Costume | Piana degli Albanesi

the traditional female costume

The Traditional Female Costume of Piana degli Albanesi represents, without a doubt, the cultural identity of this colony founded in 1488.

Recently the Traditional Costume was registered in the REIS (Intangible Heritage Register) of the Sicilian Region.

Contrary to what one might think, our Costume did not arrive in Sicily as we see it today, but in the 18th century it was radically transformed, making it the unchanged symbol of our identity to this day.

The identity value of our costume is very strong because, in addition to representing more than five hundred years of history as a Greek-Albanian colony in Sicily, it is also an extraordinary ethno-anthropological document that condenses in itself the aspects linked to the Greek-Byzantine rite, still practiced in Piana degli Albanesi.

THE ORIGINS

In seeking the origins of the Piana women's costume, one must not forget that it, even if in a restricted area, has undergone various transformations over the course of five centuries. Not only have various parts of it been used on different occasions over the centuries, but they have changed in size, in the richness of the embroidery, in the fabrics and in the way of wearing them. To find the origins, it was therefore necessary to look at Houel's prints from 1700, by Vuiller or at the oldest dowry deeds that mention this costume since the sixteenth century. The fact that in Palazzo Adriano (a town of Albanian origin) this type of costume was normally used certainly until the end of the 18th century suggests a common origin, but identifying this with Albania is not entirely acceptable or at least not as the only one. In fact, if it is true that, close to the Byzantine sphere of influence, Albania has felt, since the end of the first millennium, the charm and beauty of the clothing used at the court of Byzantium, as evidenced by the use of gold embroidery and precious stones both in the clothes and in the sacred parameters, it is also true that since 1400 Italy had also entered into a relationship with this culture and this wealth, especially, through Venice. And it is also true that in Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries one can observe the clothes of great Italian ladies portrayed by the best painters of the time in clothes completely similar to our ntzilone.

The wide skirt gathered at the waist by numerous pleats, for example, was launched in the fashion field of the Europe of the time by De Medici. The famous "Formarina" by Raphael is an example of how the sleeves attached to the bodice by laces that let the shirt puff out at the sides were a typical garment of the 16th century and that the veil worn in various ways returns in Venetian engravings of the 17th century. The costume of Albania before the Turkish invasion instead had a straight and slightly flared cut similar to the medieval one even if rich in some examples of gold embroidery therefore very distant from the Arbëreshe one. The Italian fashion of the 16th and 17th centuries which in turn had undergone oriental influences is therefore the ground from which one drew to give life to this costume especially the one today for weddings but once (certainly until the end of the 18th century) used as a normal gala dress. While important insights can be gained by observing the historical nativity scene of the Royal Palace of Caserta, it is in fact noted that the (kurorë) bands of gold net worked with bobbin lace decorate numerous skirts of the eighteenth-century female characters. This is an example of how strong the Sicilian-Campanian influences are in the other type of female outfit consisting of a skirt decorated with kurorë with a jacket and cape.

Furthermore, everyone remembers the Annunziata by Antonello Da Messina and her cerulean cape which has become a fundamental piece of the Arbëreshe costume, clearly enriched in the place as usual with gold embroidery. Similarly, the prototype of the embroidered shirt with a falling collar on the shoulders can be found in the Spanish shirt and without particular research one realizes that the jacket (gipuni) also for its etymology is clearly a Sicilian piece. One of the most particular and certainly original pieces is the keza (female headdress) once used by all women who owned more than one both for parties and for weekdays. Today this has been loaded with a new symbolism, that of the weight of family responsibility and is worn on the wedding day.

brezi costume tradizionale piana degli albanesi

THE JEWELS

An integral part of the costume are also the jewels. The silver belt (Brezi) in the first place. It is the result of the evolution of the oriental silver belt through the progressive enlargement and modification of the design of the front plate.

The most ancient brezi have in fact a flat and embossed plate without perforations. Earrings with pendants (pindajet), cross with breastplate (krikja and kurçets), ring of rough diamonds (domanti), double strand necklace of grenade stones closed in several points by filigree spheres, are the set that completes the dress.
These jewels of red gold sometimes enamelled that are found in the Sicilian jewelry of the 600 and 700 where rubies emeralds and roughly cut diamonds are mounted at night, can now be observed only in Piana, especially on Easter day. While it is interesting to note that in a painting by A. Durer 1505 the young Venetian woman portrayed wears the typical rusari around her neck.

THE COSTUME IN EVENTS

The following cards on each type of traditional costume link each of them to various moments in the life of the women of Piana, from everyday life to marriage.
All this is now a thing of the past. In fact, even if the costumes are still handed down from mother to daughter and jealously preserved they have lost their link with the events, they are no longer clothes but costumes with all that this term implies. The progressive loss of this bond began in the 1920s, when the new European fashion introduced practical and light clothes, freeing women (invested with new social roles) from large and bulky skirts. The adaptation to fashion, however, was not immediate for the woman of Piana. The young women were the first to wear the new clothes, abandoning the daily dress in their youth but rehabilitating it in full maturity. In the thirties and forties the half-party dress began to fall into disuse. To go to mass, in fact, new clothes were preferred, especially those sent from America by relatives who emigrated in the previous decades, while women born after forty wore traditional costumes (except for the daily one) only on special occasions such as baptisms, weddings, especially Easter, but generally not respecting the relevance of the custom to the event celebrated. Only the bridal costume remained linked to the event, perhaps due to the great peculiarity of it.

the fact that these very rich and precious dresses have been part of the trousseaus of most of the marriageable women of Piana even if the "ntsilone" have always been rare), should not suggest an immoderate wealth of the families of Piana who to tell the truth they were in bad conditions especially in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The almost uninterrupted production of them is instead attributed to the great craftsmanship of the local women in transforming silk (mola) or velvet and gold (into threads, lenticiole and in canatiglie) imported from Naples in refined and precious clothes using the bobbin lace or the loom or simply the needle, as is done for the curling of the sleeves of the shirts and for the needlepoint laces.