Siberian old believers: history in costume

Е.F. Fursova

A good dress is a card of invitation; Fine dress helps to impress… It is no problem to find evidence supporting this proverb. Clothes can tell a lot about their master: for example, his or her level of income, tastes and habits, education and views… If our modern dress is so telling, the more so is traditional costume whose every detail has been sifted through the ages. Simple or intricate, folk costume is the essence of both material and spiritual life of many generations. Its language, however, is only understandable to a historian and ethnographer… This publication about the costume of Siberian Old Believers is the first in the series of articles dedicated to the ethnographic exhibits of the Museum of History and Culture of Peoples Inhabiting Siberia and Russian Far East with the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The core of the Museum's rich ethnographic exhibits is collections made in compact communities of indigenous nationalities and Russian settlers on the initiative of Academician A. P. Okladnikov in the 1960s-1980s