Traditional folk dress

Moldovan folk dress is a genuine identity card of the village, through which, in former times, one read the age, the marital status and the birthplace of each person. The traditional costume of the Moldovan lands stands out through the preservation of a large number of archaic elements — compared with other Romanian folkloric areas, old forms of clothing have been conserved here to a great extent, which gives it a particular ethnographic value.

The women's costume

The central piece of the women's dress is the ie — the shirt of white cloth, gathered at the neck, with the sleeve cut from the shoulder (the shirt with altiță) or set in gores, richly ornamented with embroidery on the breast and on the sleeves. The women of Moldova created an impressive number of patterns, while nevertheless preserving the characteristic arrangement of the stitching. Over the skirt is worn the catrință, a rectangular woollen cloth, usually dark in colour, wrapped around the waist, with local variants: the black catrință, the striped one or the flowered one.

The men's costume

The man's dress comprises the white, long shirt, gathered with a woven belt or with a leather chimir, the ițari or woollen trousers, the lambskin cap and the suman or the sheepskin coat for cold weather. Here too the embroidery, though more sober than on the women's, marks the collar, the breast and the sleeves of the shirt, giving the costume elegance and dignity.

Ornamentation and the present

The brâu and the bârneață complete the costume: the brâu, 8-12 centimetres wide and about two metres long, is wound several times around the waist, while the bârneață, narrower and longer, has a chiefly decorative role. The motifs — floral, geometric, solar — and the colouring of each area give the costume its particularity, passed from generation to generation. Today folk dress is worn mainly at celebrations, patron saint's day festivals, weddings and folklore performances, and the ie has undergone a genuine revival as a marker of identity, worn with pride by young people. The women craftsmen who still sew shirts after old patterns keep alive an inheritance that binds the Republic of Moldova to the whole Romanian cultural space. Museum collections, exhibitions of folk dress and the ever-growing interest of young people in the authentic ie contribute to the conservation of this treasury of clothing, in which every stitch tells of the patience, the taste and the soul of those who created it.