T he collection of Greek clothing "Victoria G. Karelia" was created by the founding member and for many years the President of the Kalamata Lyceum Club, V. Karelia, initially as a personal collection.
Fruit of the collecting effort of 50 years, granted to the Kalamata Lyceum Club in order to be integrated into an established organization for the protection and promotion of the Greek tradition. Since then, as a sign of recognition and after a unanimous decision of the Board of Directors of the Kalamata Lyceum Club, it bears the name of the collector.
The collection includes complete clothing sets, women's and men's, from all regions of Greece, gold-embroidered linings, excellent examples of the art of terzides, as well as jewelry, which not only meet the needs of complementing and adorning the clothing, but are an independent and important piece of the collection.
The classification of the costumes in the exhibition follows the typological division of the folklorist Aggeliki Hatzimichalis into costumes with seguni, costumes with kavadi and costumes with frock.
On the ground floor, the local costumes are presented with seguni, the investor of the agricultural and livestock world of mainland Greece. On the first floor, the clothing of the nomadic and semi-nomadic populations meets the clothing world of the communities with commercial and craft activities, with local clothing with kavadi and anderi.
On the second floor, the fustani - tsukna, a schematic variation of the Byzantine dalmatian, is found with its Renaissance version, the polyptychs, that is, the dresses of coastal and island regions with commercial contacts with the West.
