Skirt

The cotton skirt, an element of the costume of the Dogon women, is a rectangular fabric wrapped around the hips, sometimes additionally tied at the waist with a braided leather belt when doing heavy work.In the Dogon it is the women who process the cotton, clean it and prepare the yarn, while the weaving is the task of the men. The Dogon use a horizontal 2-needle workshop, the construction of which makes it possible to obtain long, narrow strips of fabric which, when sewn together, form the shape of a skirt. Women rarely wear white cotton skirts, most often they dye them blue with indigo (Indigofera tinctoria). The dyeing of garments is done by women belonging to the dyon caste, using the reservoir technique. They tie or stitch pieces of fabric together before dyeing, thus preventing the dye from penetrating and producing white patterns that reflect the blue background. Some skirts are covered with coloured embroidery, but it is quite expensive, so it is usually only for festive outfits. The skirt is the basic clothing of a woman, it is also an element of seduction for men. The Dogon do not appreciate nudity at all, but they admire women who cover their hips and knees - a woman dressed in this way is an object of desire for them. The Dogon often complement their outfit with various ornaments: necklaces, bracelets and earrings. However, they started to cover their breasts only in the seventies of the last century, when the authorities of the Republic of Mali introduced the regulation about the necessity for women to cover the upper half of their bodies, especially when travelling. To this day it is possible to meet Dogon women (especially the older ones) wearing only a skirt on their homestead.

Ewa Prądzyńska