While the xhubleta has survived for so long in northern Albania, the relationship women have with it has changed drastically. As time has passed, traditions and society have evolved, been lost, or forgotten. The xhubleta is no longer worn in everyday life, as it once was. Some families were forced to sell xhubleta in order to support themselves (Z. Markaj, personal communication, Nov. 28, 2018), others adapted to new styles of clothing that became available during and after the communist period (Hamza, 2018). The adaptation to new styles was sometimes forced upon women, while others changed by their own free will (A. Vuktilaj, personal communication, Nov. 12, 2018).

Women in northern Albania have repaired, worn, and cared for their xhubleta during the recent turbulent decades. Women still wear the dress in marriage ceremonies; almost every woman interviewed spoke about the xhubleta as a wedding tradition. Many of the women were keen to have this continue through their own daughters. However, some women do not think it is necessary to keep the dress as a part of day to day life. 

“Nowadays everything has changed, and it is a pity to force a girl to wear a xhubleta. They can wear them in different festivals for excitement or to display them somewhere, as a reminder of previous times. Today’s outfits are the simplest way to keep, dress, and create. But then that was the time. … Today’s clothes are lighter, simpler. It has been easier for them.”

– Age, 2018

Pashkë’s wish for the tradition to persist has come to fruition. Her daughter, Lule, wore a xhubleta on her wedding day. The pieces of the xhubleta from Malesi e Madhe were gathered from neighbors for Lule’s wedding. Though Pashkë’s is intact, she worked to collect another for her daughter because the xhubleta from Malesi e Madhe are praised as the most beautiful and most heavily ornamented in Albania. Pashkë has kept the xhubleta she wore during her wedding, refusing to sell it off in pieces. Her son is adamant that she not sell it at all. 

“I can sell it, but I want to sell it all together. The Jacket ‘paraniku’ with gold ribbons and the ‘velodon’ with gold ribbons edhe ‘shtjellakun’.”

“What if we do not allow you to sell it?” [Son interrupts]

“Why does even your son not want you to sell it, is it important to your family?”

“He just wants those clothes at home, he says if I need money he’ll give me money, if I want modern clothes he’ll buy them for me. We want those clothes for memory and tradition.” 

– Pashkë, 2018

Lule no longer has the xhubleta that she wore on her wedding day. She has given her daughters some parts of the dress, continuing to pass it down matrilineally, in a way.

“My mother has embroidered it for me. And when the girls grew up, they liked some pieces in the xhubleta and took some parts of it. Until it was all damaged, and now I do not have it anymore.” 

– Lule, 2018

Other women and their families did not have the opportunity to make this choice. They were forced to sell their dresses in order to support their families financially. In this way, having a xhubleta, especially an original, is a socioeconomic status symbol in itself. Zinë no longer has the xhubleta she was married in. In the aftermath of the communist regime, three years after Zinë’s wedding, her mother had to sell it to make ends meet. Though Zinë is disappointed that she doesn’t have the xhubleta she was married in, she bought an imitation for herself to display at the guesthouse she and her husband run.

“What do you miss about having a [original] xhubleta?”

“All, I see it in my dreams, I dream about it. It was very beautiful.”

– Zinë, 2018

 She hopes to keep the tradition of xhubleta and other costumes alive in her family. 

“Does your girl in Austria [referring to her daughter in college there] want to wear the xhubleta?”

“For that, god, yes I would love that.”

– Zinë, 2018

Zinë has also knitted and imitation of a child’s white xhubleta for her daughter to wear at her son’s wedding and is sewing other traditional costumes for her grandson’s baptism.

Some of the women, especially those that were unable or unwilling to wear the xhubleta suggested that they be preserved by a museum or collector, as they have the tools to care for them properly. However, a number of women forcefully spoke against this idea of taking the xhubleta out of its context. They argued that it couldn’t be fully understood or appreciated from behind glass, without a living, breathing woman giving it life. 

“There is no better dress in this world. In today’s times we do not have any clothes as good as the xhubleta.” 

– Pashkë, 2018