[in progress]
Colors
The color of the gömlek varied significantly by time and place. In the 15th century, high-end gömleks could be colored red, yellow, or blue, an extravagance that at least one moralist inveighed against.
The tradition continued into the earliest court records I have access to, from Istanbul’s semi-rural neighbor, Üsküdar, in 1513 to 1583. The Üsküdar estate inventories listed eight blue (gök) gömleks, which belonged to both sexes and had no fabric descriptor. There were also three red vale silk gömleks and one red “bez” (generic cotton or linen cloth) gömlek, all owned by women, and one yellow vale silk gömlek, also owned by a woman.1 Women owned the lion’s share of the silk gömleks because Islam permitted women, but not men, to wear silk; men got around the rule by not wearing silk next to their skin. Women also owned all the red and yellow gömleks. Let’s look closer at the blue gömleks, which were owned by both sexes and which didn’t rate a description of their fabric.
Blue wasn’t a prestigious color in 16th-century Üsküdar. In fact, it was so cheap that quite a few escaped slaves were dressed entirely in blue. Indigo is one of the hardest-wearing natural dyes, lightfast and colorfast without a mordant, producing excellent color on cotton, wool, silk, and even linen, which laughs at almost every other natural dye; and it comes from a fast-growing plant that takes so well to warm climates that it’s one step short of being a weed. In short, indigo is guaranteed to slide to the bottom of any textile economy. And in Üsküdar, a small but noteworthy number of people, both men and women, wore cotton or linen gömleks dyed blue. It’s possible that blue dye was one way to salvage a stained gömlek. It’s also possible that blue gömleks were the last and strongest remnant of a tradition of colored gömleks.
In the next set of court records, from wealthy late 16th/early 17th-century Galata, that tradition is gone. Gömleks were white. Period. There was a single exception, a man from the 1573-1591 record who owned a blue gömlek; apart from his gömlek, even the fancy embroidered gömleks owned by the wealthiest ladies were described without mentioning a color.
Fabrics
The ideal gömlek was almost transparent. In the absence of such perfection, wealthy people used the lightest fabrics they could: the superfine cotton batiste called destâr; tafta (taffeta) silk; and tafta’s cousin, vâle silk. Although bürüncek, a silk or silk/cotton gauze, doesn’t appear in the estate records, it was considered uniquely suited to making gömleks; in the market price listings (narh defteri), it was even listed as being sold by the gömleklik, “enough fabric to make a gömlek.”
To see an example of the gauzes available for gömleks, examine the closeups of a 14th-century Persian pirihan. Wrong country, wrong century, but the same technology was available to 16th-century Turks.
Cotton, linen, silk, and blends of those three fibers. No direct evidence of wool, although wool winter gömleks are attested in other sources.
The specific fabrics varied by location. In Uskudar, estate records mentioned alaca, bez (generic cotton or linen cloth), and vale silk; in Galata, records mentioned only tafta silk.
Recreating the Gömlek
Finding a Pattern
Because of the aforementioned uncertainty about how gömleks were made, you have plenty of latitude in choosing a pattern. All of these patterns will produce a garment with the right profile:
The 14th-century long pirâhân pattern is accurate to 14th-century Persia, but makes a comfortable and plausible gömlek.
Colors
For the first three quarters of the 16th century,
Fabrics
Any light cotton or silk is suitable. Plain-weave is best, but wide, irregular stripes of satin weave on a gauze ground would imitate bürüncek nicely. No dots, fine lines, seersucker, crinkle gauze, or other textures.
Batiste is my personal favorite. It’s light, it’s soft, it has a beautiful drape, and it’s just sturdy enough to withstand machine washing. Voile, which is like batiste but has a crisper hand, would be equally good. When you go shopping, check all labels–the market is flooded with polyester batistes, which look lovely and will turn your garb into your own personal sauna.
Çakşır | Trousers Zıbın | Short underjacket
Detour: The Cut of Extant Gömleks