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Dress

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.

Physical description

This cotton dress ('jumlo') with silk embroidery is in the Indus Kohistan style but the embroidery, apart from the added cuffs which are done in cross stitch, is in a surface darn stitch like the Swati shawls and kurtas.

Place of Origin

North-West Frontier Province (made)

Date

20th century (made)

Artist/maker

Unknown

Materials and Techniques

Cotton embroidered with silk

Dimensions

Height: 90 cm, Width: 182 cm across sleeves

Descriptive line

Woman's embroidered cotton dress, Pakistan, 20th century.

Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)

pp.132-133, ill. p. 209
Colours of the Indus : costume and textiles of Pakistan / Nasreen Askari and Rosemary Crill. London: Merrell Holberton in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1997 Number: 1858940443
pp.166-167
Dress in detail from around the world / Rosemary Crill, Jennifer Wearden and Verity Wilson ; with contributions from Anna Jackson and Charlotte Horlyck ; photographs by Richard Davis, drawings by Leonie Davis. London: V&A Publications, 2002 Number: 1851773770 (hbk), 1851773789 (pbk)

Materials

Cotton; Silk thread

Techniques

Embroidering

Categories

Clothing; Women's clothes; Textiles

Collection

South & South East Asia Collection

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