SACRED SEMANTICS OF TUVAN TRADITIONAL COSTUME
Authors:   Tuvan State University (Kyzyl, Russian Federation), Mainy Shenne B. , Kukhta Maria S. ,   National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University (Tomsk, Russian Federation)
Published: February 2021

The relevance of the work is due to the need to study the features of the cut and decoration of the Tuvan costume, which are, on the one hand, a bright unique ethnic image, and on the other hand, carry the universal laws of the Universe inherent in the cultures of all the peoples of the Earth. The traditional costume is included in the “cultural core” of the Tuvan people and contributes to the preservation of its national identity. The aim of the work is to study the sacred semantics of a traditional costume. The object of research is the Tuvan folk costume, the subject is the sign-symbolic nature of the traditional Tuvan costume. The study uses a cultural-historical analysis that reveals the specifics of the Tuvan national clothing and its types, as well as the structural-semiotic method, which allows you to explore the features of the symbolic and symbolic nature of national clothing. National clothing is a complex structure that includes numerous types of upper and lower clothes, hats, shoes, jewelry, personal items and hairstyles. Tuvan clothes are classified according to their age and sex and eight traditional types are distinguished: children’s, girls’s suits, boys’s suits, bridesmaids suits, women’s suits, men's suits, and older’s suits. The traditional costume of Tuvans is a ritual object that has rich sacred semantics. The Tuvan costume is considered not only as a thing, but also as a symbolic sacred form, a sign in the context of culture. This semantic status of folk clothes was to be read and understood both by its owner and other members of traditional cultural communities, as a “sign (symbol, code, artistic image), composed of clothing, shoes, accessories, external behaviors, characteristics of the figure and human personality. The costume language is an image of the real world, the accumulated spiritual experience of people, the practical and aesthetic values of previous generations. Each element of the traditional costume had both functional significance and sacred semantics. The forms of cut and elements of the traditional Tuvan costume acquired particular semantic significance and translated the unity of the “earthly” and “sacred” worlds of mythological consciousness. The traditional Tuvan costume as the most important element of the material culture of the Tuvan people is a “mirror of myth”, reflecting various spheres of life, both material and spiritual. The traditional costume captures the diversity of all aspects of human life, the complexity of social relations and human behavior patterns in material embodiment. The entire costume complex is an integral system of ordered and interconnected signs and symbols, through which the accumulation, organization and transfer of cultural experience is carried out. The result of the study is the systematization of the cultural types of costume and the identification of their symbolic sound in a specific material expression (form, cut, decoration elements).