When I first got the book The Worldwide History of Dress by Patricia Anawalt, I found a couple of pictures that really struck me as interesting. One was the black and red yelek that I talked about a few posts ago. Another was a potlach dress from the Kwakwaka'wakw tribe of the Pacific Northwest.
Here's a wikipedia article about them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwakwaka%27wakw
(However, as a librarian, I urge you to take anything wikipedia says with a grain of salt.)
The dress is canvas with hand-painted designs. According to the book, those are stylized wolves.
The back is the same as the front. The neck and wrist are edged with grey fox fur. (Recycled from a very old vintage coat that was given to me.) There are abalone shells around the neck. The fringe around the bottom is actually from cotton mop heads!
This is the last of my Costume Con 31 costumes that I'm going to post. I actually wore 1 more - I went as Ada Lovelace to the Friday Night Social. But I neglected to get photos. :-(
(Photo by Don Searle)
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