,,Ar iš balos tas gražumas mano prigimimo?” Mintys, kilusios skaitant tradicinei lietuvių valstiečių vyrų aprangai skirtą monografiją

‘Mirror, Mirror on the W all, Who’s the Fairest of them All?’ Thoughts on a Monograph about the Traditional Clothing of Lithuanian Peasant MenThe author of the review discusses the debatable aspects of Vida Kulikauskienė’smonograph ‘Traditional Clothing of Lithuanian Peasant Men’. First, he highlightsthe value of the book. He notes that the book is the result of Kulikauskienė‘s longtermresearch into traditional peasant men’s clothing, and the reconstruction andcreation of the Lithuanian national clothes in relation to it. Ethnographic fieldwork,which began in the 1960s, took place within the context of the preparationof the ‘Historical Ethnographic Atlas of Baltic National Clothes’. Until then, researchinto women’s traditional clothing, which had been carried out for severaldecades, and the well-established picture of their regional sets, contrasted withmen’s clothing as depicted mostly in a variety of fragmentary literary texts.After a few years, the ethnographic information covering the entire territoryof Lithuania began to appear in Kulikauskienė’s articles published in various localmonographs. After supplementing the data gathered during the ethnographicfield-trips with literary material, and researching in museums and archives,Kulikauskienė wrote and sucessfully defended her doctoral dissertation. At thesame time, an introductory text for the ‘Historical Ethnographic Atlas of BalticNational Clothes’ was written, and maps were compiled. The atlas was publishedin Riga in 1985. Before that, Kulikauskienė published a series of articles onclothing, and wrote a manuscript for this monograph. The ethnologists Dr IrmaŠidiškienė and Dr Dalia Bernotaitė-Beliauskienė took the initiative and preparedthe final version of the manuscript, selected illustrations, and wrote footnotesand explanations.