Every year, on the third Thursday of May, Ukraine and Ukrainians abroad traditionally celebrate the Vyshyvanka Day, an international holiday that aims to preserve ancient folk traditions of creating and wearing ethnic Ukrainian embroidered clothes. Throughout the years, the employees of the Directorate-General for Rendering Services to Diplomatic Missions have participated in the celebration, showcasing their embroidered outfits and traditional adornments with the main message that the strength of the Ukrainian people lies in the embroidery that affirms Ukrainian identity and represents a powerful act of self-identification worldwide.

Ukrainian vyshyvanka is more than simple clothing. It’s a symbolic code that retains the people’s history, faith, and strength. Its origins go back to the earliest times, when our ancestors decorated clothing with sacred ornaments, which eventually evolved into the embroidery we know today. By the 11th century, the Rus state already had the first schools of embroiderers, where girls learned to weave gold and silver threads into embroidery for ceremonial purposes. In different historical periods, a vyshyvanka could be an item of ceremonial clothing, a talisman, or a symbol of resistance which people wore despite prohibitions, risking their freedom.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, vyshyvanka became a tool of cultural self-identification amidst oppression by different empires, earned international recognition, and made it to the shelves of European stores. Yet the true value of this heritage opened up during the years of repression and wars, when people would hide embroidered shirts as their most valuable items, as their memories, roots, and proof of who they were. Now, vyshyvanka is a bridge between generations, a work of art, and the living language of culture, which unites Ukrainians across the whole world. It’s also a fashion element with deep meaning: it’s included in festive attire and event military dress styles, continuing to live on, evolving alongside the country, yet retaining its soul, collective memory, strength, and pride of the Ukrainian people.

Today, everyone who puts on a vyshyvanka demonstrates their love for their homeland and glorifies their culture without using any words. Employees of the GDIP administration, Managing Directorate, Centralised Accounting Department, and the Avtotsentr, Dypservis, Inpredkadry, Media Center, and Rembudekspluatatsiia Directorates eagerly joined this symbolic event. Throughout the day, they demonstrated the wealth of Ukrainian culture through embroidery, representing ornaments from different regions and unique application techniques, shared familial stories about the creation of shirts and dresses with different designs, and also took group photos, which will undoubtedly pass down in history as proof that Ukrainian culture has been and will forever remain a part of this world!