The ferace is an unfitted full-length overcoat with loose full-length sleeves. It was extremely popular with both men and women–for women as a modesty covering, and for men as a less stylish, but less expensive and more practical, alternative to the coat with hanging sleeves. In modern scholarship men’s ferace…
The short-sleeved full-length overcoat is worn by a wide variety of people, from court officials to women going to the bath. It’s worn by women as a replacement for the ferace, and may have simply been called a ferace. Based on this, men’s short-sleeved overcoats may have been called feraces…
Both men and women wear hip-length overcoats, usually short-sleeved or sleeveless. In modern scholarship these are usually called yeleks, following the terminology of later centuries. It’s unclear whether the 16th-century Ottoman Turks also called them yeleks, or whether they had other terms that haven’t been identified yet.
The yelek is a hip-length jacket that men wore over their gomlek and zıbın and under their belt and overcoat as a formal layer. It was a less cumbersome, less fabric-intensive, and therefore less high-status replacement for the kaftan. Soldiers, cooks, baristas, porters, and other men who worked with their…
The zıbın was a hip-length jacket that both men and women wore over their gömleks and under their kaftans. It was an informal layer, always covered in public by one of the formal robes (a kaftan for women, and a kaftan, yelek, or knee-length robe for men). Women, who spent most…
The kaftan was a full-length robe with short, long, or extra-long sleeves, worn over the gomlek and zibin and under the belt and overcoat. It was the only formal layer women wore, and the most formal of men’s options–the suit jacket of the Ottoman world.