A long walk at the beach made me think about my roots. I grew up near Scheveningen, which is an old fisherman’s village where women used to wear beautiful traditional costumes. When I was a little girl there already weren’t many woman left who actually wore these costumes but my friends grandma was one of them. She taught me the meaning of the different garments and how and when to wear them. I loved these clothes especially the laced headgear with the golden ornaments and the blood coral necklaces.
Nowadays the number of wearers has dropped below 80, mostly elderly women. And no, I don’t think we should go back in time and start wearing these costumes again, we would look really silly but I do think it would be a shame if we forgot the techniques.
That is what the fashion designers Alexander van Slobbe and Francisco van Benthum must have had in mind when they (guest) curate the exhibition Gone With The Wind.
They invited high-profile Dutch designers of fashion, jewellery and accessories, stylists, photographers and illustrators to give an inspiring picture of the wealth of ideas latent in the Dutch world of fashion and how it relates to the Dutch dress tradition.
I think I like to wear some of these on my next walk on the beach while waiting for the fisherman to return home safe and I wouldn’t look silly
Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen (22 March – 22 November 2009)
Nice post! Rememberance and traditions. What a duality. The first remain the second is somehow disappearing. Something I see everytime I go to the lake (Cannobio on the lake Maggiore). Few old women “the Cannobine” still wear these old dresses. It was a tradition of the valley. Now almost only a memory. They are the memory.
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