Sarafans are known from Russian written sources since the 14th century. The first mention of them dates back to 1376. The very name of the garment originated from the Iranian words “sarapa” or “sarараi”, which meant “dressed from head to feet.” This was the name of long men’s clothing with sleeves. The sarafan appeared in the women’s wardrobe only in the 15th century.

The style of folk clothing has always been adapted to the peculiarities of everyday life. The clothes had to be light, non-restrictive and at the same time warm enough to protect from the weather. Sewing shirts and sarafans almost did not require the use of scissors, and there was practically no fabric waste. A small number of straight seams shortened the time of making clothes and did not require much skill from the seamstress.

The forms and styles of such clothes have changed from century to century. Among the types of sarafans, researchers of folk costumes distinguish tunic-shaped, slanted open-fronted, straight, sarafans with a bodice and sarafans with a bodice on a yoke.

The sarafan with straps presented in the exhibition was sewn by a craftswoman from the Old Believer village of Mokino in the Minusinsk district of the Yenisei province (currently the Krasnoyarsk Territory) at the end of the 19th century. Mokrina Mikhailovna Sannikova used brown printed satin as the material for the sarafan. The cut is quite simple: these are four straight panels assembled at the top edge. The craftswoman also hemmed the edges of the sarafan and the straps on the inside with satin.

Mokrina Mikhailovna chose a fabric with a pattern of crescents and figures with four prongs. Women wore such sarafans with belts made of silk or cotton fabric. Usually girls wore them on holidays. Russian folk clothing served different purposes, in addition, it was possible to judge a person’s age and marital status by it. As a rule, this was influenced not by the cut and type of clothing, but by its color, the amount of decoration.

Mokrina Mikhailovna Sannikova moved to the village of Novoilinovka in the Far Eastern region in the 1920s. The garment ended up in the collection of the Museum of Local Lore, thanks to one of the old-timers of the village of Novoilinovka, Feodosia Merkuryevna Kukhtina (Sannikova), born in 1924.