The Urban Dress Collection of the Ethnographic Museum comprises more than 2,200 items of clothing and represents dress culture in Serbia’s urban communities from the nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. The objects in the collection belonged to urban residents of different social and economic backgrounds, religious affiliations, and generations. They show how forms, materials, production techniques, and ways of wearing clothes changed under the influence of local traditions, Ottoman-Balkan dress culture, and European fashion trends.
A particularly significant part of the collection consists of nineteenth-century dress, which makes it possible to trace the gradual transformation of urban clothing and the development of a distinctive urban costume. Fistans, anterijas, libades, džubetas, jeleks, and other garments made by skilled craftsmen, often decorated with terzija embroidery, demonstrate a high level of craftsmanship while also reflecting the social status, taste, and cultural connections of the urban population. Objects dating from the later decades of the nineteenth and the early decades of the twentieth century reveal the growing presence of European fashion and the gradual transformation of dress practices.
Twentieth- and early twenty-first-century clothing documents further changes in urban dress culture through artisanal and individual production, the development of ready-to-wear clothing, and the expansion of mass production. Domestic and foreign industrially manufactured goods, everyday and formal clothing, underwear, footwear, and dress accessories make it possible to trace changes in lifestyles, consumption, and the fashion choices of the urban population.
The Urban Dress Collection thus preserves different layers of urban dress culture and, through individual objects, provides insight into changes in clothing, everyday life, and social relations throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries.
The Urban Dress Collection is curated by Jelena Sekulović, curator-museum advisor, who can be contacted by email at:
jelena.sekulovic@etnografskimuzej.rs
Twentieth- and early twenty-first-century clothing documents further changes in urban dress culture through artisanal and individual production, the development of ready-to-wear clothing, and the expansion of mass production. Domestic and foreign industrially manufactured goods, everyday and formal clothing, underwear, footwear, and dress accessories make it possible to trace changes in lifestyles, consumption, and the fashion choices of the urban population.
The Urban Dress Collection thus preserves different layers of urban dress culture and, through individual objects, provides insight into changes in clothing, everyday life, and social relations throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries.
The Urban Dress Collection is curated by Jelena Sekulović, curator-museum advisor, who can be contacted by email at:
jelena.sekulovic@etnografskimuzej.rs
