A woman in a red brocade zıbın, circa 1625.
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 of their time in the privacy of their homes, often wore the zibin as a top layer, and were frequently drawn dressed that way. Men always wore a formal layer over the informal zıbın in public, so we don’t have any depictions of men in a zıbın alone.
The derivation of the word is the Arabic zabūn زبون from the root zbn, meaning “inner shirt.”