Welcome to the Russian National Costume Museum. We hope you will enjoy your tour with us today. We will see a variety of national costumes that come from all regions of Russia. If you follow me, we will go to our first exhibit...
This is an example of an 18th century peasant shirt, kosovorotka, a very popular item of clothing that could be worn every day and on special occasions, at home and at work.

Men wore shirts to their knees and women wore them to their ankles. The next exhibit is a sarafan from the 18th century. The sarafan was either a sleeveless dress or a high skirt with stripes. Girls and young women wore it.

The exhibit on your left is the most common type of festive headdress, the kokoshnik.

It was worn in the 18th and 19th century. The materials used to decorate the headdress were gold, silver, pearl and decorative stones. Kokoshniks were very expensive and would be handed down from generation to generation. Please walk this way. What you see before you now are porti.

These men's trousers are made of rough linen. Next to them is a long woollen skirt called a poneva which dates from the 19th and early 20th century. The poneva was worn by married women. In winter both men and women wore sheepskin overcoats, usually with fur on the inside, called polushubok.

If you look down to your right, you will see some bast shoes, lapti, which were worn over homespun onuchi - narrow strips of cotton wrapped around the lower leg - and valenki -felt shoes.