Dress obtained special significance as an expression of Latvian ethnic affiliation in the 1880s. In large measure this was the result of activities organized by members of the Riga Latvian Society (RLS, founded in 1868). The Latvian national-style dress origins and development are rooted in the National Revival and in the cultural events established at this time, first and foremost the Latvian National Song Festival.

The earliest known case (as yet unrelated to a festival setting) when a choir wore special national-style dress was in 1882, when a choir was formed by the first director of the RLS, the musician Jūlijs Purāts (1835–1897), in order to perform in a Russian applied art exhibition in Moscow. The journalist and teacher Juris Kalniņš (1847–1919) described the apparel in the newspaper Balss that year: “For the male singers, national-style dress consists of grey trousers and coats with a wide lapel and multicoloured neckerchiefs; the ladies have a red or blue skirt, a black bodice with white lacing, a white apron and a wreath of flowers.”

A national dress code, by means of which song festival participants demonstrated their sense of Latvian ethnicity, was not in evidence in the festivals of 1873 and 1880, but became pronounced in the preparations for the third National Song Festival of 1888. Among the various views that circulated at the time, the following core concerns can be discerned:

• Rusticism: Latvian-style dress should be taken to mean the dress of country folk, made of homewoven-fabric but tailored in accordance with fashion. The emphasis on rustic homespuns was propounded resolutely by the folklorist-clergyman Ludis (Ludvigs Ernests) Bērziņš (pseudonym: Pabērzis; 1870–1965).
• Traditionalism: the dress should reflect the style worn in earlier generations, 50 years or more back, a point raised by the writer and publisher Pēteris Bērziņš (pseudonym: Rudzišu Pēteris; 1848–1926). Regional variation posed a problem: a reconstituted traditional peasant festive dress should be a unifying, common cultural feature for the entire population. As for the reference period, the dress should set “the free Latvian of the present day” apart from “the time of slavery”, i.e. the period antedating the abolition of serfdom (in 1817 or 1819, depending on the region).
• Collective unity: a new, modern pattern of dress should be developed, with characteristic Latvian-style elements; taking into account the question of cost, this would, so it was hoped, create a unified national style transcending distinctions of social position and wealth.

In order to prepare the re-creation of the ancient festive dress of the Latvian peasantry and the approach favouring the creation of a new, modern national-style dress, a special Dress Commission was established at a meeting of the Riga Latvian Society Song Festival Committee in early 1888. Later that year a drawing of dress designs including a descriptive text was sent out to 124 choirs that had indicated they would be participating in the song festival. It is possible that these drawings were the work of the Latvian ethnographer, folk-dress researcher, and artist Miķelis Skruzītis (Skruzīšu Mikus, 1861–1905), secretary of the Dress Commission, who as part of his ethnographic fieldwork of the 1880s and 1890s had published several drawings of traditional festive dress. These recommended designs, which owed more to artistic vision and to the bourgeois rustic-idyllic imagination than to authentic specimens of festive dress, were only for women’s attire. The male choristers wore their usual festive dress for the song festival, tailored in accordance with contemporary fashion.

That the song festival participants should wear national costume was merely a non-binding recommendation. In addition, the commission advised that the suggested designs were for the benefit of those areas where traditional festive dress was no longer preserved. Choristers from areas where “ancient folk dress” was still alive or in living memory were urged to make use of their local designs and patterns. The recommendations of the Dress Commission were widely adopted (especially in the countryside), as was the idea of national-style dress as a unifying symbol.

Sartorial interest got a fresh impetus in the run-up to the fourth Latvian National Song and Music Festival, held in Jelgava in 1895. Press coverage re-enlivened the discussion on the need and design for a national costume dress; and the Dress Commission of the Fourth Song Festival Committee commenced its activities.

At this time public opinion on the issue had been shaped by the articles of Hermīne Zālīte (née Balode, 1858–1932). Amidst the various press interventions on the topic, her articles, published in the leading periodicals Dienas Lapa, as well as Mājas Viesis and its literary supplement (edited by her husband Pēteris Zālīte), stood out because they advanced a visually detailed proposal, including descriptions and drawings, for a national-style dress. Zālīte’s ideal was a refined, ornate “folk dress” resembling the dress of land-owning squires rather than peasants and inspiring a sense of national pride. Although the design to some extent reflected her personal taste, it also made use of references in Latvian folk song (which, however, she interpreted rather too literally and uncritically). In 1894, without actually indicating that she herself was the author, Zālīte had published a description and drawing of her own version of an “ideal” national-style dress under the title “Latvian national-style dress”, made of velvet, silk, and cambric, with multicoloured silk embroidery.

