Clothes of Zaporizhia Cossacks

The clothing of the Zaporizhia Cossacks was initially too simple. At the beginning of their historical existence, the Zaporizhia Cossacks could not seriously even think about taking care of their appearance and dressing up in expensive "robes", the Cossack and the poor were synonymous at that time.

By that time, the words of a Ukrainian song can be attributed to
"a Cossack sits on the grave and mends his pants" ,
or the words of a Cossack poem
"Cossack is a truthful soul - he has no shirt."

Chasing the beast through boundless steppes, deep ravines, impenetrable forest thickets, spending nights mostly in the open air, sleeping for several hours in the Georgian swamp and thick reeds, the Zaporozhians were more like impoverished hungry men than "glorious knights", whose name already in the early days of their existence thundered in Europe.

And even in the late period of Zaporizhia history, when certain customs and a certain costume had already come into force among the Cossacks, many of them, due to various cases in the war or at home, because of poverty and destitution, and sometimes even because of a special desire to show off the poor clothes, often dressed too simply. It happened that a Zaporozhian would shave his head, stick a herring behind his ear, tie himself with a piece of cloth, put on a pantyhose, put on slippers made of pigskin, and walk like that, while another would catch a goat, skin it and, after cleaning the skin from the wool, put on her, wears shoes made of leather of a creamy thickness, and two-quarters long, and wanders through the steppe. And the other one is even better, either he dresses up in such shoes that you can swim across the Dnieper in them, or he pulls a shoe on one leg, and a sapian boot on the other, and still sings.

The Zaporozhians themselves said about themselves: "We don't have any - no shirt, no pants, one cursed gray one." "They had no boots, no pants, no shirt; and on the other the scars themselves hang; it's like that gypsy walks - he walks with his heels." "A Zaporozhye man puts on a shirt and does not take it off for the whole hour, until it falls off his shoulders, but he goes to bath, he does not take off his pants: "it is not suitable," he says."

But with the passage of time, on the one hand, successful wars, on the other hand, and the development of life itself, changed a lot in the concepts and lifestyle of the Zaporozhian Cossacks: after defeating the Tatars or Turks, robbing the lords or Jews, the Cossacks, returning to Sich, brought with them a lot of money, clothes and expensive fabrics Data that have reached our time indicate that Zaporizhia Cossacks acquired their own clothes during the war - fur coats, overcoats, harem pants, shirts, hats, boots, checkmen, striped skins, etc.

The Zaporozhians never had uniform clothes; that often during the war they dressed in such clothes as the enemy had, and that their field clothes were generally poor, but their home ceremonial clothes were very luxurious.

Academician Vasyl Zuyev, who lived in the 18th century, says that the obligatory clothes of the Zaporozhian Cossacks were a shirt and trousers: these clothes were customary for them and they wore them without changing them until they fell to pieces, but to get rid of washing and insects, they impregnated it with fish oil and dried it in the sun. After all, in addition to this most necessary clothing, according to the same Zuyev, the Zaporizhia wore good dress clothes, velvet hats, silk belts and sapian boots.

When the Cossack had to gird himself, he tied the belt to a nail with a string and turned around, winding the entire belt around himself. Then he will tie the laces either behind him, on his back, or on his side, and leave the gilded ends in front, on his stomach, and walk like a real knight. Belts were of different colors: green, red, blue, brown. In addition to long belts, Zaporozhians also wore short ones made of leather or hair, tassels were attached to them from behind, and hooks, buckles, belts for daggers, sabers and pipes were attached to them in front. This is how a Zaporozhian put on a red Circassian coat, girded himself with a belt, stuck a dagger on himself, attached a saber, then he puts on a kaftan or zhupan.

These clothes are spacious and long, almost to the ankles, with wide sleeves, like a priest's tunic or the clothes worn by bishops around the cities. The captan was already a different color than the Circassian; if the Circassian is red, then the captan is blue or blue; it was also gathered and laced, embroidered with gold, with various gold pozumenta, buttons on the hem, ends of the sleeves, slits, with hooks, with a thin wire inside and with wide-extremely wide sleeves, or, as they say, tears or slits.

What clothes they had! Such clothes that he won't even sell a shirt for a hundred rubles; as he walks down the street, he seems to shine all over with stars or flowers. Harem pants, dress pants, nankovi, ⁸ were suitable for this wide and spacious clothing leather, with pockets on both sides, and here a pocket, and here a pocket, both edged with gold pozumenta, of various colors, but mostly blue; the bottom of the trousers was made so that it touched the ground, as if something was dragging: as the Cossack goes, so does the trail behind him.

There is no doubt that the cut of Zaporizhzhya clothing, especially high hats, wide trousers, long coats and wide belts, is of Eastern origin and was borrowed by them from the Tatars and Turks. This borrowing was carried out either by capture during raids, or by purchase, or by donation from the higher Tatar and Turkish authorities to the Zaporizhia Cossacks. From the Ottoman history of the Turkish historiographer Naima, for example, we know that in 1653 the Crimean Khan Islam-Girey presented cloth kaftans to the Zaporozhian elders. In general, Zaporizhia clothing had the advantage that it did not constrain a person's movements and was adapted to the country's hot climate.

based on the materials of the outstanding historian DMYTR YAVORNYTSKY