Snapshot: Azerbaijan — urban dress, the 1920s to the twenty-first century

The Azeri (Azerbaijani ethnicity) aristocracy and the nascent bourgeoisie and intelligentsia gradually introduced elements of Western styles into their dress beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, when the region was still part of the Russian tsarist empire. Europeanized dress was one of the elements within a wider discourse that challenged the old way of life and its long-held traditions and proposed modernization in all the fields of society. A new role for women was on the agenda of secular and religious reformers, including Muslim modernists—Jadidists—who advocated that the revival of Muslim civilization should embrace the emancipation of women. These efforts were immensely helped by the advance of industrialization, which, fueled by the oil boom in Baku at the beginning of the twentieth century, resulted in frequent contact with European culture.

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