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Overclothes of peasants
Dushegreya was worn on a sarafan and a shirt. It was made from expensive patterned fabrics and pinned with a decorative border. (Picture 6. M.Shibanov “ The celebration of the wedding contract”). Being an original national dress, dushegreya came back in fashion later again and again.
The artists of the XIX and XX centuries often pictured women in these picturesque and colourful clothes.
Letnik was laid-on overclothes. Well-to-do women wore it. It was high-necked clothes of a straight cut flaring to hem due to gussets. The width was up to 4 m. The peculiar features of letnik were wide bell-bottomed sleeves stitched from the armhole up to the elbow only. The rest part of the sleeves freely hung down to the floor in triangle breadth of cloth. In the bottom they were decorated with voshvas - gussets of atlas or velvet, embroidered with gold, pearls, metal plates and silk. Such voshvas were stitched from the cut-out to the breast.
Letnik was beautified with a beaver fur collar. Fur for collars was usually tinted in black colours to emphasize the whiteness and high colour of skin.
Another variant of letnik was a mantled fur coat which differed from letnik itself in sleeves cutting. The sleeves of a fur coat were long and narrow. On the armhole line there were slits for hands.
Telogreya reminded a fur coat in a silhouette, the form of details, but it was still loose clothes with buttons or bands. ( Pic.8. Ryabushkin “The merchant’s family in the 17th century”)
Since the time of Kievan Russia the headdress continues to be an important part of a suit. Chelo kichnoe and a venets are decorated with pearl beads with pendants - ryasas along cheeks, podniz’ - on a forehead. Girls plaited their hair with gold, silver, and pearl strings, colour lace, decorated nakosniks. Married women liked to wear kika, a fashionable headdress worn over povoinik and consisting of an obruch, a soroka and a nazatyl’nik. The obruch was wooden or leather and had various forms: a half moon shape, a horseshoe shape, a spade shape. The cover - soroka and nazatyl’nik were attached to the obruch. They were made of expensive embroidered fabric. Kika could be worn under or over obruch.
A kokoshnik was the most beautiful headdress, of a piece, decorated with pearls, with a very high front part. Sometimes a coverlet from an expensive patterned fabric was attached to the kokoshnik. Women wore fur caps ‘gorlatnye’or caps with a okolysh in cold weather.
Women wore leather, morocco, velvet, satiny boots and shoes. Until the XVII century there were no heels in footwear, then high heel appeared.
Unique beauty of national female clothes can be admired in masterpieces of fine arts (Ryabuchkin: <"Russian women of the XVII century ">, "The merchant’s family in the 17th century", "Moscow girl of the XVII century ", Surikov: <"Boyarynya Morozova "> , <"The morning of strelets’ execution ">, , Repin: <"Tsarevna Sofia Alekseevna in Novodevichij monastery in 1698 "> and many others) and in literature.
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