Tag Archives: Baluchistan

BALUCHI PASHK (Baluchi Dress)

The origins of Baluchi culture and traditions can be traced back to Mesopotamia, which is widely accepted as the origin of the Baloch people.  Baluch people have preserved their traditional dress with little change over the centuries. The culture and traditions of the Baluch have historically been passed down from mother to daughter, and men from father to son. (Source- Wikipedia)

Baluchi women are recognized by their clothing that comprises traditional motifs and colors. The top/shirt/kameez in baluchi is known as “pashk” and cover their hair with a scarf, called a “sarig” in the local dialect. This pashk is embroidered with sophisticated and colorful threads, beads, small mirrors and needle work. This embroidery is often done on cotton, chiffon or silk fabric. It usually takes 6 to 7 months of hand embroidery whereas the machine work which is quite preferred in cities takes within a month span. The following dress shown is a delicate handmade Baluchi dress, and is quite expensive as compared to a machine made.

Baloch women living in eastern Balochistan, western Balochistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East have been wearing the traditional Balochi pashk, shalwaar andsarig/gushan for hundreds of years.  Baloch women living in Europe, Americas and Africa also proudly wear their traditional dress. (Source- Balochi Jaamag/dress! Description by Walid Garboni)

Shown at right is recently (2012) one of the unstitched machine made dresses that I have surpassed. One can easily find these kinds of dresses around Gulf Bazar at Clifton, Pakistan at a reasonable price. The idea for this is of-course derived and influenced from a Baluchi dress merely lacking a “Pindool” which is a long pocket that lies at the lower middle of the dress. I found many women belonging to different caste and socio-economic class merrily purchasing them.