Vyshyvanka Day

A Flash Mob That Became a Fest

Today marks the 20th Vyshyvanka Day — a flash mob during which Ukrainians around the world wear embroidered clothing as a sign of national identity. The idea belongs to Lesia (Oleksandra) Voroniuk at Chernivtsi University, and over two decades this student initiative has grown into an unofficial holiday. Children, adults, and even some dogs proudly wear embroidered patterns. And it is gorgeous.

Endangered Heritage

Ukraine has had — and still has — an incredible wealth of embroidery techniques and styles of embroidered gowns. Blue embroidered shirts from Hadiach, red embroidery from Kyiv and Poltava regions, the bright styles of Hutsulshchyna and Eastern Podillia, the heavy beaded shirts of Bukovyna…

Much of this diversity was lost in the 20th century because of two world wars, repressions, the Holodomor (artificial famine), deportations, forced assimilation, and the destruction of both material heritage and the people who carried those traditions.

Red for Love

Despite the enormous variety of embroidery traditions across Ukraine, the most enduring image of traditional Ukrainian clothing in the 20th century became the white shirt embroidered in red and black cross-stitch.

And the reason is not only the famous song by Oleksandr Bilash based on lyrics by Dmytro Pavlychko. Red dye for threads was relatively easy to obtain from oregano plants or from the kermes insect, unlike, for example, blue dyes. The dominance of cross-stitch embroidery, however, is also partly a story about the spread of visual information and industrial production.

Brocard Roses in Cross-Stitch

At the end of the 19th century, perfumer Heinrich Brocard and his wife Charlotte, owners of the “Brocard & Co.” factory, included small embroidery patterns in hygienic kits — at first just as a package, and later ready-made grid patterns that could easily be transferred onto fabric and quickly embroidered in cross-stitch.

People shared these patterns, copied and adapted them, and visual motifs spread across the country. This is how roses and lilies — previously uncommon in embroidery — found their way onto clothing and ritual towels.

Restoring Heritage

Today, we are working to restore the lost diversity of traditional clothing and to share our visual culture with the world so that Ukrainian heritage becomes recognizable and respected.

The “Spadok” (“Heritage”) project by the Ukrainian Fashion History Institute reconstructs traditional clothing from different regions of Ukraine and demonstrates how these garments were worn.

Projects dedicated to regional shirts — from Pereiaslav, Hadiach, and Borshchiv — bring together artisans and researchers who document stitches, create digital archives, and teach new generations.

Ornek, the embroidered ornament tradition of the Qirimli (Crimean Tatars), is preserved and promoted by the Crimean Tatar public organization Alem.

The volunteer initiative “A Shirt for the Defender” transforms embroidery into a form of moral support and creates a new layer of wartime embroidered clothing.

The NGO Huliaipilski Starozhytnosti (“Huliaipole Antiquities”) evacuates museum artifacts and personal belongings, including traditional chests, while also digitizing family archives.

Tradition Is Trending — Even on Stamps

Interest in traditional clothing is not unique to Ukraine.

Every year on May 17 (Syttende Mai), Norway’s Constitution Day, people across the country wear bunad — traditional regional costume— and today there is a real “bunad boom” among young people. This year, Norway even issued a series of stamps dedicated to this living tradition.

In 2025, Latvijas Pasts also dedicated a stamp series to the folk costumes of the Suiti, Latgalians, and Livonians as a way of representing Latvia’s cultural map through ornament, color, and tailoring traditions.

Back in 2018, Ukrposhta launched the series “Ukrainian Embroidery — The Code of the Nation,” and in addition, we also have the stamp series “Ukrainian Folk Costume.”

Ukrainian Embroidery — The Code of the Nation

The “Ukrainian Embroidery — The Code of the Nation” series includes fragments of embroidery from Cherkasy, Volyn, Bukovyna, Vinnytsia, Kyiv region, Lviv region, Poltava region, Sumy region, Odesa region, and Crimea.

Importantly, the designers use not stylized interpretations but actual artifacts from the Ivan Honchar Museum collection.

In 2020, a stamp featuring embroidery from the Chernihiv region won second place in the “Best Stamp Printed in Offset Technique” category at the Nexofil Award competition in Madrid, Spain.

Stamps are also a kind of meme — units of information, small carriers of cultural memory that travel the world, enter collections, postcards, and albums, and tell stories about us without words.

Send a Postcard with a Stamp!

Visual culture affects. What we see often, we start loving, recognizing, and protecting.

So today is a good day to look more closely at the ornaments of your own region, visit a museum, follow researchers of traditional clothing, share beautiful and thoughtful examples of Ukrainian costume, and support those who preserve material heritage.

And of course, share Ukrainian stamps with friends worldwide— so that Ukrainian “memes” can continue traveling around the world.