Kaftan Design

[in progress]

Taken individually, the plethora of Ottoman Turkish robes–the kaftans, zibins, vests, jackets, robes of honor, overcoats, cloaks, and what-is-that-I-have-no-idea-it’s-a-thing-with-sleeves–are a vast and unruly confusion. Break them down into pieces, and you start to see that they’re modular. Ottoman tailoring is simple, and the garment shapes it can create are equally simple. In this series of pages, I’ll go through the options and show you how to recreate them.

• Basic shape
  • Fitted – All inner clothes, many overcoats
  • A-line – Some overcoats
  • Hip curves – large, small, or none
• Front gores
  • One full-length, one waist-length – More fitted. All inner clothes, many overcoats
  • Two full-length – Less fitted. Some overcoats
  • Two waist-length – Nonexistent
• Closures
  • Buttons
    • Jeweled
    • Thread-woven
    • Other – we don’t have any examples of the kinds of buttons worn by the less than wealthy
  • Buttonloops
    • Fingerloop-woven cord
    • Modern substitutes
  • Braid (çaprast)
  • None – Some working-class inner clothes
• Lining
• Facing
• Sleeves
  • Sleeveless – Zibin, a few short overcoats
  • Short
  • Long and extra-long, tapered
  • Long, unfitted – Some overcoats, including ferace
  • Hanging – A couple styles of overcoat
  • Cuff details
• Collar
  • None
  • Band (Mandarin) collar
  • Broad naval collar – Post-period except for a few of the sultan’s robes of honor
• Walking slits – Nonoptional, even on robes too short to need them
• Pockets
  • True pockets – Kaftan, other inner robes?
  • Pocket slits – Overcoats
• Cutting Pattern
  • Rectangular construction – The fabric-sparing method used by most of the planet, including less august Ottomans.
  • Silk construction – My term for the wasteful, showy method used by the Chinese, Mongols, wealthier Ottoman Turks, and other groups that had access to a lot of silk. Highly adaptable to modern fabric widths.
• Modern Adaptations
  • Moving the collar farther back
  • Adding armpit gussets
  • Changing the location of the side seams – If you have a big belly, the side seams of a standard-cut kaftan will sit too far forward on your body and pull the sleeves out of whack.
  • Adding a rear gore
• Things That Don’t Exist
  This section ignores the magnificent robe of state that’s hosed down with embroidery. It’s unique, and more Persian than Ottoman.
  • External embroidery – With the exception of all-over patterns that imitate brocade, there’s no embroidery on the outside of the garment.
  • Decorated edges – The collar, cuffs, hem, and front opening are never decorated inside or out. That said, there are references to fringe on both men’s and women’s feraces, but we don’t know where the fringe went or what it looked like.
  • Strips of trim – Braid, yes. Braid was used in bands across the front, and there are occasional examples of narrow braids or cords stitched along the inner edges of facings. Bands of decoration, whether embroidered on the garment or made of sewn-on woven trim, no.