Age

Age, Vermosh, Interviewed November 12th 2018

Age currently lives with her son and daughter in law at a guest house that they run in Vermosh, near the border of Montenegro. Situated uphill from a riverbed that can fill and cut them off from the road on the other side, their home houses tourists for parts of the year. Outside the house sits a variety of hand tools and machinery, some for crafting tools for making clothing. Upstairs, her daugher in law keeps a room with xhubleta and other traditional clothing on display.

Age wore her first xhubleta when she was seven. At that age, it was obligatory in her area to start wearing a black and white xhubleta, which showed the transition from childhood to girlhood. To her, it was not an unusual or special experience to start wearing her xhubleta, given that it was the commonplace.

With this transition to girlhood, Age remembers she now had to act certain ways and follow a code of conduct dictated by her community. From then on, she wore a xhubleta as her everyday attire, as was normal to do.

“It was my mother that told me that I have to wear xhubleta now and you have to act like a girl not as a child anymore so this is the wearing the xhubleta for the first time was the first process of growing up. It was more or less to give a little bit of authority to the of the costume that I was wearing.” – Age

From age seven until she got married, she owned only two xhubletas. One was for everyday life and work, while the other was reserved for special occasions such as going to church or the bazaar. As she wore these, Age began crafting the five xhubleta she would need for her married life.

She began learning to make her xhubleta when she was nine, working “little by little” with the help of her mother to carry out the entire process. Focusing all of your energy into the work, a xhubleta can be finished in around two months, she says.

On Age’s wedding day, she remembers wearing “the most beautiful xhubleta.” This xhubleta, and all the others she would now wear, would be almost entirely black, differentiating them from those of childhood. Despite the beauty of her wedding dress, she felt no specific feelings toward her dress, it being what everybody always wore for such an occasion.

With only five xhubletas to last a lifetime, these had to be cleaned and maintained. Cleaning was performed with warm, soapy water, and Age had to remove the thin white strip along the bottom of her skirts for cleaning, to keep them from being discolored. At this time in her life, communist clothing began to replace traditional wear in everyday life. As a consequence of this, it was better and easier to throw away a xhubleta than to maintain it.

The xhubleta was heavy, and it was easier to work in the lighter communist clothes. Age and other women chose to stop wearing their xhubletas and adopt these instead. Men, too, stopped wearing their traditional cakcir in favor of communist attire. In reference to Age, it was said that “their pride was with the xhubleta, so when they left the xhubleta they left their pride, too.”

When asked what the men thought of women not wearing the xhubleta, she said they probably were worried about themselves not wearing the cakcir, actually. The last time Age wore a xhubleta was last year, when she demonstrated wearing her xhubleta for a group of journalists working on a documentary. Her one daughter did not wear a xhubleta when she turned seven. Not only were there modern clothes to wear, but the tools required to make a xhubleta were also destroyed under communism. Reflecting on the xhubletas place in present day Albania, Age says she cannot ask girls nowadays to wear the xhubleta. Clothing now is so much more practical, she states that it was different for her because it was the only way of life she new.