FOLKWEAR KNOWLEDGE
Knowledge about Romanian folk wear is hard to get one’s hands on. Despite the 19th century obsession with the Romanian peasant triggered by the quest of finding the "national essence" during Romania’s national identity formation — which resulted in an otherwise impressive collection of recorded folk material in terms of ballads, folk poems, folk sayings — knowledge never evolved from the mere philological classification to the exploration and recording of the social and performative dimensions of the peasant culture. Overall, few studies have in fact been carried out that thoroughly documented and preserved folk wear around the different ethnographic zones of Romania. We hunted for every book we could get out hands on to better understand the history behind these beautiful artefacts.
