Tag Archives: Costume

Bulgaria

By ilyani | Published 21 May, 2009

I have featured a few postcards of Sofia in this post, but now I am making an entry for Bulgaria coz I want to put this neat map card of the country.. I still can’t believe nobody in the postcards publishers here bother to make map postcards of Malaysia :( They only know to keep recycling same old photos that I am more than bored to see at the shops!

Sent by

Sent by Prilade

This is obviously from the old scanner time. Anyway I just love when a postcard has general information of a country written on it which can come in handy.. so I’ll just write them here..

Area : 110,993 km2
Population (2001) : 7,973,673
Capital : Sofia (1,173,813)
Climate : Predominant moderate
Sunlight per year : 2000-2400 hours
Coastline : 380km
The Highest Peak : Mussala in Rila Mountain (2971m)
Natural lakes : About 220 (over 260 high-mountain)
Rivers (longer than 2.3km) : 526
Mineral springs : About 500
Political System : Parliamentary Republic
National holiday : March 3rd
Time zone : GMT +2
Currency : Lev (BGN) = 100 stotinki
Telephone code : +359

Sent by

Sent by Maggie_is_here

I just feel like including this postcard along even though it’s from Mizia region, but I guess on this colorful card you can have general idea of how Bulgarian costume, tradition, nature, castles and homes are like.

Posted in Bulgaria | Also tagged , , Leave a comment

Rijk gekleed – Dress to impress

By ilyani | Published 20 May, 2009

This glossy posh-looking folded card is among the treasure in my postcards collection, it was published by Amsterdams Historisch Museum in the Netherlands, featuring historical European costume collection from past centuries, and this one particularly in my hands, is the Robe à la Française dates back in 1755 – 1760.

From Sire. This dress was probably from France by its name, and the period when these wide hips were in fashion was around 1755-1760. The dress is made of silk and painted by hand… so it does look fragile. And even in the past the fragility of these costumes used to prevent their exhibition.. but with expert restoration now they have made it possible for the collection to be brought out of storage. Okay, the idea behind the wide hips is that women with wider hips are more fertile than women with narrower hips, and in those days the most important thing for a woman was to get marrried :-) So the wider hips you have, the easier you can attract the (hopefully) rich men! ;)

Happy ABC Wednesday!! :D

Posted in France, Netherlands | Also tagged , 5 Comments

Welsh traditional costume

By ilyani | Published 18 May, 2009

Today I received an official card from Great Britain. But no, I haven’t scanned it yet, but in the meantime, I’ll feature some traditional costume postcards from there. Or precisely, from Wales.

From Tigerlily. Ugh, again this was from the sappy-scanner time, so pardon the blur image. Can you read the text anyway? I like postcards with long description written like this, and especially it’s on the picture side, so it saves me from re-writing it here again :P So you.. just read the text please :) One thing I notice about traditional costumes in Europe, the women’s dress always always have an apron hanging with the skirt, I don’t know if it has a certain use (like to wipe hands? :P) or just part of the fashion.

GB-5651 from ?? unknown! In fact, on the back of the card, the sender just pasted a small piece of paper, printed on it “I’M ARTIST, LIVE IN YORKSHIRE. Wales is where I used to live”. That’s all, without name, just the ID number. Hmm.. maybe artists in Yorkshire are too busy to write even a Hello and a few more sentences on postcards :) Okay, the other picture is the St David’s Cathedral (it’s printed on card, thankfully, otherwise I wouldn’t have known).

Posted in Great Britain | Also tagged , , Leave a comment