The costume of a woman consisted of skirts, a shirt, a vest or jacket, an apron,
ahead cover, footwear (stocking and shoes),sashes, ‘delmonas’,jewellery,
scarves or kerchiefs, gloves, awrist muff, a coarsehomespun overcoatand a fur
coat.
In the early 19th century the women used to wear long and wide tailored wool-
len skirts, gathered at the waist and fastened in the front. In the late 19th century,
black or dark brown skirts, interwoven with diagonal coloured stripes, pleated
or in accordion pleats, appeared. Several skirts used to be worn simultaneously.
Shirts used to be white, linen or cotton, made of rectangular pieces of cloth,
generally collarless, with a heavily gathered low-cut neck or a folded-over col-
lar. The sleeves were wide, with cuffs or without them, gathered at the wrist
with wide loose ends. The upper part of the sleeve and the collar were decorated
with embroidered red, black or blue patterns.
The apron of the lietuvininkai women in the early 19th century were white lin-
en, with woven patterns forming red longitudinal stripes. In the second half of
the 19th century, the aprons became darker, one-colour with evenly distributed
multi-coloured patterns, flowery or with longitudinal stripes, made mainly of
silk. In the late 19th century, Klaipeda women wore knitted patterned stockings,
woollen in winter and cotton or linen in summer. The nicest summer stockings
were white, knitted in openwork in diamond-shaped, small bend or herring-
bone designs. In the 17th- 18th centuries, women wore wooden clogs or ‘nag-
ines‘ (sandals made of a single piece of leather) every day, while better-off
women had shoes for holidays. In the 19th- 20th centuries different kinds of
leather shoes were worn.
A full set of traditional holiday clothes
of a man consisted of a shirt, trousers,
a vest, a ‘sermega’ (a homespun coarse
overcoat or a jacket), head cover, a
scarf, a belt and footwear. Male shirts
were made of the same cloth as female
ones. Men in Western Lithuania used
to wear short (arm-length) shirts thrust
in trousers. The men used to wear their
trousers either long and not wide or
short and tied below the knees. Before
the 20th century, woollen, semi-wool-
len or linen home- made cloth was
used for trousers. The scarf presented
a thin fancy kerchief, folded in a tri-
angle and worn around the neck. The
best home-made or manufactured ker-
chiefs fashionable at the time, linen,
woollen, cotton or silk, were used.
Men’s clothing
A compulsory part of a male costume was felt hats of different shapes. Felt hats
were not too high, with very wide or medium-wide brims. Men would deco-
rate their hats with one-colour or multi-colour bands or with rooster or pigeon
feather. Men would wear either footcloth or socks on their feet and calves. In the
late 19th century, knitted multi-coloured socks were popular. The most expen-
sive holiday type of footwear was high boots.Both in winter and in summer, the
compulsory parts of man holiday costume were a shirt, trousers (long or short),
a vest, a ‘sermėga’ or a jacket, a felt cap or hat, a scarf, high boots or shoes, pat-
terned knitted socks, a sash or a belt.