Ethnograpfy
The national costume of the Samarkand women at the end of the 19th - 20th cc.
The history of the Uzbek national costume testifies that it developed and modified much faster under influence of the urban culture in the large centers of Uzbekistan - Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and others than on the periphery. In Samarkand, the permanent contacts of the Uzbeks and Tadjiks and mutual influence of their cultures were reflected in the traditional costume.
The economic and cultural contacts of Samarkand with the other cities, especially with Bukhara and Tashkent, also promoted the new forms and elements of the female costume. The traditional female costume consisted of capacious dress, trousers, overclothes - munisak, veil, robe, headwear and footwear. The daily and ceremonial clothes did not differ in the cut. However, the ceremonial costume was more expressive in the color, texture of the fabric and ornamentation to accent its ritual purpose.
The women paid attention to the color of the fabric, choosing the clothes. The young girls preferred the red tones. The red color was the symbol of love, fertility and holiday. For example, in India many brides put on the wedding costume of the red color. The middle-aged women preferred the fabrics of the dark blue tones. The old women chose blue, and the oldest women - the white color. From the ancient time, the white color was considered as a symbol of purity. According to Najm ad-Din Qubro, the white color was a symbol of "clarification" in the Sufi tradition. Only after achievement of purity and honesty, the murid could take the way of "tariqah" (4, p. 20). The prevalence of the white color in the clothes of the older persons could be probably connected with the ideas that the person should have been purgeed of sins before "to leave for the other world".
The female capacious dress, similar to the male shirt, occupied the important place in the set of the female clothes. In the course of time, it obtained new details (a collar, yoke, etc.) and lost its original form. Nevertheless, the dresses of the traditional cut had remained until the early 20th century. The Samarkand dress differed from the Bukhara's in the sleeve, tapering downward (the width is about 20 cm). In Bukhara, the sleeve was wider twice in order to wear several additional shirts under the dress comfortably. The side details, rectangular or cross-cut, were sewed under the sleeves. We can not agree with O. Suhareva, who considers that the dresses initially were rectangular and only later, by the 20th century, they had become cross-cut
"Munisak" (minsak, mursak) represents the original kind of overclothes. In spite of its almost identical pattern with the robe and shirt, the munisak never had a collar and the side details under the sleeves were always pleated. Beside Samarkand, the munisak was used in Tashkent, Bukhara, the Fergana valley and Khorezm. The Samarkand munisak (it was called "kaltacha" in some districts) differed by the big number of pleats under the sleeves. The pleats occupied even the part of the back, due to which the back looked narrower, and the female figure - slimmer. The munisak is a pure female cloth, having no analogies in the male costume.