A tangent on Breton Costuming

Today I did something very likely ill-advised (*Imperial March plays softly in the background*) and while waiting for the fall out, I decided to do some costuming analysis!

Otakar Lebeda's "Killed by Lightning"

I am fairly sure the costumes from the first painting are from Brittany.

Give me a moment, I can probably tell you where in Brittany.

So the men are wearing Glazik (you can tell this easily, because it literally means “little blue” in Breton) and the woman red. Both of these are specific shades of blue and red and their use in costume has a specific spread in Brittany. (See Pays Glazik.)

You can’t see the woman’s coiffe very well, but you can see the man’s hat and both of those do fit with the costumes from the Quimper region.
For example, here are dancers from Eostiged ar Stangala (Kerfeunten) at the 2014 Cornouailles Festival in Quimper.


Eostiged ar Stangala
Keeping in mind that the painting shows everyday clothes while present day breton clothing is festive/best clothing and that there’s over a century between the two, I’d say I’m pretty close.

The men in the painting are wearing bragou braz, by the way. You can see them in the 1891 “Pardon de Kergoat” painting below, which is roughly the same time period as the Lebeda painting.


Pardon de Kergoat

(I own Yann Guesdon's Costumes de Bretagne which is entirely about folk costumes of Brittany. I haven't had time to read it entirely yet, but it's amazing.)

Breton costumes are very distinctive of the region they come from, because they're very varied. Right next door to the Pays Glazik, you have the Pays Bigouden for example and their costumes look like this: