Uzbekistan Girl Photo

[Jesper Sahu]

Afterobtaining a degree in Anthropology from the University of Iowa, she joined the Peace Corps and spent two years as a volunteer in what was then Upper Volta (later renamed Burkina Faso). She subsequently spent an additional ten years working for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Burkina Faso, Madagascar and Zimbabwe on women in development, Food for Peace, and Southern Africa regional development projects, respectively.

She moved to the Washington, D.C. area in 1988 and has worked for consulting firms on USAID projects ever since. These projects have taken her on short-term assignments to multiple countries in Africa, also in Russia and, mostly recently, in Bangladesh. In addition to her work-related travels, she takes annual vacation trips to countries of interest to her in Asia, the Middle East, and Central and South America.

From 2002 to 2004 she co-curated three exhibitions of ethnic jewelry at the Bead Museum and served a two-year term on its Board of Directors. She has an avid interest in ethnic jewelry and adornment and has a small personal collection of jewelry from various cultures around the world.

The Khanates fell to the Russian czars in the late 19th century and their cultural residues were further diminished by the Bolsheviks in the early 20th century. The impact of this on Central Asian textile production was felt in two ways. First, nomadic population, who had traditionally made a wide variety of bags, tent bands, felts, animal trappings, etc., in addition to their clothing, became increasingly sedentary. This, in turn, led to a diminished need for these kinds of specialized textiles.

Secondly, production of luxury textiles (including silk and velvet ikats, fine cotton fabrics, etc.) also changed dramatically. Up until this time, these fabrics had been produced as a cottage industry by specialized groups of craftspeople including cotton weavers, silk weavers, hot and cold dyers, ikat designers, etc., that cut across ethnic boundaries. When the Russians took over, textile production was reorganized into large, mechanized State-run factories. Uzbekistan went from being a producer of sumptuous finished fabrics, to being an exporter of raw materials (primarily cotton) that were shipped to the textile mills of Russia. Printed cotton fabric produced in Russian mills with synthetic dyes began flowing back into Central Asia in the late 19th century. We will see later how this Russian cotton was integrated into the clothing of the people of Uzbekistan.

On the other hand, there were sedentary peoples either engaged in agriculture or living in towns and villages. The urban populations, especially, were integrated into the political life of the territory and required prestige textiles as indicators of rank and wealth. These textiles were complex and difficult to make, and required input from the specialized groups I mentioned earlier. However, despite their very different lifestyles, requiring very different types of fabric, the basic clothing components were the same for both groups. This statment is also true to a fair degree for the clothing of men and women.

John Howe: It is important to notice in what Christine says above that the primary differences in clothing between nomadic and settled members of traditional Uzbek society, and especially between people with different degrees of social status and authority was NOT reflected in the basic types of garments worn, but rather in the materials from which they were made. Prince and pauper, nomad and city dweller, men, women and children wore tunics, trousers and coats as their basic garments. It was the materials from which these garments were made that marked the differences being observed in Uzbek society.

Sometimes such trousers were made in leather and embroidered. In other instances they were made entirely of one kind of cloth. But a frequent practice was to make the upper part using a plain-woven undecorated fabric and the bottoms of a different, often liberally decorated fabric. There was no reason to decorate the upper portions of such trousers or even to make them with anything but the least expensive material because only the bottom portions were seen.

The third article of clothing that formed the basic Uzbek costume is the coat. It usually comes down to mid-calf, if not longer, has side vents to facilitate walking, sitting on the floor, riding a horse, etc. It has sleeves of varying lengths, and is worn left open or tied with a belt. Coats worn by both men and women vary according to the season and the occasion.

Some lined chapans and khalats have linings all of a single pattern of Russian cotton. It is thought by some that the use of several different patterns and visibly careful piecing is the older tradition. Regardless, both of these usages are instances of the integration of the products of the commercial Russian cloth industry into the construction of traditional Uzbek garments.

A khalat is a lightweight robe made of cotton, silk or a mixture of the two. There are regional variations in the cut of this garment but, essentially, khalats have wide sleeves and are bordered with patterned-silk edging tape stitched onto the coat material.

