The crossroads of Europe
There is no region of Europe where more worlds have crossed than the Balkans. Rome, then Byzantium and its Eastern Christian splendour, then five centuries of Ottoman Empire, each laid its layer on dress. You read all this history on a festive costume.
The Ottoman Empire above all left deep traces: the baggy trousers, the šalvari, the sleeveless waistcoats covered in braid and soutache, the wide belts, for a time the fez. You find these pieces from Serbia to Greece, worn by Christians as a common ground, long after the Turks had gone.
As a result, no single Balkan costume, but a family of outfits that resemble one another across borders and religions. The same geometric embroidery, the same embroidered waistcoats, run from one country to the next like a stubborn family likeness.
The fustanella and the evzone
Greece has a men's garment unique in Europe: the fustanella, a skirt of white cotton with countless pleats, worn with white stockings and shoes with large pompoms, the tsarouchia. It is said that its four hundred pleats recall the four hundred years of Ottoman occupation. A pretty thing to say, surely invented after the fact, but it captures well what this garment means.
For the fustanella was the dress of the klephts, those unsubdued highlanders who led the Greek war of independence. From a fighters' garment, it became a national symbol, adopted even by the first king of Greece for his court.
Today it is the evzones, the presidential guard, who wear it before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in Athens. Each pleat, each pompom has its rule. A costume of rebel shepherds raised to a guard of honour.
The Romanian ie, the embroidered blouse
On the Romanian side, the queen piece is the ie, the embroidered linen or cotton blouse. Its signature is the altiță, a broad panel of embroidery covering the top of the sleeve and the shoulder, then continuing in rows to the wrist. The motifs, geometric or floral, change from region to region.
This blouse charmed far beyond the villages. Queen Marie of Romania wore it; Matisse made a famous painting of it, La Blouse roumaine; and UNESCO inscribed its know-how on the heritage of humanity. A rare destiny for a peasant shirt.
Above all, it is very much alive. Romanian women bring it out, still sew it, wear it over jeans, and devote an international day to it each summer. Like the neighbouring vyshyvanka, the ie has passed from the grandmother's chest to today's wardrobe.
Linen, wool and the frieze
Under the waistcoats and the embroidery, the structure stays simple and peasant: a white linen shirt, a wool skirt or apron, a wide belt. The wool, unbleached or dyed dark, gives the ground; embroidery and weaving cast colour onto it in tight friezes.
The apron above all is a tour de force. Woven in dazzling geometric bands, it is worn in front, sometimes behind, and concentrates the household's know-how. In Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, you read a region from its apron as elsewhere from its headdress.
Over it, in winter, comes the hide: the sheepskin waistcoat or coat, worn wool-side in, often embroidered on the leather. The same shepherd's garment you meet in the Carpathians and as far as the Sámi, fitted to the cold of the mountains.
The opinci, shod in leather
On the feet, one shoe runs from the Carpathians to the Aegean: the opincă, or opanak depending on the country. A simple piece of raw leather, gathered and sewn to the size of the foot, often with a turned-up toe, held by long thongs crossed over the leg on top of wool socks.
It is the peasant shoe par excellence, home-made, mendable, without a stitch too many. It was stuffed with hay or wool for winter. Nothing thriftier, nothing better fitted to the mud of the tracks and the stones of the mountain.
Here again is what we have seen everywhere in this notebook: the right answer, in honest material, to a concrete problem. From the Basque espadrille to the Dutch clog, from the Carpathian kierpce to the Balkan opincă, poor Europe shod itself with next to nothing, and much intelligence.
A mosaic still danced
If there is a region of Europe where traditional costume refuses to die, it is the Balkans. Not so much in the everyday street as in the dance: the Romanian horă, the Bulgarian horo, the Serbian kolo still gather, at feasts and weddings, whole rings of dancers in costume.
Every village, every diaspora keeps up its ensemble, its costumes, its steps. Children are handed not a museum relic, but a way of being together, ankles linked in the same ring. The dress follows the music, and the music does not stop.
It is on this image that we close the tour of Europe: not costumes under glass, but people who wear them, sew them and still dance them. It is exactly what we wish for what we make. Pieces that last because they serve, and that you want to pass on.
