Dress and Adornment

Evidence for Bulgarian dress in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries comes from Byzantine writings, murals, manuscript miniatures, and archaeological discoveries. Byzantine authors sometimes described Bulgarian clothing with contempt and were evidently referring mainly to ordinary people. Images of rulers and nobles create the opposite problem: they show almost nothing but ceremonial attire. The everyday clothing of the upper ranks therefore remains poorly known.

Gregory Antiochus mentions Bulgarians wearing yamurluks—heavy woollen outer garments—and lambskins. A fourteenth-century Byzantine poet describes the yamurluk as a felt garment with a hood. Niketas Choniates reports simple footwear made from calfskin, cord, and rags. These were probably opintsi, or rawhide shoes, worn with navoi: strips of cloth wrapped around the lower legs and fastened with cords or plaited horsehair. Even such shoes were not available to everyone, since poor people are often shown barefoot. On feast days the navoi could be replaced by high cloth leggings reaching almost to the knees, as seen in the murals of Hrelyo’s Tower.

The customary men’s headgear was the kalpak, a brimless cap. Theophylact of Ohrid writes of poor men whose heads were covered with felt, while later leather kalpaks were known in Byzantium as Bulgarian products. Festive male attire included a long shirt reaching the knees and always secured at the waist. White was most common, although brown, dark green, and dark blue garments also appear. The sleeves narrowed at the wrists, and the cut was angled across the chest. Men of every social rank wore close-fitting trousers called gashti. Aristocratic examples could be brightly coloured and covered with figures, whereas poor men tied their clothing with a simple cord. The wealthy had belts with elaborate buckles and gilded mounts bearing human and animal figures, sometimes set with precious stones. The report that Ivaylo put on a fine garment after beginning his uprising shows how visibly the quality of cloth signalled a rise in status.

The ring was the usual item of male jewellery. Commoners wore roughly made rings of inexpensive metal, while nobles favoured heavy gold examples with inscriptions, gemstones, and heraldic figures; some also served as seals. One particularly unusual find from Svishtov is a gold ring fashioned to function as a key. Massive gold bracelets for the wrist or upper arm are also known, probably restricted to the aristocracy and perhaps connected with an older tradition. Men generally wore beards, moustaches, and long hair falling to the shoulders. Long hair was regarded as a mark of a free person, while slaves had their hair cut. Like the Byzantines, Bulgarians mocked clean-shaven Western Europeans for their curled hair and for clothing whose outline appeared feminine by local standards.

Women’s festive clothing consisted of a long linen shift reaching the ankles. Its loose cut concealed the shape of the body and accorded with Christian expectations of modesty. The cloth was gathered at the neck and decorated with multicoloured embroidery; the narrow embroidered sleeves were fastened with round buttons. Unlike men, women normally did not wear belts. Their colours were stronger and more varied. In Tarnovo women wore the sokay, an elaborate headdress with an embroidered front, rising high at the back before falling over the shoulders. Similar coverings are known from Macedonia, while the Tarnovo form has been linked to court dress. Grave finds show that prosperous women in the capital wove metallic threads into their sokays.

Cemeteries of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries confirm the taste for adornment also described by later travellers. Finds include necklaces of glass beads in gold, red, blue, and iridescent shades, as well as even more colourful bracelets. The earrings and buttons of poorer women were simple in form and made from copper, bronze, iron, or coloured glass. Women’s clothing generally retained a relatively plain cut; wealth was displayed chiefly through the quality of the fabric, the skill of the workmanship, and the cost of decorative details.

Dress at the court and among the nobility was strongly influenced by Byzantium. Expensive fabrics came not only from there but also from Western Europe and the East, while garments were covered with gold ornament, pearls, gemstones, and embroidery in metallic thread. A burial identified as the tomb of Tsar Kaloyan contained traces of seventeen kinds of fabric, including textiles of Chinese origin. These finds point both to long-distance commercial connections and to the exceptional consumption of the ruler’s circle.

The colour of ceremonial dress formed part of the language of power. Following Byzantine practice, purple and gold belonged to the ruler and his family, and their unauthorised use could be punished. Lower ranks also had their own colours: the sebastokrator, holder of one of the highest court titles, was associated with blue; the grand logothete with yellow; and the protovestiarios with green. Costly textiles carried images of peacocks, double-headed eagles, and the ancient geometric sign of the swastika. Double-headed eagles even decorate the boots of Tsar Ivan Alexander. Portraits also suggest changes in personal fashion: in the early 1340s the ruler had a broad, evenly trimmed beard, while about a decade later it ended in two pointed tips.

The strength of foreign influence is also reflected in a much later legend, recorded by a Serbian writer in the seventeenth century and probably derived from a Bulgarian tradition. It claims that Khan Presian appeared before his nobles twice a year in clothing made entirely from local wool, linen, and hides, thereby encouraging the use of Bulgarian products. The nobles supposedly wore foreign garments without gold or pearls only at major festivals or when receiving envoys. The tale is moralising and much too late to establish an actual ninth-century custom. For the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, the surviving images and finds indicate the opposite: the aristocracy openly followed Byzantine fashion.

The ceremonial clothing of noblewomen was especially sumptuous. Desislava, wife of Sebastokrator Kaloyan, is shown in a garment bearing medallions with heraldic lions. In a miniature from the London Gospels, the robes of Kera Tamara, Keratsa, and another Desislava are edged with white pearls. Diamonds and palmettes—stylised plant designs—were among the commonest textile motifs. Noblewomen wore gold forehead ornaments, as well as earrings, temple pendants, rings, necklaces, bracelets, and medallions made from gold, enamel, and gemstones. A surviving forehead ornament in Pleven is set with six red, blue, and green stones. Little is known about hairstyles because portraits conceal the hair beneath crowns, diadems, and wreaths. A few images nevertheless show curls falling to the shoulders while leaving the ears uncovered, whereas ordinary women probably favoured long braids.

Cosmetics were widely used despite the disapproval of religious moralists. Didactic writings praised women who needed no artificial adornment and condemned perfumes, white face paint, and rouge. Archaeological evidence shows that aristocratic women in particular did not abandon such preparations. Finds include parts of finely made cosmetic boxes, tweezers, small brushes, combs, hairpins, and bottles. Handles from bronze mirrors and small vessels of Venetian glass with traces of lead seals have been found at Tsarevets; the latter probably contained rare and expensive scents. The folktale motif of a princess who owns only two shifts suggests that more attention could be given to visible attire than to underclothing, although it should not be treated as a literal description.

The capital, Tarnovo, also offered daily encounters with foreign fashions. Its streets might contain Franks in close-fitting clothes, Byzantines in white tunics, Eastern men in caftans, and local Jews in anterii—long outer robes reaching the heels. Dress thus displayed wealth, rank, gender, and origin, turning the city into a visible mixture of local and international traditions.