Native American clothing is made of animal skins and the clothing and decoration varies from tribe to tribe.
Breechcloth
Breechcloth is worn by men and is a long rectangular piece of animal skin that is worn between the legs and tucked over a belt. They are also worn by women but not as outerwear. Wearing a breechcloth leaves the legs bare so leggings are worn. The leggings are attached to the same belt as the breechcloth. Native American womens leggings were shorter and not attached to the belt with the breechcloth.
Breechcloth
http://www.native-languages.org/breechcloth.htm
As I said the styles and customs vary but in some tribes women wore a one piece dress. Like the one in the picture.
Moccasins and Mukluk
Most Native Americans wore moccasins, a leather shoe, or mukluk, sturdy leather boots. Again the styles vary but the basic material, leather, is common in all. Some are fringed others are decorated intricately.
Cloaks
Cloaks were worn in colder weather and many of the tribes in the northern parts of America wore fur parkas in the winter.
http://vivifypicture.com/native-american-wedding-dress
After the colonization of North America Native American tribes were pushed out of their land and forced to live more closely to each other. This resulted in many tribes sharing their tribal dress between themselves.
Headresses and fringed garments became more popular in different tribes where they had not originated. Native Americans then started to bring in some more contemporary European styles to their clothing.
Today traditional clothing is only worn to religious ceremonies or other important events. Although items like moccasins are still wor on a daily basis in many tribes.
From this it is clear that the style of dress has to suit where you are living and in the case of the Native Americans it also depends on the materials that were available from the land to make their clothes. Also the fact that they moved closer together meant their clothing was shared and styles were adopted by each tribe.
Sources: http://www.native-languages.org/clothing.htm
http://www.warpaths2peacepipes.com/native-american-clothing/
Ireland
Not much is known about Irish traditional dress but we do know that they wore mainly wool and animal skin. The cloaks they wore were called mantles. They were often made of many scraps of wool sewn together.
Brats were another type of cloak worn. The wealthy wore these cloaks as they were made of different colours of wool and signified wealth. These cloaks signified so much that in Brehon Law it was said that slaves were not allowed to wear cloaks with more than one colour in them.
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/traditional-irish-clothing.html
The léine was worn under the brat. It was a long tunic that went to their knees and was wide in the bottom and got narrow at the top.
The ionar was a pleated jacket worn over the brat, historical sources show that the ionar was very intricately decorated with embroidery.
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/traditional-irish-clothing.html
Women wore léine like the men but as time went on they began wearing long dresses decorated with ribbons. The léine was traditionally yellow as the colour of Ireland was yellow. The Irish used yellow as it was a representation of the sun, the Irish then believed that the sun was a symbol of life.
http://www.potomacleather.com/Lassies-Irish.htm
Traditional Irish clothing is very similar to traditional Scottish clothing. Animal skin and wool had to be worn as it would get very cold in winter. As you can see from the different types if clothing worn, the Irish layered many garments to keep warm. Their clothes also gave a clear representation of their wealth.
Bye :)
Sources: wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_clothing
http://www.mcginleyclan.org/nativeclothing.htm
Sarafan
Russian traditional dress is very modest and are made in a way that makes movement easy for working. The different types of dresses for women and children, called 'sarafan' differ only slightly in decoration. They are often red dresses that touch the ground or hit around the ankle, they have long sleeves.They are made of wool and are embroidered using painted threads. Russian women also wore 'kokoshnik' a head dress.
In the northern areas of Russia the embroidery was very modest and refined, this was in keeping with the architecture there and in the south the embroidery was brightly coloured. This shows how geography effected the style of dress worn by Russian women.
Ushanka
Another common garment worn by Russians in the past is an ushanka. It is a very well known garment world wide. An ushanka is a cape with fur trim, it has earflaps and a leather head covering that is padded. These features of the ushanka protected Russians from the very harsh winters. For example the leather head covering was padded so that if you were to fall on the ice the padding would protect your head. The ear flaps kept them warm as did the fur lining of the cape.
Ushanka Hat Picture owned by Eugene Zelenko
Sources: http://www.rusclothing.com/traditional-russian/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushanka
