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Folk Dress in Moravia

Let yourself be carried away and enchanted by the beauty of folk costume, whose unusual colors and composition of shapes are so different from contemporary clothing. The exhibition will pleasantly attune you and lead you to reflect on the skill and aesthetic sense of our ancestors, thanks to which they created their clothing.

The exhibition "Folk Costume in Moravia" was ceremonially opened during the 70th edition of the Strážnice International Folklore Festival in 2015. It is one of the outputs of the Program of Applied Research and Development of National and Cultural Identity (NAKI).

You can view a separate presentation at http://vystava.lidovyodev.cz/

Virtual Tour

Moravia, thanks to its exceptional location, is an intersection where influences from several distinct areas with unique clothing cultures converge. In the east, bordering the Carpathian mountains, clothing elements associated with pastoral culture are prevalent, with elements extending to Wallachia and Moravian Kopanice. In contrast, the south and southeast, Podluží and Strážnicko, have a close relationship with the flat western Slovakia and Pannonia. In Haná, located in the core of the Moravian lowlands, some elements of domestic clothing constructions have been preserved, with histories dating back to the Middle Ages. Unlike these, northern, western, and partly central and southern Moravia bear traces of Western European stylistic clothing, whose urban variants penetrated into villages from the end of the 18th century. The western type of folk costume historically extended to northern Kyjovsko and remains in use in Vracov. Some of its elements, such as women's and men's vests and jackets, also spread further east into neighboring areas, gradually changing the established form of folk dress. The result of such influence and intermingling is an extraordinary diversity in folk costumes, which in Slovácko manifests in unusually sharp boundaries between costume districts, often differing from village to village. Differences are evident in colors, materials used, composition of clothing components, and their construction, with elements of various ages coexisting in a single ensemble.

Given the diversity of clothing material, we have divided the entire exhibition into three exhibition halls, each presenting not only a specific geographical part of Moravia but also specific situations and types of costumes people wore. The entrance hall is conceived as a tribute to Slovácko, the area where folk costume remained in use the longest and is represented by the largest number of costume types. The displayed ensembles represent ceremonial and festive costumes worn by wedding participants, whether it was the groom and bride, wedding parents, groomsmen and bridesmaids, or regular wedding guests. The second part of the exhibition is conceived as a fair, where people from near and far always gathered, resulting in a colorful mix of costumes and dialects. In our case, inhabitants from southern, western, and central Moravia, starting from Hanácké Slovácko, through Horácko to Brněnsko and Malá Haná, set out for Brno. Costumes of national minorities who lived in Moravia are also presented, whether it's Croats in the Mikulov region or German-speaking inhabitants of Jihlava, Hřebečsko, and Vyškov regions. The last part of the exhibition presents pious pilgrims from Haná and Wallachia, who met in Velehrad on the occasion of the Cyril and Methodius jubilee.

The challenging task of presenting folk dress in the form of fully dressed figures was undertaken by the exhibition architect Emil Zavadil. Exhibition mannequins were chosen for the installation, with bodies made of wire skeletons wrapped in soft foam material. This allowed the mannequins to be given specific postures, gestures, and expressions, further enhanced by facial expressions. The architect's goal was to give the figures a hint of inner life, which can only be expressed by facial expressions. Young sculptor Irena Armutidisová therefore created several types of faces representing men and women in young, middle, and late age. Thanks to the use of several different shades of skin color and the play of light and shadow on the mannequin's face, we have the impression that each face is unique. The overall concept of the exhibition is intentionally minimalist, emphasizing the object of installation itself - the folk costume - yet the exhibition doesn't feel empty or static. This is due to details that appear so natural that we often only register them after a certain delay.

We wish all visitors to the exhibition to be carried away and enchanted by the beauty of folk costume, whose unusual colors and composition of shapes are so different from contemporary clothing. We would like the exhibition to put you in a pleasant mood and inspire reflection on the skill and aesthetic sense of our ancestors, thanks to which they created their clothing. We hope that you will gain new knowledge here and enjoy the installation of folk costumes and accessories that have been stored in depositories for years and are now presented to you in all their beauty.

PhDr. Martin Šimša, Ph.D., exhibition author