A different design appeared in the literary supplement of Mājas Viesis in 1895, possibly on the recommendation of the Dress Commission. Unlike Zālīte’s design of 1894, it maintained fidelity to the actual ethnographic material, even though such material was as yet scantily collected and the design also reflected a generally current, Romantic image of the “fair maiden”. As such, the Latvian national-style dress as it came to be adopted in the 1890s had some resemblance to the national dress of other peoples, likewise created under the influence of National Romanticism. And in line with the political movement of the time, it was both Latvian and modern – corresponding to the ideas of Romanticism and cultural nationalism.

A significant change in views on Latvian-style dress was brought about by the First Latvian Ethnographic Exhibition, held in Riga in 1896 in the penumbra of the Tenth All-Russian Archeological Congress. This event was comparable to the First Latvian Song Festival in its significance for the development of a national-cultural awareness. The ethnographic exhibition met with great enthusiasm and interest from non-Latvians, and even more so from Latvians themselves, and marked a significant turning-point in the development of Latvian symbols, including the creation of national-style dress.

Even before the Ethnographic Exhibition, the RLS had amassed a collection of ethnographic artefacts, including traditional folk garments; for lack of suitable museum premises, the collection had remained undisplayed and largely unknown. Further fieldwork was undertaken by the RLS Scientific Commission in preparation for the Ethnographic Exhibition, bringing together an extensive body of material and providing a more thoroughly grounded knowledge of the national cultural heritage, including folk dress. This corpus of objects significantly augmented the collections of the Latvian Museum, and later formed the basis for the State Historical Museum. (The name of this museum has changed repeatedly with the successive regimes of the 20th century; in 1989 it was renamed the Latvian History Museum and since 2005 it has been known as the State Agency National History Museum of Latvia.)

The Latvian Ethnographic Exhibition of 1896 showcased this and other materials, including folk dress. The many mannequins shown in the exhibition, in everyday and festive dress, along with the garments displayed in the showcases, together created a vivid and very real impression of a nationally “Latvian” dress, regardless of regional differences (even a single set of dress could include garments from different regions). Among the various regions, southern Kurzeme became paradigmatic for the new designs of national-style dress presented at the beginning of the 20th century.

By the turn of the century, and in the run-up to the Fifth Song Festival, a new generation of singers was emerging, and artistic fashions and tastes were changing worldwide. Art Nouveau was flourishing in Latvian architecture, and in the applied and visual arts. Accordingly, the previous national-style dress designs no longer fully corresponded to the festival organizers’ conception of how Latvianness should be expressed in dress. In May 1903 the RLS Song Festival Committee set up a new Dress Commission, which included the artists Jūlijs Madernieks (1870–1955) and Janis Rozentāls (1866–1916). The first issue of the magazine Austrums in 1904 included colour drawings of the new dress designs approved by the Dress Commission, by Madernieks. Madernieks used ethnographic material to create a unified Latvian-style dress (again, only for women) in several variants, and generalized to such a degree that it could be worn in all parts of Latvia. The influence of modern art was noticeable in the ornamentation of the garments and the proportions of the silhouette, making the dress serviceable at other public events besides the song festival; it could be adapted to personal taste and changing fashion demands. This “individual” approach to national-style dress remained dominant after the First World War. Maderniek’s national-style dress, with its greater use of local ethnographic material and its emphasis on the modern and the individual, marked a retreat from the previous generation’s reliance on a general Romantic-European template.

As yet, however, the idea of a Latvian national unity, let alone a nation-state, was at best aspirational. The developing national-style dress reflected aspirations, ideals and social values, and the taste of the day, and could therefore be subject to debate. This debate erupted when a very different sartorial code for the Fifth Song Festival was advanced by the artist and ethnographer Rihards Zariņš (1869–1939). In 1904, Zariņš published in Austrums a drawing of his version of Latvian-style dress, designed to give a faithful reflection of the dress preserved in museum collections. The artist was familiar with a very broad range of Latvian ethnographic material, and he depicted authentic garments. However, in presenting how they were worn, he generalized the mode of wearing traditional folk dress in southern Kurzeme. Zariņš roundly criticized the lack of ethnographic fidelity in Maderniek’s designs for the Dress Commission. Indeed, the conflict had wider artistic ramifications. Madernieks and Zariņš had both been active in the Rūķis group of Latvian artists in St Petersburg and had taken opposing sides in the group’s divergent agendas for the future of Latvian art. Madernieks had advocated the modern European art movements of the time, and the idea of fusing them with local ethnographic motifs, while Zariņš shared the view of the Russian peredvižniki that the true sources of artistic progress are to be found in the national cultural heritage as represented by the peasantry. The difference of opinion between Zariņš and Madernieks involved more than just the appearance of national-style dress: it was about the development of Latvian art in a broader sense.