Fustanella

Guard of honour at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (2006).

Fustanella (Greek: φουστανέλλαcode: el is deprecated ; Albanian: fustanellë/fustanellacode: sq is deprecated ) is a pleated, or folded, Greek skirt like a Scottish kilt. It is worn by men from different countries in Southeast Europe.

History

Statue in the Vari Cave showing the Greek stonecutter Archedemus wearing a fustanella-like garment (5th century BC).

Byzantine pottery fragments from Corinth showing Greek warriors wearing the fustanella (12th century AD).

The fustanella originates from ancient Greek clothing like the chiton (or tunic) and the chitonium (or short military tunic). An ancient Greek statue in Attica shows a stonecutter named Archedemus wearing a folded skirt like the fustanella. The ancient Roman toga may have also impacted the development of the fustanella.

In the Byzantine Empire, the fustanella was worn and called the podea (Greek: ποδέαcode: el is deprecated ). It was commonly used in Greek lands as early as the 12th century AD. In Byzantine art and music, the wearer of the podea was either a hero or a Greek warrior defending the empire's borders. The fustanella was part of a military outfit consisting of bows, swords, battle-axes and armor (corselet or chain mail). In the Ottoman Empire, the fustanella was worn by Greek guerillas like the klephts and the armatoloi. In Albania, the fustanella is first mentioned in 1335 in a list of items taken from a sailor at the port of the Drin River.

The Albanian fustanella is based on the Greek fustanella. But the difference is in the number of pleats. The "Bridegroom's coat" is a Greek fustanella with two-hundred pleats that a bride would buy as a wedding gift for her groom. The Albanian fustanella has around sixty pleats or usually a moderate amount of folds.

Albanian costumes with the fustanella from Yanina in 1873.

Gallery

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  Statue of a young man wearing a chiton; Roman copy of a Greek original (4th century BC).

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  Stone depiction of an Aromanian (15th century AD).

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  Lord Byron in Albanian Dress painted by Thomas Phillips (1813).

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  Souliote Warrior painted by Louis Dupré (1820).

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  A Souliot in Corfu Nikolos Pervolis painted by Louis Dupré (1827).

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  Greek general of the Royal Phalanx in full dress uniform (1835).

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  At the Carnival in Venice painted by Mikhail Scotti (1839).

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  A group of upper-class Albanians in typical dress (circa 1850–1900).

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  Albanian leader Hamza Kazazi (circa 1858).

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  Greek Warrior painted by Carl Haag (1861).

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  Russian picture of a Greek and an Albanian (1862).

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  Arnaut Smoking in Cairo, Egypt painted by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1865).

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  Ilyo Voyvoda, a Bulgarian Macedonian revolutionary (1867).

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  Albanian in Cairo by Jean-Léon Gérôme (circa 1880).

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  Albanian Officer painted by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1894).

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  Spiridon Louis, Olympic marathon champion (1896).

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  Vlach shepherd in traditional attire (early 1900s).

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  Aromanian leader Gheorghe (Ioryi) Mucitani (early 1900s).

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  Ioannis Ramnalis, a Greek Macedonian revolutionary (after 1908).

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  Old man wearing the fustanella in Arcadia, Greece (circa 1920s).

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  Royal Guard of Albania (1921).

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  Sarakatsani, or Greek nomads, in Western Macedonia, Greece (1935).

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  Sarakatsani, or Greek nomads, in Thrace (1938).

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  Changing of the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (2005).

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  Greek Presidential Guard officer, Athens (2007).

Fustanella Media

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  A Souliote warrior wearing fustanella, by Louis Dupré.

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  Albanians in Shkodër depicted by Edward Lear, 4 October 1848.

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  Albanian Frontier Guards at Prayer (1889) by Richard Caton Woodville Jr. Costume version that was also worn by Shkodran Albanian warriors in the Ottoman Mansure Army, established in 1826.

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  Prayer in the house of an Arnaut chief, by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1857.

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  A Greek from Ioannina by Louis Dupré (1827)

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  Albanian palikars in pursuit of an enemy (1813-4). Watercolour by Charles Robert Cockerell showing Souliot warriors wearing their traditional costume.

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  Richard Church, first commander of the 1st Regiment Greek Light Infantry of the British army, wearing the regimental uniform based on the Albanian traditional warrior costume and a dragoon helmet, 1813.

Related pages

• Kilt

Sources

• Ethniko Historiko Mouseio (Greece), Maria Lada-Minōtou, I. K. Mazarakēs Ainian, Diana Gangadē, and Historikē kai Ethnologikē Hetaireia tēs Hellados. Greek Costumes: Collection of the National Historical Museum (1993). Athens: Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece.
• Fox, Lilla Margaret. Folk Costumes from Eastern Europe (1977). London: Chatto & Windus (Random House). ISBN 0-7011-5092-0.
• The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (1991). New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504652-8.
• Konitza, Faik. Albania: The Rock Garden of Southeastern Europe, and other Essays (1957). Boston, MA: Vatra.
• Morgan, Charles Hill. Corinth: The Byzantine Pottery 11 (1942). Cambridge, MA: Published for the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780876611111. OCLC 36957616.
• Notopoulos, James A.. Akritan Ikonography on Byzantine Pottery. Hesperia 33 (2) (1964). p. 108–133. doi:10.2307/147182.
• Rupert, Cyprien. LE MONDE GRÉCO-SLAVE. LES ALBANAIS. Revue des Deux Mondes 31 (3) (1842). p. 353–410.
• Smithsonian Institution. Greek Costumes and Embroideries, from the Benaki Museum, Athens: An Exhibition Presented Under the Patronage of H.M. Queen Frederika of the Hellenes (1959). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
• Weller, Charles Heald. The Cave at Vari. I. Description, Account of Excavation, and History. American Journal of Archaeology 7 (3) (1903). p. 263–288. doi:10.2307/496689.

Further reading

• Skafidas, Michael. The Fabric of Cultures: Fashion, Identity, and Globalization (2009). New York and Oxford: Taylor & Francis (Routledge). p. 145–163. ISBN 978-0-415-77542-7.
• Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. World Clothing and Fashion: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture, and Social Influence (2014). London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-45167-9.
• Verinis, James P.. Spiridon Loues, the Modern Foustanéla, and the Symbolic Power of Pallikariá at the 1896 Olympic Games. Journal of Modern Greek Studies 23 (1) (May 2005). p. 139–175. doi:10.1353/mgs.2005.0010.
• Welters, Lisa. Dress and Ethnicity: Change across Space and Time (1995). Oxford: Berg Publishers. p. 53–77. ISBN 978-0-85496-879-4.

Other websites

• The New Hellenic State (1833 - our days): Fustanella