Sorry it took so long to get back to you on this... I was looking for some notes from a Denise Enan workshop where I took sketches of photos of the Kawmiyya version of the banat maazin costume from whom they learnt their style of ghawazi and then adapted to the troupe/stage, and photos of the original mazin cossie... pictures of both will probable be floating around online for 'clearer' inspiration.
The Mazin costume of the short skirt etc was invented by the family more or less recently... the 70's I think and had gradually faded out through the eighties
But I Love It!!! I tell ya, if I had the legs for it and I was making a ghawazi style costume from scratch I would style it around that classic mazin design.
Here is a med list post (snipped) where Morocco of NY details the costume:
"For the entire time that they wore that style of costuming, which
was
*their own idea*, the Banat Maazin made their own skirts, which
consisted
of 4 meters of net fabric, totally had fringed with *several* rows of
bugle
bead fringe, with paillettes at the ends. It was gathered over a
strong,
thin rope at the waist/hip & ended up weighing over 30 pounds, so that
it
had to be worn over a padded "bumper", to prevent it from falling down.
When the 3 older sisters were dancing together, at first the skirts
were
much longer: mid calf length, then they gradually got shorter & shorter
.... 8-)"
and:
"(They) 1) used tulle, which they totally bugle-bead fringed, with paillettes
at
the end, in row upon row, none of which were used in that way before
them.
Paillettes are plastic, made from petro chemicals & did not exist at
the
time, though metal sequints did.
2) needed/ made/ used the padded hip-bumper under their skirts -
otherwise
the sheer weight of the beads would have meant that those skirts hit
the
ground at Mach 5 speed!
3) made/ wore the elaborate "taaj" or "crown", which is supposed to
represent flowers (or so they said), which are not always available
....
(kinda like the colored wool pom-poms on some fellaha scarves, which
are
supposed to represent flowers) & was not Elizabethan .... something
with
which they would have had no acquaintance at all ....
4) wore a short, fitted vest over an opaque, fitted, leotard-like body
suit
(later over a turtle-neck sweater: yuck!)
5) added the base-metal, mass-produced "dowry necklaces" at the bottom
of
the short vest ...."
Linear Mode
