{"id":1265,"date":"2017-10-31T19:41:54","date_gmt":"2017-11-01T00:41:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/?page_id=1265"},"modified":"2023-06-20T17:54:01","modified_gmt":"2023-06-20T22:54:01","slug":"zibin-short-underjacket","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/womens-garb-piece-by-piece\/zibin-short-underjacket\/","title":{"rendered":"Z\u0131b\u0131n | Short underjacket"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

A beauty in a bazaar painting by a Turkish artist, The Habits of the Grand Signor\u2019s Court, circa 1620.<\/p><\/div>\n

[in progress]<\/em><\/p>\n

The\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131n was a hip-length jacket that both men and women wore over their g\u00f6mleks and under their kaftans. (It’s sometimes referred to mistakenly as a h\u0131rka.) If you think of Ottoman Turkish clothing as a pantsuit, the\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131n is the shirt.<\/p>\n

The sexes put different emphasis on their\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131ns.\u00a0Men spent much of their time in public, dressed formally, so their\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131ns were less important than their kaftans; but women spent most of their day in the privacy of their home, dressed informally, with their\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131ns on display. Women still spent more money on their kaftans than on their\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131ns, but by the early 17th century, men’s\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131ns were largely a functional underlayer, while women like the richly dressed lady to the right continued to wear z\u0131b\u0131ns made of brocade and fine silk.<\/p>\n

Before we go any farther:\u00a0\/z\u026f b\u026fn<\/em>\/.\u00a0<\/em>The dotless\u00a0\u0131 is a sound similar to a schwa, but where the schwa is a sort of blurry, super-neutral AH, the\u00a0\u0131 is more of an UH or an OO. Hear it pronounced by Google Translate<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cut<\/h3>\n

Z\u0131b\u0131ns were cut exactly like short kaftans. If you have a kaftan pattern you like, just shorten it to crotch-length, and you’re done. I also reduce the size of the hip gores, but that’s not necessary, as a comically proportioned extant\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131n<\/a> shows.<\/p>\n

Length<\/h4>\n

Crotch-length, not knee-length! It’s tempting to make the\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131n longer–it suits our sense of how long a “tunic” layer should be–but both period pictures by Turkish artists and garment measurements<\/a> from the 1624 market regulations confirm that the\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131n was a short, short garment.<\/p>\n

(16th-century European artists do draw knee-length\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131ns. They also draw hats much larger than Turkish artists do. What does this mean? I’m not sure, but I recommend copying the Turks, not the Europeans.)<\/p>\n

Sleeves<\/h4>\n

Long, short, or sleeveless. Sleeveless\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131ns don’t appear to have any shaping around the armhole.<\/p>\n

Collar<\/h4>\n

Collarless or with a short band collar.<\/p>\n

Lining and Facing<\/h4>\n

Z\u0131b\u0131ns were lined (or unlined) and faced exactly like kaftans, with one exception: They weren’t lined with fur. They could be quilted, like one extant\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131n<\/a>; the\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131n was a warmth layer as well as a fashion layer. But fur was too expensive to waste on a garment that was covered up with a kaftan the moment you stepped out of the house.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Miscellaneous<\/h4>\n
Pockets<\/h5>\n

No pockets! To the best of my knowledge, extant\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131ns are pocketless, and too short to have decently sized pockets in any case. That said, museum catalogs usually don’t mention pockets even when they describe, say, kaftans that we know from other sources do have pockets, so it’s not implausible that extant\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131ns are pocketed and catalog writers are holding out on us.<\/p>\n

Side Slits<\/h5>\n

All types of robes have short “walking slits” in the side seams, even when the garment is too short for movement to be an issue. I haven’t found any measurements for the side slits of z\u0131b\u0131ns, but they’re probably a few inches long at most.<\/p>\n

Color and Fabric<\/h3>\n

Z\u0131b\u0131ns can be made in any attractive color. Because the z\u0131b\u0131n was an informal garment, women tended not to make them in drab, serious colors like dark purple and black, which were considered better suited to overcoats and men’s working clothes. (But see the lady at the top of the page. Black was considered an ideal color to make goldwork pop.)<\/p>\n

Any fabric that’s sturdy enough to be worn as a main layer can be used to make a\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131n. The estate records document\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131ns made of satin, watered silk, and the full line of brocades and velvets available to wealthy Istanbulites, as well as the colorful silk-and-cotton blends known as kutni and alaca, the polished cotton twill called bogas\u0131, and the occasional reference to generic plain-weave cotton or linen cloth (bez<\/em>).\u00a0One man had a\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131n of velense<\/em>, wool blanketing.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> In the agricultural district near Istanbul, men wore even sturdier fabrics: wool broadcloth, coarse aba<\/em> wool, and the humblest fabric of all, felt.<\/p>\n

<\/i>\u00a0 G\u00f6mlek | Shift<\/em><\/a> Kaftan | Long formal robe<\/em>\u00a0 <\/i><\/a>
\nDetour:\u00a0 The Perplexing and Obnoxious History of the\u00a0Z\u0131b\u0131n\u00a0 <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[in progress] The\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131n was a hip-length jacket that both men and women wore over their g\u00f6mleks and under their kaftans. (It’s sometimes referred to mistakenly as a h\u0131rka.) If you think of Ottoman Turkish clothing as a pantsuit, the\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131n is the shirt. The sexes put different emphasis on their\u00a0z\u0131b\u0131ns.\u00a0Men spent\u2026<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":1043,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1265","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","category-ottoman-turkish-clothing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1265"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2762,"href":"http:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1265\/revisions\/2762"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}