Today, May 16, 2024, Ukraine celebrates Vyshyvanka Day, a holiday that has become a symbol of national unity and patriotism. Despite the fact that this day has only 18 years of history, it has already become an integral part of the country's cultural calendar and is celebrated by all strata of the population.
On May 16, 2024, Ukraine will once again celebrate Vyshyvanka Day. Now the holiday is especially important, as Russia continues to destroy Ukrainian culture and everything related to it.
When did Vyshyvanka Day arise
In 2006, Lesya Voronyuk, a student of the Faculty of History of Chernivtsi National University, invited her classmates to come to class in embroidered dresses. Teachers joined the initiative, and later the idea spread to other cities. After that, on the third Thursday of May, Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora around the world celebrate Vyshyvanka Day.
This year the holiday falls on May 16. In 2023, Vyshyvanka Day was celebrated on the 18th.
When Ukrainians started to wear vyshyvanka
According to some historians, even in Paleolithic times, people living in Ukraine decorated their clothes with embroidery. Archaeologists discovered the oldest embroidered clothes in Ukraine near the village of Mizyn in Chernihiv Oblast.
Subsequently, excavations of the grave of a noble and wealthy Sarmatian woman were carried out in the Mykolaiv region. Archaeologists managed to unearth a woolen garment, probably a shirt decorated with ancient embroidery, in the burial mound of Sokolov's Grave. This fact proves the importance of embroidered clothes for people, because they were even placed in the grave together with gold.
Also, embroideries were found in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. The clothes were embroidered by the mother of Hetman Mazepa.
As for the motifs, they were mostly geometric patterns and floral ornaments. In particular, such embroidery techniques as straight smooth and "retyaz" (a type of "cross") were used. It was especially popular in the west of Ukraine. The main colors are red and black. Black symbolized grief and sadness, red - joy and love.
As you know, flowers appeared much later than the geometric pattern. They were popularized by the perfume manufacturer "Brokar i K°". His wife, Charlotte Rave, decided to supplement inexpensive cosmetics for the middle class with leaflets with embroidery samples. After that, new at that time motifs were gradually integrated into folk ornaments.
Modern embroidery can boast of a variety of styles, embroidery techniques, colors and creativity. People wear embroidered dresses, corsets, skirts.
For example, in 2022, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, demonstrated an embroidered shirt with tanks. The drawing was created by a craftswoman from Belarus, Rufina Bazlova. The clothes are decorated with stylized images of a man and a woman, as well as a tank and an armored personnel carrier.
The pattern is a charm for embroidery
Embroidered ornaments carried not only aesthetic pleasure, but also an encrypted message, a family code, becoming a person's talisman. A shirt was embroidered for the child from the clothes of her parents, the bride created an embroidered shirt for her lover. Often, the meaning of specific ornaments was lost over the generations, because the craftswomen simply repeated after their grandmothers and great-grandmothers, but no one canceled the magical effect of this.
The part of the clothing that covered the most vulnerable parts of the human body - the throat, the heart - was decorated with a talisman pattern.
How to celebrate Vyshyvanka Day in 2024
Special events for Vyshyvanka Day are not organized, especially in times of continued full-scale war with the Russian Federation and constant danger. People on this day wear their clothes, perhaps from past generations. Ukrainians demonstrate their national clothes on the streets and share patriotic pictures on social networks, keeping the memory of the festive May Day.
