Man's Féssi Cap

The Féssi cap (Fez in Turkish; Tarbush in Arabic) remained popular in Greece throughout the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries– this despite its association with the Ottoman Empire which had ruled Greece from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 until Greek Independence in 1830. Worn at an angle, soft, red versions with black tassels like this example had been part of traditional regional dress in both Attica and the Peloponnese, and at his arrival in newly-independent Greece in 1832, King Otto encouraged such red féssi to be included as part of male courtly garb– a fashion which survived his deposal in 1862. This example is particularly fine with a strand of gold thread twisted through the tassel's black silk.