What's the cultural history of the coined headscarf?
January 24, 2019 6:48 PM   Subscribe

I'm thinking of the headscarf that is stereotypically associated with the Romani people in Halloween costumes, etc, with gold coins dangling down from the edges. Were those actually historically worn by the Romani? And/or where and from what culture(s) do those type of scarves originate?
posted by overglow to Society & Culture (8 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm most familiar with these as hipscarves, worn by modern American bellydancers. According to this source (which cites 'Marvelous Mahmoud Abd el Ghaffar: The Beginning Of Al Wikalah'), they're a modern American invention and seem to have originated in the early days of American bellydancing.

This is pure conjecture, but I suspect that led to them becoming something of a shorthand for (forgive me) "exotic", which is why we now see the motif borrowed for use in Romani caricature costumes.
posted by rhiannonstone at 7:20 PM on January 24, 2019


Here's another source with some stories suggesting the origin of coins on bellydancer scarves.
posted by pinochiette at 7:22 PM on January 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


Also, here's one dancer (Badia Masabni), who was born in 1892 in Lebanon, wearing coins. I think it may not be correct that this is an American invention.
posted by pinochiette at 7:31 PM on January 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


You might get less bellydance-oriented results searching for coins on headdress rather than scarves.

(Many but not all of the results have to do with the Palestinian shatweh, though that may be less scarf-like than you meant.)
posted by trig at 12:07 AM on January 25, 2019


Best answer: It looks like this does have a historical basis. I found a factsheet at the Romani Project.

"Romani culture tends to emphasize the display of wealth and prosperity . . . In most traditional communities, women will tend to wear golden bracelets and necklaces and headscarves are decorated with golden coins."

That specific statement is under "Fashion and Display" on this page.
posted by FencingGal at 7:58 AM on January 25, 2019 [4 favorites]


Yeahh, people are usually wearing bellydance hipscarves as headscarves for their costumes.

If you trawl through historic photographs of Romani--well, it's maddeningly difficult to do this casually without getting a lot of hits for modern costumes, and theatrical portraits and paintings of "g*psy dancers"--but you'll see some women and girls wearing a lot of jewelry and scarves, and others just wearing very modest, heavy-draped, somewhat old-fashioned looking clothing for the time period. And of course, traditions of Romani dress are very different in different countries, even within the same time period. The Holocaust Museum website has a section on the Roma including some photos and footage (content warning on later chapters for, well, Holocaust).

Between historic photos and the popularity of romanticized portraits of Roma performers, you can kind of see how the idea of an exotic East-meets-West "costume" concept developed, which was picked up in popular culture, including cabaret, burlesque, and movies.
posted by desuetude at 8:09 AM on January 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


"Romani culture tends to emphasize the display of wealth and prosperity . . . In most traditional communities, women will tend to wear golden bracelets and necklaces and headscarves are decorated with golden coins."

I am pretty sure - but not 100% sure - that I came across a similar statement in Bury Me Standing. This is the only book on Romani people that I have read and I have this idea in my head that the coins are a demonstration of wealth as stated in that quote, so I'm assuming that's where I got the information.
posted by komara at 8:48 AM on January 25, 2019


Best answer: The women of my family (Kalderash Romani, mostly in what is now Serbia) were doing this for a while before they started coming to the U.S. at the turn of the 20th Century. It was common enough for them that at least the next generation of (largely assimilated) children was still doing it, in one form or another.

It is not just for display of wealth: easily negotiable jewelry is a smart investment when your ancestors tend to get kicked out of places every few years.
posted by Etrigan at 10:54 AM on January 25, 2019 [11 favorites]


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