Flickr Favorites : Traditional Costume Walcheren, The Netherlands

Today in the Flickr Favourites we descend even more along the North Sea coast until we reach the island of Walcheren in the province of Zeeland. The costume from Walcheren is colourful and girly with deep cut jackets and bodices underneath; it has a white lace cap with a tail for the little girls and a small fitting white lace cap for women. The latter cap is held on the head by a visible ear-iron. In some area's of Walcheren (around the city of Middelburg) the women keep their girl cap with the tail.

For more flickr favourites see ArtMind's blog.

1. Klederdracht, 2. People of The Netherlands , about half a century ago, 3. Terneuzen 09052009 DSC_0294, 4. Schorten

And two picture postcards from my own collection.

Traditional Costumes : Dutch Costumes on Postage Stamps

This Friday again some non-Dutch stamps with Dutch costumes :)) We start with a cute Dutch boy from the Netherlands Antilles, published in 2008. The costume of the boy must represent the man's costume of Volendam. The Netherlands Antilles was an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, consisting of six islands in the Caribbean Sea. Aruba became a separate country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1986, followed in 2010 by Curaçao and Sint Maarten. Saba, Sint Eustatius and Bonaire joined the Netherlands as "special municipalities". The name "Netherlands Antilles" is still sometimes used to indicate these last three islands.



The next stamp is from Suriname and shows a Dutch woman in the costume of Volendam waving to a Surinamese woman in the Creole costume called koto missie. This stamp was published to commemorate the first KLM flight between Paramaribo and Amsterdam in May 1949.



This third stamp is from 1965 and published by the former German Democratic Republic and shows a statue of a Dutch woman of Putten in the traditional costume of the Veluwe. It is a World War II Memorial to commemorate the victims of the German raid on the 1st of October 1944, in which the entire male working population (between 15 and 50 years of age) of Putten was deported to several concentration camps, as a revenge act against a Dutch resistance attack on a German Wehrmacht vehicle nearby on the 30th of September. From the 660 deported men, only 107 men survived the war.



This fourth stamp is a very fancy one; it's from Umm Al Qiwain (one of the United Arab Emirates) and part of a 1972 series of dolls in traditional costumes of the world. It shows a doll in the costume of Volendam and it is a hologram.



This last stamp sheet seems to be from Mordovia or Mordvinia, a federal republic of Russia. However, these are forged stamps issued by anonymous private companies operating outside Russia. Among other typical Dutch things, it shows a Dutch woman in the costume of Walcheren in Zeeland and a pair of typical Dutch wooden shoes.

Traditional costume : kraplap

After making my bodice / kraplap for the traditional costume challenge from the European Street Team on Etsy, I thought it would be interesting to show you some pictures of bodices / kraplappen from traditional costumes in The Netherlands. Originally the kraplap was a part of the underwear, but in many parts of The Netherlands it has developed into an important decorative part of the outerwear; often very visible and showy, but also sometimes hidden under shawls only revealing a small part under the chin.




In Marken it is worn above all other clothing parts and made from antique pieces of the most beautiful chintz (calico cloth printed with flowers and other devices in different colors).



In Urk the kraplap is more voluminous, mostly made from satin and often embroidered with flowers.



The best known kraplap is the one from Volendam, tucked under the typical short sleeve jacket, often with the most beautiful flower embroidery.



In Walcheren, it is also tucked away in the short sleeved jacket but with lots of folds and more visible because of the more open form of the jacket.



The kraplap of Bunschoten-Spakenburg is the most striking one; it's made of a handpainted cotton and fully stiffened, which makes it look like a giant collar; the red checkered vertical stripe in the middle, is the shawl folded into a strip only in such a way that the kraplap is fully visible.



In Staphorst it is often made from a black woollen muslin with flowers or from black satin handpainted with "stipwerk"; a special painting technique only used in the Staphorster costume. The flowers and stipwerk is dark coloured when the wearer is in mourning (blue and purple on black), otherwise the colours are pretty bright (red, green, yellow etc.). The checkered shawl is covering quite a part of this stunning piece. Which is very much the same situation on the Veluwe, where the kraplappen are not so very brightly patterned.




In Arnemuiden and on Zuid-Beveland the kraplappen are very similar, and also very much covered by the shawl. Often the shawl is made of the same fabric as the kraplap.




The most decorated kraplap is the one of Axel; it's ingeniously embroidered with glass beads and sequins leaving almost no space of the fabric to be seen. The scarf, which is folded and stuffed like a pair of wings, is covering the fabric, leaving the embroidered part visible as one big front jewel.


I hope you enjoyed this little tour through some of the traditional costumes in The Netherlands. All the pictures are postcards in my possession.