
- Dress
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Dress
- Place of origin:
North-West Frontier Province (made)
- Date:
20th century (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Unknown
- Materials and Techniques:
Cotton embroidered with silk
- Museum number:
IS.33-1996
- Gallery location:
In Storage
This woman's dress from Northern Pakistan has an astonishing 524 triangular and rectangular panels inserted into the skirt to provide a swirling mass of fabric around the knee-length hemline. The use of prodigious amounts of cloth is also a feature of other types of dress from this region, for example the immensely wide-waisted trousers formerly worn by both men and women. It is not clear whether this taste for extra cloth is a response to the harsh climate in this remote mountainous region or a form of modesty that hides the outlines of the legs.