{"id":1215,"date":"2017-10-09T00:12:59","date_gmt":"2017-10-09T05:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/?page_id=1215"},"modified":"2017-11-29T17:37:25","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T22:37:25","slug":"gomlek-shift","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/womens-garb-piece-by-piece\/gomlek-shift\/","title":{"rendered":"G\u00f6mlek | Shift"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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Colors<\/h3>\n

The color of the\u00a0g\u00f6mlek varied significantly by time and place. In the 15th century, high-end\u00a0g\u00f6mleks could be colored red, yellow, or blue, an extravagance that at least one moralist inveighed against.<\/p>\n

The tradition continued into the earliest court records I have access to, from Istanbul’s semi-rural neighbor, \u00dcsk\u00fcdar, in 1513 to 1583. The\u00a0\u00dcsk\u00fcdar estate inventories listed eight blue (g\u00f6k<\/em>)\u00a0g\u00f6mleks, which belonged to both sexes and had no fabric descriptor.\u00a0There were also three red vale silk\u00a0g\u00f6mleks and one red “bez” (generic cotton or linen cloth)\u00a0g\u00f6mlek, all owned by women, and one yellow vale silk\u00a0g\u00f6mlek, also owned by a woman.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Women owned the lion’s share of the silk\u00a0g\u00f6mleks because\u00a0Islam permitted women, but not men, to wear silk; men got around the rule by not wearing silk next to their skin. Women also owned all the red and yellow\u00a0g\u00f6mleks. Let’s look closer at the blue\u00a0g\u00f6mleks, which were owned by both sexes and which didn’t rate a description of their fabric.<\/p>\n

Blue wasn’t a prestigious color in 16th-century\u00a0\u00dcsk\u00fcdar. In fact, it was so cheap that quite a few escaped slaves were dressed entirely in blue. Indigo is one of the hardest-wearing natural dyes, lightfast and colorfast without a mordant, producing excellent color on cotton, wool, silk, and even linen, which laughs at almost every other natural dye; and it comes from a fast-growing plant that takes so well to warm climates that it’s one step short of being a weed. In short, indigo is guaranteed to slide to the bottom of any textile economy. And in\u00a0\u00dcsk\u00fcdar, a small but noteworthy number of people, both men and women, wore cotton or linen\u00a0g\u00f6mleks dyed blue. It’s possible that blue dye was one way to salvage a stained\u00a0g\u00f6mlek. It’s also possible that blue\u00a0g\u00f6mleks were the last and strongest remnant of a tradition of colored\u00a0g\u00f6mleks.<\/p>\n

In the next set of court records, from\u00a0wealthy late 16th\/early 17th-century Galata, that tradition is gone. G\u00f6mleks were white. Period. There was a single exception, a man from the\u00a01573-1591 record who owned a blue\u00a0g\u00f6mlek; apart from his g\u00f6mlek, even the fancy embroidered\u00a0g\u00f6mleks owned by the wealthiest ladies were described without mentioning a color.<\/p>\n

Fabrics<\/h3>\n

The ideal\u00a0g\u00f6mlek was almost transparent. In the absence of such perfection, wealthy people used the lightest fabrics they could: the superfine cotton batiste called dest\u00e2r; tafta (taffeta) silk; and tafta’s cousin, v\u00e2le silk.\u00a0Although b\u00fcr\u00fcncek, a silk or silk\/cotton gauze, doesn’t appear in the estate records, it was considered uniquely suited to making\u00a0g\u00f6mleks; in the market price listings (narh defteri), it was even listed as being sold by the\u00a0g\u00f6mleklik<\/em>, “enough fabric to make a\u00a0g\u00f6mlek.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To see an example of the gauzes available for g\u00f6mleks, examine the closeups of a 14th-century Persian pirihan<\/a>. Wrong country, wrong century, but the same technology was available to 16th-century Turks.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cotton, linen, silk, and blends of those three fibers. No direct evidence of wool, although wool winter g\u00f6mleks are attested in other sources.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The specific fabrics varied by location. In Uskudar, estate records mentioned alaca,\u00a0bez (generic cotton or linen cloth), and vale silk; in Galata, records mentioned only tafta silk.<\/p>\n

Recreating the\u00a0G\u00f6mlek<\/h3>\n

Finding a Pattern<\/h4>\n

Because of the aforementioned uncertainty about how\u00a0g\u00f6mleks were made, you have plenty of latitude in choosing a pattern. All of these patterns will produce a garment with the right profile:<\/p>\n

The 14th-century long pir\u00e2h\u00e2n<\/a> pattern is accurate to 14th-century Persia, but makes a comfortable and plausible\u00a0g\u00f6mlek.<\/p>\n

Colors<\/h4>\n

For the first three quarters of the 16th century,<\/p>\n

Fabrics<\/h4>\n

Any light cotton or silk is suitable. Plain-weave is best, but wide, irregular stripes of satin weave on a gauze ground would imitate\u00a0b\u00fcr\u00fcncek nicely. No dots, fine lines, seersucker, crinkle gauze, or other textures.<\/p>\n

Batiste is my personal favorite. It’s light, it’s soft, it has a beautiful drape, and it’s just sturdy enough to withstand machine washing. Voile, which is like batiste but has a crisper hand, would be equally good. When you go shopping, check all labels–the market is flooded with polyester batistes, which look lovely and will turn your garb into your own personal sauna.<\/p>\n

<\/i>\u00a0 \u00c7ak\u015f\u0131r\u00a0| Trousers<\/em><\/a>\u00a0Z\u0131b\u0131n | Short underjacket<\/em>\u00a0 <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

Detour: The Cut of Extant G\u00f6mleks\u00a0 <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

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

[in progress]       Colors The color of the\u00a0g\u00f6mlek varied significantly by time and place. In the 15th century, high-end\u00a0g\u00f6mleks could be colored red, yellow, or blue, an extravagance that at least one moralist inveighed against. The tradition continued into the earliest court records I have access to, from\u2026<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":1043,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1215","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","category-ottoman-turkish-clothing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1215"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1637,"href":"https:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1215\/revisions\/1637"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}