Fashion, Identity, and Culture of Living in Belgrade in the 19th and Early 20th Century: Religious Holidays and Balls

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, religious holidays were an important segment of identity and social life in Belgrade. The celebration of religious holidays was a very important event in the family, so before each holiday the house was thoroughly cleaned, and numerous traditional dishes and cakes were prepared. 

Serbian baptismal glory is one of the elements that are included in the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage today. As a solemn celebration of the patron saint of the family, the celebration, in addition to the religious one, also had a strong social component, which implied the exchange of visits. On days of great celebrations, such as st. Nikola, on the streets of Belgrade, you could see festively dressed married couples, who, on foot or by cab, visited their acquaintances and candlelighters. Men wore a black suit, black coat, hat or top hat, and women wore formal dresses for visits, usually darker colors with some discreet jewelry and a mandatory hat. The drawing of the Austro-Hungarian travel writer Felix Kanitz from 1859 shows the fame of a Belgrade family. Family members, dressed in national costume, are shown welcoming guests in an interior whose appearance is fully harmonized with the cultural model of bourgeois Europe. Although the influence of European fashion has prevailed in Belgrade since the middle of the 19th century, the national costume, as clothing with appropriate symbolism, is still worn at celebrations and other festive occasions.

Christmas Eve, Christmas and Easter were celebrated mostly in the family circle. We only went out of the house to church or to visit the elderly to congratulate them. Lawyer and politician Kosta Hristić notes in his memoirs that on Good Friday, a solemn ceremony of bringing out the shroud is performed in all churches, which is especially solemnly performed in the Cathedral Church. A special place in the children’s calendar of holidays was occupied by Lazarus Saturday or Vrbica, which was also an occasion to buy children new festive clothes for the holiday procession. On that occasion, girls wore silk dresses, hats and lacquered shoes, while boys wore popular sailor suits and sailor caps. Hristić also remembers small ones traders who decorate their windows with whole wreaths of bells for Vrbica, children’s caps, dresses, straw hats, but also those big ones, with fashionable goods in new styles, felt and panama hats, all of the latest form and color.

During the ball season, which lasted from December to the end of March or the beginning of April, a large number of balls were held in Belgrade. Numerous associations appeared as the organizers of the balls, including the Women’s Society, the Belgrade Garrison Officers’ Corps, the Belgrade Singing Society, the Belgrade Shooting Group, the Craftsmen’s Association, the Belgrade Trade Youth and the Belgrade Workers’ Society. Balls were often held in the Građanska kasina, which was founded in 1869 and was located in the Main Bazaar, at the corner of today’s Kralja Petra and Knez Mihailo streets. This institution was of great importance for the development of social life in Belgrade. In addition to balls, concerts, speeches, parties and art exhibitions were held there, while the Građanska kasina reading room had a well-stocked library, and regularly received local and foreign newspapers and magazines.

The most solemn were the court balls attended by high-ranking military figures, politicians, diplomats and distinguished merchants with their families. Kosta Hristić left a written testimony about one of the balls organized by Prince Mihailo and Princess Julija. This ball was attended by guests from all levels of citizenship: merchants in European or “Turkish” suits, women in Serbian suits with tepeluks, puščulas, bajaders and necklaces of pearls and ducats, young women and girls in wide crinolines, but also people in Turkish and Austrian uniforms, such as the city pasha and senior Austrian officers from Zemun and Pancevo.

Court balls were particularly glamorous in the 1980s, during the marriage of King Milan Obrenović and Queen Natalija, as well as during Natalija’s stay in Serbia as Queen Mother in the mid-1990s. At court balls, in addition to the ball toilet, the national costume often appeared as a dress code for women. Special popularity was enjoyed by the so-called costume balls where, instead of ball toilets, various folk costumes and exotic costumes were worn.

Draginja Maskareli
Museum advisor – Art and Fashion Historian

Dictionary of less known terms:

Epitaphios – a religious textile with embroidered or painted images showing the body of Christ immediately after being taken down from the cross

Tepeluk (tr. tepelik) – a shallow women’s cap made of red cloth and decorated with pearl embroidery, worn as a part of Serbian national costume

Bajader – a long and wide patterned silk sash with fringes, worn as a part of Serbian national costume