Men in Black

Men in the island of Crete have kept the tradition of a total black outfit while the rest people of the country wears black only to show grief for someone who recently died!

Even nowadays, especially older men , wear always black clothes and sariki at the head!

The replacement of the white shirt with black, starts from Sfakia, at the end of the 17th century, when even the curses of the vendettas covered the area and the whole island like a black cloud.  The relatives of the deceased wore a black shirt to show their grief but at the same time, in this way they showed their “promise” of revenge.  When they performed their “obligation” then they took off their black shirt.

However, the black shirt was established as the everyday clothing of the Cretans in 1936, when Eleftherios Venizelos died.

Sariki is a handmade headscarf type symbolizing bravery but also the tears and the mourning of the island’s occupation by the Turks as the tradition says!!