Is Hungarian culture endangered? – The day of folk clothing

The Day of Folk Clothing has been celebrated on Saturday, April 24th, for seven years now. Its aim is to draw attention to the diversity and beauty of folk costumes and to transform some of the elements and accessories for general, everyday use.

Although the Day of Folk Clothing is not yet an official, Hungarian state-recognised holiday, like, say, Poetry Day or Folk Dance Day, just a cultural celebration, the intention is beautiful and noble – dress in any folk costume for a day and capture it. It is especially difficult to honour a celebration so deeply rooted in sensory experiences in the virtual space, but since the initiative has been in existence for seven years, the organisers also have experience from last year’s quarantine times when the celebration was limited to the online space and only for a few hundred people.

“As a child, I spent a lot of time in my grandmother’s village where even then a picture of a sinking world emerged in front of me. I observed two-window farmhouses with porches in the front and their dwindling hard-working residents living in harmony with the garden and nature who whitewashed the house during spring, brought water from the well, went to mass in folkwear, creased skirts, cultivated the kitchen garden, and did their thing as long as – as they say – their will carried them forward. ”

This was stated by photographer Zsófia Mohos in October 2020 in the Index Large Image section. Even then, it was foreseeable that among the snapshots cast, she saw many older ladies dressed in folk clothing or captured the making of folk costumes.