Fashion, handicraft and women between the wars in Turkey :|modernization, nationalism and women’s movement

Abstract

This study looks at women’s fashion-related agenda, tailoring and handicraft works in interwar Turkey. To that end, it revisits the history of the women’s movement and analyzes the activities of four women-run institutions — Women’s Branch of Red Crescent, Organization for the Protection of Ottoman (and) Turkish Women, Turkish Women’s Tailoring School and Turkish Women’s Union. It also focuses on the girls’ institutes as well as tailoring schools and enterprises run by women. It demonstrates that women remained active participants of public life in early republican Turkey thanks to their fashion-related activities, tailoring and handicrafts works. Women in this period not only propagated but also produced domestic clothing. A considerable number of women earned their livings as tailors and embroiderers. The Kemalist regime also encouraged their employment in tailoring-related works. Women who participated in these activities thereby rescued themselves from restriction to their homes and instead made themselves visible in the public sphere. In other words, women's engagement in occupations traditionally associated with womanhood and the domestic sphere brought them the opportunity to join public life. This study argues that women’s activities in interwar Turkey show that the boundaries between public and private sphere were not strict but porous. Women were in turn able to blur these boundaries to their advantage, which increased their opportunities in public life and improved their social status.