The national Tuvan outerwear is called ton. It is girded with a belt called a kur.
Clothing was indicative of a person’s social status and age.
Tuvan teenage girls wore a robe (shyva ton) and leather shoes. The robe had no ornaments, except the edgings. The main headdress was a skullcap dovurzak. Girls braided one plait, which was tied up with a “boshkun” ornament, made of three strands of beads. Girls’ jewelry — rings, earrings, bracelets — were not particularly luxurious, but was more ornate and elaborate than those for children.
The cut of the girls’ ton on display is loose, robe-like, open, with a standing collar. The breast part of the left flank has a figured neckline. The collar, figured neckline and sleeves are trimmed with a yellow silk braid. Unlike the women’s robe, the hem of the girls’ robe is not truncated; an additional button with a loop is sewn in the middle of the hem. The robe has a fabric lining sewn to the base with vertical fine stitches.
There was a certain color symbolism in a girl’s costume. The most appropriate colors for teenage girls and young women were “ripening” and “maturing” colors, close to bright colors (blue, green, yellow, orange, pink).
The width of the ton was sometimes determined by the width of the fabric of the time. Therefore, the summer robe of rich girls could be very spacious.
Such robes were tied with a long cloth or silk belt, which had a special meaning in Tuvan culture. The belt and its length symbolized the person’s wealth and social status. The longer the sash, the wealthier the person was considered. However, the length of the sash had to be an odd number of meters — for example, three or five.
There were also strict rules about how to wear the belt properly. The sash was wrapped sunwise, that is clockwise, from the navel area. The tip of the sash was not supposed to dangle. For this reason, the sash wrapped around the waist tightly enough, and when removing it immediately wrapped. It was treated very carefully and usually taken off before going to bed, so in the wrapped form it was put under the head or under a hat.
