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Adygei`s traditional costume in the `river of time`
Today museums are probably the only space, where the "river of time", which implacably runs and carries away all the former values, slows its progress. If we stand on the museum "shores" of this "current", and take labor to look in it thoroughly, we can see in its disappearing flow the things, which once would make our world more beautiful, but unfortunately will never remain in it. However, there are people, who try to save from this current all that is necessary to conserve for the world civilization. These people are few, they are professional ethnographers and keepers of ethnic traditions, who can modernize and enrich them by mixing with other traditions.
While we offer to esteem in proper degree the examples of modern Adygeis women's costumes, created by Madina Saralp, which actually correspond to ethnic cultural patterns and capricious demands of contemporary urban fashion, we consider necessary to remember those people, who really contributed to inclusion of traditional Adygeis clothing to the cultural universe of Russian auditory.
First of all we should remember Eugenia Studenetskya, the outstanding expert in traditional clothing of Northern Caucasus, and the founder of museum collections, who worked in the Russian Museum of Ethnography for more than 50 years, and was the first to analyze the Kabardian costume from the perspective of its origins and cultural value.
We should also pay homage to the Kabardian women, who tried to revive their traditional clothing in the time of overwhelming expansion of urban fashions more than 100 years ago. The fruits of their work remained in the Russian Museum of Ethnography as remnants of once large collection of gifts, which the family of the emperor Alexander III received during their travel to Caucasus, to Kabarda in 1888. The travel was long, and the gifts were rich, and endowed with special meaning. The crown prince and future monarch Nicolas received a set of weapon as if he were young Adygeis warrior in search of military achievements. The tsar as mature warrior and ruler was given among other things traditional felt cloak with a set of hoods. Special reverence was paid to the Empress Maria Fyodorovna, which testify even the remaining objects, i.e. two sets of clothing. The first set includes felt cloak and hood, traditional elements of male costume. However, their sizes and the monogram on the hood leave no place for doubt to whom, they were presented. The second set of clothing included completely traditional dress of high-ranking Kabardinian woman, with extremely thin waist and flattened chest, and formerly much more items, for example riding-habit, which could be combined with both ethnic garment and urban fashionable costume.
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