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The art of the traditional blouse with embroidery on the shoulder (altiţă)

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Christine Brown on Romanian Textiles, Part 1: The Lecture

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“Hand Made in Rumania”: Romanian Textiles at Maryhill Museum of Art

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Romanian Blouse - Global Impact

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The Peasant Blouse - The Romanian Blouse

The legacy

IA  is a cultural artifact. Its roots stretch back to ancient times, with patterns and sewing techniques that trace their origins to pre-Christian rituals, Dacian traditions, and the Byzantine era, later influenced by Ottoman and Western European aesthetics.

The blouses are distinctively shaped and reflect the area of origin, bearing specific embroideries, adornments, and colors, characteristics from region to region, sometimes even from village to village. From the rolling hills of Transylvania to the mountains of Moldova and the plains of Wallachia, every ethnographic region of Romania has its version of the ia.  The blouses evolved alongside the people, for good and for worse, from celebration to wail, absorbing centuries of migration, fights and celebration.

To wear an ie is to wear a fragment of Romanian history—one that carries the strength and grace of our past generations, which we are so thankful and proud.

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