primrose54

first off, let me apologize if this is in the wrong forum; this seemed like the best fit, but if it's not, please move it. :)

I'm an artist working on a degree in visual communications, and as a personal side project, I'm working on traditional dress of the world grouped by region. I have Asia done already,(here-Ethnic Dress Portrait- Eastern by ~Ladyadokenai on deviantART)
and I plan on doing the Middle East, Europe, Africa and the Americas.

The Americas one is why I'm here. I've been doing research the past couple of days on Cherokee regalia specifically, as it seems like they're they largest tribe (nation?) I'd love to do one from every tribe, but that's just not feasible for this idea I have. eventually. :)
I've learned a lot in my research so far, about the tear dress mostly, but I'd really like to know what the everyday dress of the Cherokee looked like before the Europeans came. I've had a hell of a time finding out and I think I'm getting closer, but I figured you might be able to help me much more than Google and Flickr can.

So is there a traditional dress for the Cherokee nation that I should use? What would be best here?

thank you!
-Primrose

steelemagnolia63

what time frame are you looking for??? Before contact and the cleregy decided that we are to immodest for them we wore simple hemp woven wrap skirts and went bare breasted, until winter then we added rather simple tunic styled buckskin top and a cape from animal hides...as did a great many of the woodlands tribes... the top seems to be up to a bit of debate since some say that it was just a cape added and others say that there was the tunic styled top...

The tear dress was found in someone's grandmothers trunk I believe in the late 1960's and did not become the dress of the Cherokees until 1968 or 69... at the time of the removal Empire waisted dresses were the ladies style for that time period...Cherokee ladies clothing is discussed in several threads on this site... along with the fact that the Eastern band is going over to another style of dress....

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neling4

primrose54,

This has been discussed in some detail in the Cloth forum. Here is one thread:

Cherokee style Tear Dress no longer for Eastern band

butterflypulse

I can't vouch for accuracy, but I found this the other day and thought you might be interested in info. It has illustrations of Southeast Region clothing styles from 1830s to 1900. NativeTech: Southeast Region: REGIONAL OVERVIEW OF NATIVE AMERICAN CLOTHING STYLES
No, it's no pre-colonization, but it shows a version of Cherokee dress prior to Tear Dresses,which, as I understand, did not become popular/common, until 1969, when the first official tear dress was made for and worn by Virginia Stroud during her reign in the titled position as "Miss Indian America" (various sources, from account given by Wendell Cochran).

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