Different ethnographic groups of the population live in the Bulgarian ethnic territory. Among them there are four main varieties of women's costume: two-apron - typical of the Danube plain; single-apron - found only in some settlements of the Western Rhodopes until the beginning of the XX century; soukman (pinafore) type - covers the central, mostly mountainous and partly flat areas of the country and the type saya, which is distributed south of the type soukman (pinafore) costume. According to the color of the fabrics, men's costumes are divided into two groups: white and black. Their division is not territorial, but temporal. The black costume, the fruit of the commodity production of the abadjii, gradually displaced the earlier white costume from east to west. During the Revival there was a greater variety in clothing. It changes and enriches, depending on changes in taste and material, the emergence of new factory goods and foreign loans. At the same time, there is a transition from the traditional costume to a new type of clothing serving the craft and trade circles. From the beginning of the 20th century, with the disintegration of the traditional way of life, the old costumes of the Bulgarians gradually became obsolete, until finally they were completely forgotten. Today they can be seen "live" only in museums or on the stage of major folk festivals and fairs.

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Assoc. Prof. Dr. Angel Yankov, ethnologist

The Live Roots of Bulgaria Foundation