Though the costume is inspired by 19th-century rural Welsh dress, styles ebbed and flowed throughout this period – the Welsh hat, for example, did not arrive until the 1840s – making the costume we know today more an amalgamation of various styles than an accurate depiction of an outfit worn during one particular moment in history.
Additionally, there was also not one singular style of dress throughout Wales, as Michael David Freeman, a former curator of Ceredigion Museum, who also runs a website dedicated to Welsh traditional dress, explains.
'Though most items in the outfit were found across Wales, and further afield, there were regional variations, especially in the gown and bedgown,' says Michael.
'The most distinctive feature of most Welsh costume is that it was made of local wool, rather than cotton,' he adds.
Today, versions of the classic outfit tends to be predominantly red, a colour strongly associated with Wales, due in part to y ddraig goch (the red dragon) that adorns our national flag. However, the 19th-century iterations of the clothing items were more commonly blue, according to contemporary accounts and paintings. The most popular shawls of the time, meanwhile, bore a paisley pattern, which originated from Kashmir in India.
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