Turkish women custums in the Ottoman period, 16.cc-19.cc

In the Ottoman Period, Turkish women were never able to see, meet, or be in the same place with anybody, especially men, except for her gender or her husband. The traditionally widespreading of the harem system was as influential as Islam in their living such a conservative life. Harem and the Ottoman Women living there had been the common interest of national and foreigner writers, painters and travellers. The visual and written documents that belong to this period tell about the Turkish women who lived an exotic life in the Ottoman society, the Turkish women clothes which were famous for their richness in fabric and style characteristics were widely dealt with, the visual documents, which include the examples of the clothes of the periods are paintings, gravurs and travel stories, which were supported with the hand writings and albums in miniature style, and pictures. The clothes' being torn related to usage and time, the absence of the tradition of keeping the women's clothes both caused the decrease of the number of clothes that remained, which belonged to the period. The present material that are in the museums, promote the evaluation of the knowledge attained through the related documents and complete the missing parts. The women's clothes in the Ottoman period can be grouped as house clothes and outwear. The house clothes were; shirts(underwear dress), şalvar, dresses, pullovers and onwear(kaftan), and the outwear was ferace-yeldirme and maslahs. In this period, there was a similarity between the women's and men's clothes, there was not much difference between the clothes of the Turkish, Foreigners, Muslims, or Non-Muslims except for the quality and the colours of the fabrics. In this research, 140 dresses consisting of twelve samples from the 16th century, thirty-nine samples from the 17* century, seventy-five samples from the ^8m century and fourteen samples from the first quarter of the 19th century including their materials, styles and models were studied. Silk and wool were used as fabrics in the period, the clothes' being mainly in the visual documents prevented the detailed description of the fabrics. The fabrics that were used, were mostly the plain ones and the ones with herbal patterns, lines, furs and needlework were used as ornamentation elements in the fabrics.363 The cloth samples were observed to have lively, shiny and pale colours together or separately with the dense usage of colours red, green and yellow(gold); and blue, pink, orange, grey, cream colour, dark blue, brown, burgundy, bluish green, purple, beige black and white in addition to these. The colourful appearance that was received by wearing ail of the on top of one another, has an aesthetic unity of an artist's sensibility. Thirty-five model characteristics were found to exist in the Turkish women's clothes of the Ottoman period depending on the differences in whole or the details. In the dresses of the 16th century; short and loose sleeved dresses, sleeveless or half-sleeved pullovers, long and lose shirts, loose skirts with peş(pesh), çaprasts, button holes, silk and plain fabrics, herbal and symbolic patterns were used, and the dresses were placed in X and A forms according to their styles. The rich appearance of the 16th century is observed to have been followed also in the 17th century, the fashion of the period consists of such model characteristics as sleeveless or short-sleeved pullovers, very long and narrow sleeved dresses, loose skirts with peş(pesh), judge type collars, and onwears of fur. The movement towards the western values and the Tulip period in the 18th century effected the Turkish women's life styles, the high amount of documents related to women in this period is a proof for the Turkish women's taking their places in the social life. The dresses that are worn on top of each other, silk fabrics covered with rare herbal patterns, the loose and tailed skirts with peshes(peşler) in the front or on sides, narrow sleeves and the ones as long as to cover the hands, onwears of fur, sals belts around the waist, needlework, yirtmacs and wide corners all reflect the fashion of the period. In the women's clothes of the 19th century, in the last period of the Ottoman Empire, the traditional styles in the women's clothes are observed to have disappeared step by step, and the models that came from the west are observed to have been admired and to have become the fashion. In the first quarter of this century, the characteristics of the 18th century were followed although partly, however, as a result of the widespread of the imported clothes as fashion the fabric producers had to copy these models. T-G. \M§Eku \Hf - ? \ ml-..