This, well-known photo is of a Bokhara emir at the turn of the 20th century. His robe is of a sumptuous material and is clinched with a wide metal belt. Note that he is also wearing a turban.

Men of the next rank were permitted to wear coats made of imported cashmere or silk velvet with brocade embroidery. It is hard to tell whether the man in the image below belongs in the highest level or this next rank, but his dramatic costume still signals that he has a high rank.

Most of these photos were taken in pre-revolutionary Uzbekistan in the early 20th century. Notice that in many of the coats worn by those of the middling and lower classes of that day, it appears that Russian cottons are used for the outside materials, not just, as we saw in estimated earlier or elite examples, for linings.

Postins are made of fur or sheepskin and are worn for warmth. In the West fur coats are made so that the fur is on the outside. When worn that way they not only provide warmth, but their visible fur is beautiful. As can be seen here, the fur is on the inside. Sometimes there is embroidery on the skin outside, but often is it left plain.

Men often wore several coats simultaneously as a display of wealth. This explains why many of these coats are so large. The size of an Uzbek coat is not determined only by the size of the person wearing it. Size of the coat, if it is worn over other coats, also depends on its position in the various levels placed on the body. The smallest will be first and each additional coat will be increasingly larger. When several coats are worn at once, the innermost coat is belted and the outer ones hang open.

There were/are seemingly narrower belts which sometimes had metal buckles. There were a number of bands, some of which were likely belts, in the room. The one on the right in the image below may have been part of a somewhat more complex belt assembly that could have included hanging purses.

Women from wealthy families wore multiple coats just like the men. Such coats were specifically designed to show the embroidery on the front edges and cuffs of the multiple garments.

Christine had an example image of one in her lecture that is not available here. It was of an arrangement of three levels worn one over the other. The sleeve treatments were designed to maximize visibility of the three layers. The sleeves on the outer coat came only to the elbow. Then there was a second layer of a yellow coat with a few inches of sleeve extending from under and beyond the outer one. The third and deepest level was of a white shift which was visible both at the neck and in its very long sleeves sticking out, again, from under and beyond the yellow second coat.

It is a style of coat that came into being after the Russian conquest. It is, usually, a relatively short coat with narrow sleeves and a lapel collar, and was often made of plush, imported material.

Note the visible sheen of this fabric. Some ikats (a warp-faced structure with the warps of silk) were coated with egg to produce additional shine. That may be the source of the seeming sheen here.

The tops could be horizontal with the ground or cut at an angle as in the drawing above, apparently to make it easier to put them on and to take them off. There were very short versions of boots that were even easier to slip the formidable leather stockings in and out of.

In the images above, the man on the left is wearing a turban. He is actually a skullcap vendor, as you can see by the piles of skullcaps on the shelves behind him and in front of him. He, almost certainly, is wearing a skullcap underneath his turban.

Nomadic men have ethnic-specific types of hats. In the array of photos below, a middle-aged man from Khiva is wearing a sheepskin hat that is very similar to those worn by Turkmen men, except that it is shorter.

The middle photo shows two dervishes (members of a Moslem religious order) wearing conical hats that are fur-trimmed and often embroidered. Note that the dervish on the right, in this center photo, is wearing a turban over his conical hat.

The young person in the photo on the right looks girlish but is in fact a young Jewish man wearing a black hat trimmed with fur. In this case, it looks like there is decoration on the top of the hat. I think such Jewish hats are, usually, plain black.

What she is wearing on her head is an incredible amount of fabric in layers. She first puts on a small skullcap which is, then, covered with 3-5 meters (9 to 15 feet) of fabric that is often red with a flower pattern. This, in turn, is covered with another 4-7 shawls, each about 30 inches square, placed one on top of the other to create the wrapped effect seen here. (The number of shawls indicates the status of the woman.) On top of all this is placed another large shawl, followed by a headdress that resembles a coat with false sleeves (similar to the Turkmen chyrpy).

3a8082e126