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<\/a><\/p>\nHere is a news video about this year’s National Dress Day<\/a>, and you can see many dresses at once in it.<\/p>\n The Women’s School has a photo gallery of National Dress Day across some years<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here is another one from the same school<\/a>. Remember the post about suffixes? “Kvenn\u00f3” at the upper-left of the page is short for “Kvennask\u00f3linn”, the school name.<\/p>\n I think the Icelandic “lopapeysa<\/a>“, a type of woollen sweater that’s actually quite modern, is advertised a lot more often than the national dress. You see it a lot in tourist advertisements, textbooks, and even just picture books for Icelandic kids. People wear them a lot more often too, and you can buy them just about anywhere in Reykjav\u00edk. Coming from a country that doesn’t have a traditional dress (Native American clothing and “jeans and a cowboy hat” don’t exactly count), I think it’s sad that the Icelandic ones aren’t worn more and aren’t more accessible, and that something not even a hundred years old has become a more recognizable icon.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nThese three photos are just from my dictionary. You can already see that there are varying types of women’s dress and a lot of names to memorize. The English Wikipedia article<\/a> is pretty good about labelling their photos with which type of dress is being worn. In Iceland you can find quite a number of books on the national dresses at the library, but finding books that include the men’s outfit is a bit more difficult.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nHere is an ad from 1925, describing silk and “silk flauel” (remember “flauel” from a previous post<\/a>?) as an appropriate choice for making national dresses. From timarit.is<\/a>. A book from 1935 explains that you need 3.5 meters of fabric for the most basic national dress.<\/p>\n