Comparing the New LaDS Dress to Traditional Circassian Clothing
In this post I will show the similarities between the new dress and Circassian/North Caucasian traditional clothing. Now I’m not saying that the dress was inspired by North Caucasian culture, but the similarities makes me soooo happy that I had to show everyone.
First of all, who are the Circassians? The Circassians, also known as the Cherkess or the Adyghe are a Northwest Caucasian ethnic group native to Circassia, a region in the North Caucasus. Circassian traditional womens clothing shares a lot of common points with other North Caucasian people’s clothing, like Ossetians, Abkhazians and etc, so the similarities I will mention here are related to them as well, but since I mainly focus on researching Circassian culture I will just call it that. (I might use some Ossetian pictures btw). I should mention that I am only partially Circassian, don’t live in Caucasia, and don’t speak any Adyghe or Russian so my resources are very limited.
Most Recognizable Features
The silhouette: Circassian dresses (Fasha) typically has long skirt down to the shoes, and they emphasize thin waist with a belt usually made of gold or silver. These dresses can be in various colors like red, blue, black etc but I mainly picked white ones to make it easier to see the similarities. Fasha has a variety of different sleeve types, but as MC’s dress has no sleeves I won’t dwell too much on it.
The chest plate: Bghe’wlh consists of a false shirtfront with (usually up to) 12 silver or gilt pairs of plate-like buckles. The chest plate is worn on top of a chemise. I think this part of the LaDS dress was actually inspired by the buckles usually seen on historical European military clothing (I can’t find the specific time and country for that type of clothing but look up Nutcracker toys ig??) but to me, it’s still the biggest part of the dress that gives us the Circassian illusion…
The neck part: As you can see from the picture below, the neck part of the dress is usually connected to the chest plate, or is worn as a separate piece completely. In MC’s dress, though, that part seems to be connected to the cape instead.
The outer coat: The outer coat is called a Tsey. Instead of an outer coat tho, MC has a cape so I will be comparing them. I’m not sure if the Tsey in the picture below belongs to women’s or men’s clothing, but when I saw it I thought the way there were 2 pieces of fabric hanging down from the back was very similar to MC’s dress so I had to use it. And I think the way the coat’s sleeve cut is similar to the cape’s sleeve cut as well.
Patterns and accessories: In love and deepspace, a lot of outfits have patterns based on the game’s lore, like protocore shapes/crystal shapes, stars and other celestial designs. This outfit is the same, especially since it’s the dress of a cosmic empress. I will make another post about the most important symbols used on the outfits some day. But for now, you can see that a lot is similar patterns exist in the pictures I shared. Looks like the protocore shape is a universal design after all, which is beautiful when you think about it. As for accessories, there are Georgian belts in a similar shape to MC’s belt but I guess it could be considered a common design as well. The head accessory MC has in this outfit has nothing in common with Circassian headdresses so I’m not sharing it.
The end✨✨I don’t know if there’ll actually be anyone reading this post but anyways thanks for reading :) At last I must say, if you wear a wedding veil together with the dress, your mc will look like a Circassian princess, so if anyone wants to share pictures I’d love to see them!