Ireland

Galway shawl avaSuch a traditional garment as the shawl is among the oldest pieces of clothing in the world. Basically, it’s a rectangular cloth wrapped around the shoulders for warmth. But it’s amazing how unique and authentic a shawl can be. The design, interwoven patterns, fringe, decorative border, and other adornments can tell a lot about the origin of a particular shawl and the country’s traditional culture. For example, the Galway shawl is sometimes called a velvet or fur shawl, although there is no velvet or fur in it.

Mantle avaThe traditional Irish mantle is a folk garment with a curious and long history of use. It has come a very complicated, sometimes even unfair, and challenging way – some of the facts about the Irish brat might surprise you. But this outerwear piece is worth researching, and it helps us learn more about the history of Ireland in general, its political past, etc. Very often, through clothes, we find out about matters totally unrelated to fashion. And the Irish mantle is one of such articles of clothing.

Irish headdress avaWe know dozens or even hundreds of different hairstyles today and are able to choose the one we like, no matter where we’re from, what our marital status is, or what the tradition of our people dictates. But in the past, one’s appearance often showed off all of the mentioned things. You could look at a person and tell who he or she was just by the person’s hair, headdress, clothing, accessories. For example, here’s what we know about Irish typical hairstyles and headpieces in the early modern period. What did Irish people do with their hair in the 1530s-1800?

Irish clothing avaIn this material, we’re going to find out what garments were used by men in Ireland in the Gaelic period (from the prehistoric era until the early 17th century), how people called those items, what Irish clothing traditions were like at the time, etc. But we’ll talk about only men’s attire. If you’re not of Irish origin, it’s highly likely that you’ve never heard these terms before, so this will be interesting. We promise!