Maria Erdnieva, About Women's Dress

Abstract

Maria talks about Kalmyk women's dresses. Darina: Did your mother wear a traditional dress? Maria: Yes, she did. In our family three elderly women wore traditional dresses, including my grandmother, her younger sister, and my mother. They wore it until recently. D: Do you know the names of traditional dresses and their parts in Kalmyk? M: No, I do not, a girl sewed dresses for my grandmother. Our women wore hats without a red thread at top though. They also wore shivrlyk on their plaits. D: What did she (your grandmother) do with her tokug? M: When my grandmother was alive, she gave one of her silver tokug to me and the other one to her second daughter. From that tokug I made a pair of silver earrings. My mother did not wear tokug, only shivrlyk. My grandmother also wore shivrlyk. There is a song: ‘A girl with golden tokugs, a girl with golden tokugs/ When I see her my heart beats faster’.