ABOUT POSSIBILITIES OF A CONTEMPORARY USE OF THE FOLKLORE COSTUME

Prompted by the M. Gušić\u27s article: »We had you, we did not know you . . .« (Narodna umjetnost, No. 2) the author underlines two basic thoughts: 1) the problem and the way of handling our folklore, because this question is often solved by inexpert on the base of »sentimentality and pseudopatriotic amateurism«. 2) to know how to understand that the new life brings new habits with, but to know also to preserve the picture of the antique life as a document and a value of the past. Today, when it is required that the folklore should be engaged for and that it should be used in tourist trade too, it is necessary to adapt correctly this kind of our cultural values. So, for instance, at Dubrovnik, a well known touristic center, the tourist experts try in every possible way to make a good use of the national garb of a region near Dubrovnik, Konavle. Here we have up to this day preserved garb in a somewhat simpler form. Organizers in travel agencies endeavour to exhibit Konavle\u27s garb either at the town or in other places, as for instance, at the Dubrovnik airport. During the tourist season the girls from the town wear Konavle\u27s garb at Dubrovnik itself, and the stewardesses meet the travellers at the airport dressed in this picturesque clothing. Such displays of national garb were accepted with enthusiasm, though these costumes had not a such stylistic integrity as they should have. Because of the great interest for this national costume, the organizers of tourist agencies organize trips on Sundays to the villages of Konavle, where Konavle\u27s women put on their ceremonious garments. In a brief account the author gives a description of the antique garb of Konavle comparing it with the present one and giving standard terminology of the single parts of the garb. She states the cultural influences, which can be traced in this garment. So, we can detect in the male and the female garb elements of the Dinara area, which yield the ground to the influences from the nearby Dubrovnik. The beauty and the nobleness of the Konavle\u27s garb originate from the mixture of the both cultures. As national garb inevitably vanishes under the pressure of the modern way of life, the question is how to keep permanently alive our cultural inheritance and how to present it to the public. The author solves it in this way: 1) to complete ethnographic researches and, conformably to the possibilities, to acquire by purchase all still existing ethnographic objects for the museums. This was a standing practice of the Ethnographic museum at Zagreb, which recently made purchases in many Yugoslav regions, specially in Konavle, where are bought all of the oldest specimens of national garb and so on till the new ones. They bought the objects from the other fields of material culture too. 2) for the sake of actual problems of presenting our national garb it would be necessary to effectuate the closest cooperation between the organizers of tourist activities and the professional institutions and associations, and, in the first place, the ethnologists and folklorists. In many areas the last forms of national garb have disapeared, so it will be necessary, in the future, to make reconstructions based on materials depened in the museums. Except the cooperation in the selecting and the reconstructing of costumes, the ethnologists and folklorists could help also in searching of localities for tourist excursions as well as in selecting the designs and genuine objects for souvenirs etc. A solution of these both problems should considerably contribute to the harmonious realization of a form of the preservation our cultural inheritance and to the prolific application of folklore elements in present time life