Skirt

Skirt of satakrouta, a pure silk fabric made from coarse unboiled silk. The name derives from the Italian term seta cruda. The colour of the fabric is somon (from the French saumon, salmon). The light-coloured field is interrupted at intervals by parallel horizontal stripes formed in the weft. The stripes are in three groups, each of which has six stripes – three fine and three broader stripes. The colours (from top to bottom) are light green, deep red, and purple. Below the bottom group, at the lower edge of the skirt, there is a broad band in dark/cypress green. The thin stripes have a 0.5 cm width, the wide stripes have a 1 cm width, and the green band at the bottom is 4 cm wide. The width of each group is 10 cm. The skirt is ankle-length and widens towards the hem. It gathers at the waist, where a thin belt of the same fabric has been sewn on. At the side, there is a vertical opening of 15 cm, with two cotton ribbons that tie at the waist. It is lined with off-white cotton fabric and it has a simple hem at the bottom. In places, the fabric is stained and shows signs of wear.   This is a characteristic urban festive traditional skirt, primarily made in Nicosia. This particular type of skirt was worn in Cyprus as part of a more recent variation of the national dress inspired by the costume of Queen Amalia, dating back to the late 19th/early 20th century. For examples of the same skirt as part of a complete Amalia-type costume, see: Papantoniou 1996, p. 100; similar examples can be found in Papadimitriou 1991, p. 15; Rizopoulou-Egoumenidou 1996, p. 76, fig. 38; Rizopoulou-Egoumenidou 2010, p. 136-137, no. 91b, and pp. 138-139, no. 92b.   Dimensions: height 90 cm., width 40 cm.   Price: 275 drachmas.