My Fiddler on the Roof director thinks Russian Jews wore barmaid bodices and polyester pants, where do I find research materials for 1905 Russian Jews so I can enlighten him?

Tara , I read and love your page!!! i am the chief designer at a community theatre in the Northwest and we are just now starting the brainstorm process for Fiddler on the Roof; and since you seem to know a good deal more than me about any part of Russian costume history! I was hoping you could tell me where to look for some ideas about what Jewish peasants in 1905 Russia might have worn. i have a general idea but our director is just sure they'll all be wearing bar-wench bodices and JC Penny suits. i can't convince him to let me have the budget necessary to build such a show if i can't show him examples of actual costumes from the period HELP!!! any info would be so well appreciated!!!!! Thank You ---Delia

I'll have to look up some more info to help you with detailed stuff, but I have a great source for the basics, that is sort of a "spare" concept I've always had for that show. Did you know the title of the show is based on a Chagall painting? Chagall, in his early career (READ 1905!) did a whole SERIES of paintings of Jewish characters, villages and ghettos. He was a upper bourgeois Jewish intellectual, very Russianised, and so as an early artist he did this series as a way of "getting in touch with his roots" The roof fiddler is a nifty painting where this huge village fiddler is floating over a miniature village, with his feet on the tiny houses. That painting is where the writers got the title of the musical and the song. It would be completely amazing to an audience to see somebody do the "Sunday in the Park With George" routine with the costumes and sets, with a main rag formed of a painted drop of the fiddler painting, pulling up to reveal cutout houses in his painting style. One could even do the costumes in the cubistic-simplified style he renders Rabbis, villagers, musicians etc. It would spare one making every detail, and would mainly require fabric paint. Go to a library and look up Marc Chagall, and dig through the parts on his early works for material. That is my best advice.

Now for general Russian costume of the time I have lots of resources: "Photographs For The Tsar"," Before the Revolution", and "In the Russian Style" all have good bits, especially the second book. I'll look for more when I can, but the Chagall will do you best for the interim, and may give you design ideas as well as research material. -- ---Tara