ABSTRACT

Over the last two decades, women of Turkish or Moroccan descent wearing headscarves, djellabas or other long garments have become a familiar sight on the streets of Amsterdam and other Dutch towns. But the Marken women, who are so proud of their folk attire, their klederdracht, have almost disappeared, even from the streets of Marken, a former island and fishing village twenty kilometres north of Amsterdam. And whereas the women of Turkish or Moroccan origin, despite their non-Western dress, are considered by both scholars and the public at large to epitomise Dutch society with all its social and cultural complexity, the women in Marken attire are usually denied such coevalness. Yet, home dressmaking in Marken was also different from the practices as they have been described for twentieth-century England and America. First, it may well have enhanced the families' creditworthiness, but in a fishing village such as Marken employability was until well in the twentieth century a family affair.