Pauline Oosterhoff
Kledingstorm
Kledingstorm (2024)
As a young girl I found a photo in the drawer of my maternal grandmother, who was born in Yerseke in 1907. It showed her in traditional costume. Zeeland costumes are beautiful, unique Dutch heritage. Making them requires skills built up through years of practice. As a young anthropologist I interviewed my grandmother about the costume, expecting to hear something nostalgic or positive.
That wasn’t what I got. The costumes, she argued, were beautiful, but they kept women and girls weak. Girls could only watch the boys run and play football; they themselves stood on the sidelines in layers of heavy skirts. She had hoped to become a nurse, but without having played sports as a child, she lacked the physical stamina to work night shifts in the hospital. She married and left Zeeland.
I recently returned to Zeeland and, with the help of brilliant local historians, was able to learn a great deal about the South Beveland costume, women and sports in the twenties and thirties. My grandmother's generation exchanged their costume for civilian clothing. Many left Zeeland for a life elsewhere. Just like during the iconoclasm, lace caps, beech, beech cloths and skirts were quickly replaced by civilian clothing. The typical jewellery of the costume, ear irons, blood coral necklaces and hat pins were sold or melted down. Despite the increase in women in sports, women's football remained taboo in the Netherlands for a long time.
To my surprise I heard that Zeeland was the birthplace of the Dutch women's football team. In response I made girls football outfits "football costume" for Yerseke's MO15-1 inspired by the South Beveland costume. Nowadays, women and girls don't have to give up their love for football to celebrate Zeeland and its rich cultural heritage.
Voetbaldracht (2024)
This short documentary shows three different ways, including my own, in which residents of Zeeland and their descendants try to keep their traditional costume alive. In the 1920s, most adults and children wore one of sixteen regional costumes. Zeelanders were known for their lace hats, necklaces of gold and red coral and gold earrings. But only one photo of my grandmother wearing such clothes was left. What happened to these clothes and jewellery? The film is an intimate portrait of how Zeeland women and men deal with family history, balancing between the preservation of ancient cultural heritage, modernity, freedom and fashion.
My Grandma's Kledingstorm

My grandmother (middle) in costume

My grandmother in civilian clothes

My grandmother in training

My grandmother visiting her mother in civilian dress

My grandmother with me
Thanks to: Football club VV Yerseke, Team MO15-1, Susan Bakx Plasmans, Image bankZeeland, Historical Museum De Bevelanden, Costume Group Mooi Zeeland,Polder house in Westkapelle, Nicky den Breejen, Ea Polman, Sanne Bax and BerberSoup farmer from the Textile Workshop of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Annemarie vanFrom the Computer Workshop of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Menno SabelPhotography, PZC Zeeland
Read: Girls VV Yerseke play in 'traditional football costume': 'This is how we give heritage a new meaning'meaning'https://www.pzc.nl/reimerswaal/meiden-vv-yerseke-spelen-in-voetbalklederdracht-zo-geven-we-heritage-a-new-meaning~a919013c/