Posavina, the Sava River valley, is the area along the right shore of the River Sava, from Bosanska Gradiška to Brčko.
The folk costume of the Croats in Posavina developed since the second half of the 19th century in close relation with neighbouring regions, and was particularla under the influence of Croatian Posavina and Slavonia. It goes as far as calling the inhabitants of the villages down the river Bosna in the neighbourhood of the Bosanski Šamac Šokac, which is the name given to the inhabitants of Baranya. It can be classified into two groups: the folk costumes of the ‘real’ Posavina and the ones from the upper regions, called Gornjaci. The basic part of the men’s and women’s folk costume is the shirt called rubina. This is an Old Slavonic term that is still used in Slavonia.
The women’s skirt has soft, dense folds round the neck that fall radially to the shoulders, back and breast and backwards. The sleeves on the shirt are wide and free at the beginning then are gathered round the wrist in tiny folds. There is embroidery on the sleeves, along the length of the sleeve and along the skirt at the back and all round the length of the hem. The shirt is also embroidered in front, on the breast. The sleeves are not sewn on but they start at the neck and go down to the end of the arm, in the raglan cut. What makes the men’s shirt, rubina, characteristic is the fact that the shirt is worn above the wide pants, gaće, reaching down to the knee and it is similar in cut to the women’s shirt. The pants are wide and, depending on the region, more or less richly decorated along the lower hem, like shirt. A part of this costume is a lambskin vest, kožuh, with applications of multicoloured leather decorations and tiny mirrors. The motives are of herbal pattern. The women’s costume also has diagonally woven aprons with long tresses, laced on the bottom with the shedding technique. Unmarried women have an embroidered small cap, počelica, on their heads, characteristic of all the costumes of Croatian Posavina. They also wear hoops of different shapes on their heads, as pads for the head covering.
The cover for head is in the lengthened shape of a longer cloth, like a towel and is called krpa, a cloth. In the case of young girls this is called krpica (small cloth) or the local word jagluk, covering only the crown of the head, while the tresses fall down over the forehead. The remaining part fall down the back with its total length. There was a decoration tucked behind the ear, made of multicoloured wool shaped into tiny balls, like a flower. A specially interesting feature in the region are the costume parts worn on the heads of the married women as well as the way of doing their hair in plaits in the case of young unmarried girls. Both men and women wear low leather footwear known as opanak. The stockings are decorated by tiny white beads that can also be found on the cufflinks. For all the home-woven linen for shirts, pants and head coverings there is a characteristic feature called jumačenje, executed in cotton and silk, an embroidery made in the shedding technique. The clothes were dyes with laundress’ blue or copper vitriol and were either blue or greenish. Flax, hemp, wool and cotton were used for the manufacturing clothes.
