The First Day of School

In Istanbul in the early 18th century, the colour of your shoes could be a matter of law. Ottoman rules on dress reserved yellow slippers for Muslims, and that detail is how the museum knows the women in this crowd are Turkish. Above the slippers come long coats in blue, rose, green, saffron and red, and above those, white veils wrapped around every face, so that only the colour of a coat tells one woman from the next. A whole party of them has come out behind one mother and her small daughter, who holds her hand. At the left, boys in white turbans gather by the wall with a man holding a sheet of paper. The museum adds that embroidery, sewing and music were the favourite pastimes of Turkish women in well-off households, where the daily housework was left to enslaved servants.