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Tetovo - Culture

Information about the city.

Tetovo is a town lying at the foothills of the Sar Mountains, with an altitude of 468m above sea level. This town has a well-developed textile and clothing industry, and a massive plant for the production of chromium and ferrosilicon. The comparative advantage of the Polog valley have been well used for the development of agriculture, especially market-gardening and fruit growing. More recently, Tetovo has become a centre of private business and trade. Countless small shops have been opened where one can buy almost everything. 
Tetovo is a quaint and a lovely town, whose broad streets twist between ample konaks and green luxuriant gardens irrigated by numerous streams. Everywhere the textures and colours detain the eye: the choppy ripple of russet tiles, the rough flakiness of outer walls topped by peaked roofs and set with grilled apertures and studded door, rutted streets duned with ochreous dust, the scraped pinks and jean blue of house walls and shutters... Tetovo is a tobacco town, and in late summer when the crop is picked the women crouch in rows on the verandas, in the wine-eaved shadows, to grade and string the leaves on wires. Sometimes the whole family gets down to it. As each wire is completed, it is strung in a wooden frame. In August and September the whole town is decorated with garlands of tobacco festooned at he edges of streets, on frames leaning against walls and strung in row upon row, along the sides of houses like the shirred silk curtains of Venetian palaces. 
The Monastery of Lesok with the churches of St. Atanas and of the Holy Virgin, from the 14th century, is situated near Tetovo. In honour of the educator Kiril Pejcinov, this monastery hosts an International Meeting of Literature Translator's. Tetovo is also the host to the Festival of Macedonian Choirs. 
The well-known ski resort of Popova Sapka lies above Tetovo in the Sar Mountains, and is linked to the town by a road and a cable railway. 

Culture...National Dress

Like the other cultural phenomena among our people, the national dresses of Macedonia depend on the varied conditions under which they have been developed, so that : "It is through clothing and jewelry that each social gradation can be traced". . . . In other words we can freely state that clothes and jewelry are a part of the material culture of every human community and their development is conditioned by the general cultural development of the same community.

In order to obtain a clear picture of Macedonian cultural dress as it is today, we shall follow the path of its historical development, beginning from early pre-historic times and going on till today, using in the process various cultural monuments and ancient written documents.

The ancient peoples who lived in the Balkan Peninsula before the coming of the Slavs, that is the Trachians, Illyrians, Greeks and Romans had their own fully developed national dresses which later exerted an influence on the Slavs. If we compare the dress of these ancient peoples with modern Macedonian national dress, by means of various archeological discoveries which have been made in our country, we can come to the conclusion that there are a fair number of similarities between them. If we compare some individual examples, e.g. the clothing of the "Klichevats" idolon ( ) and that at the "Charshiya" site at the foot of Avala ( ), we can see that certain proportions of the dress are almost identical, with the contemporary national dress of the Debar area. 

Immigrating into the Peninsular, the Slavs had as their distinctive mark their own fully developed, but simpler dress which differed from that of the native inhabitants both in cut and several other features, being predominantly white. This dress consisted of "rubina" - smock, girdle, apron - front or front and back, while over this was worn an overdress - the present "klashenik", a bolero and a short jacket. This was the woman's dress, while the men wore the following: "rubina" - smock or shirt, a girdle, "sukman" - a kind of upper garment, "chakshiri" - breeches and gaiters which have been retained till now in the man's dress from Mariovo, a coat with sleeves which was worn either as a shirt or on top of the jacket. Each of theses features has been preserved in the contemporary national dress of Macedonia.

...A consequence of the fact that our country has until recently developed under peculiar social, political, and economic conditions. Our people clung to their dress as they would to the eyes in their head in order not to separate themselves from their clan - their origins - so losing their membership of the ethnic group. Their national dress - as a convenient mark - has been preserved until now and it is a consequence of this that we have such a treasury of folk costumes, about seventy varieties in all, each the essential mark of a separate region. The wearer is recognized at once as belonging to a certain place, even a distinct family. There is rarely such a wealth of costume over such a small area and every part has contributed a number of variations as its distinctive mark. The men and women had their clan marks woven or embroidered onto their materials, their satchels, aprons and carpets. This is the origin of the opinion that this dress is a significant clan sign which has been guarded as something holly until nowadays. Few, if any, of our older people want to be cut off from their dress so even the young bride was conditioned to her wedding dress. No bride was ever taken to another district with a different costume, no matter how good or wise the girl was. The Brsyak wouldn't marry the Miyach women and vice versa, and they used to say: " I would not take a bear for wife." When this did happen, the young bride was compelled to change her dress and to accommodate to her new milieu.

Although there is such a variety of costume in Macedonia. we can still distinguish among them all something which is purely Macedonian, but which is not noticeable at first sight. This is the white color, the cut of the dress and the rich decoration of embroidery mostly executed in red and black with various trimmings: "bikminya"-twined thread, "shiriti"-ribbons, "gaytani"-braids, "monistra"-beads, "kitki"-bobbles and tassels, etc. which give our national costume, and the women's costume in particular, and especially rich, decorative, and noble appearance. Although the men's national dress in Macedonia is simpler and less elaborated, white was worn everywhere until the First World War. All the clothes were made from hand-woven linen and wool, light or dark, depending on the natural color of the wool.

Today there are about seventy different national dresses which have survived in some of which the peculiar features appropriate to individual areas can be distinguished.

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