Zıbın | Short underjacket

[in progress]

The zıbın was a hip-length jacket that both men and women wore over their gömleks and under their kaftans. (It’s sometimes referred to mistakenly as a hırka.) If you think of Ottoman Turkish clothing as a pantsuit, the zıbın is the shirt.

The sexes put different emphasis on their zıbıns. Men spent much of their time in public, dressed formally, so their zıbıns were less important than their kaftans; but women spent most of their day in the privacy of their home, dressed informally, with their zıbıns on display. Women still spent more money on their kaftans than on their zıbıns, but by the early 17th century, men’s zıbıns were largely a functional underlayer, while women like the richly dressed lady to the right continued to wear zıbıns made of brocade and fine silk.

Before we go any farther: /zɯ bɯn/. The dotless ı is a sound similar to a schwa, but where the schwa is a sort of blurry, super-neutral AH, the ı is more of an UH or an OO. Hear it pronounced by Google Translate.

Cut

Zıbıns were cut exactly like short kaftans. If you have a kaftan pattern you like, just shorten it to crotch-length, and you’re done. I also reduce the size of the hip gores, but that’s not necessary, as a comically proportioned extant zıbın shows.

Length

Crotch-length, not knee-length! It’s tempting to make the zıbın longer–it suits our sense of how long a “tunic” layer should be–but both period pictures by Turkish artists and garment measurements from the 1624 market regulations confirm that the zıbın was a short, short garment.

(16th-century European artists do draw knee-length zıbıns. They also draw hats much larger than Turkish artists do. What does this mean? I’m not sure, but I recommend copying the Turks, not the Europeans.)

Sleeves

Long, short, or sleeveless. Sleeveless zıbıns don’t appear to have any shaping around the armhole.

Collar

Collarless or with a short band collar.

Lining and Facing

Zıbıns were lined (or unlined) and faced exactly like kaftans, with one exception: They weren’t lined with fur. They could be quilted, like one extant zıbın; the zıbın was a warmth layer as well as a fashion layer. But fur was too expensive to waste on a garment that was covered up with a kaftan the moment you stepped out of the house.¹

Miscellaneous

Pockets

No pockets! To the best of my knowledge, extant zıbıns are pocketless, and too short to have decently sized pockets in any case. That said, museum catalogs usually don’t mention pockets even when they describe, say, kaftans that we know from other sources do have pockets, so it’s not implausible that extant zıbıns are pocketed and catalog writers are holding out on us.

Side Slits

All types of robes have short “walking slits” in the side seams, even when the garment is too short for movement to be an issue. I haven’t found any measurements for the side slits of zıbıns, but they’re probably a few inches long at most.

Color and Fabric

Zıbıns can be made in any attractive color. Because the zıbın was an informal garment, women tended not to make them in drab, serious colors like dark purple and black, which were considered better suited to overcoats and men’s working clothes. (But see the lady at the top of the page. Black was considered an ideal color to make goldwork pop.)

Any fabric that’s sturdy enough to be worn as a main layer can be used to make a zıbın. The estate records document zıbıns made of satin, watered silk, and the full line of brocades and velvets available to wealthy Istanbulites, as well as the colorful silk-and-cotton blends known as kutni and alaca, the polished cotton twill called bogası, and the occasional reference to generic plain-weave cotton or linen cloth (bez). One man had a zıbın of velense, wool blanketing.² In the agricultural district near Istanbul, men wore even sturdier fabrics: wool broadcloth, coarse aba wool, and the humblest fabric of all, felt.

  Gömlek | Shift Kaftan | Long formal robe 
Detour:  The Perplexing and Obnoxious History of the Zıbın 

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1. Even the sultan himself didn’t have a single fur-lined zıbın.
2. Recycling a worn-out blanket as clothing was a mark of dire poverty.