In an appearance on Vikerraadio's "Huvitaja" this week, Vihman explained that the initiative was born of the desire to get people to wear authentic Estonian folk accessories more.

"We do a lot of stylizing; there are a lot of stylizations based on woven belts or various patterns and embroidery, for example," she said. "There's nothing wrong with that, it's just I felt like we're overstylizing them, and those pure, authentic accessories are being left unused. But they're actually major design assets, and we should be wearing them together with modern clothing in their authentic form too."

"I started thinking about how to dispel that fear of wearing them and what would be a good day, where people are thinking more about heritage and stories and their roots," Vihman recalled. "And it felt like that day is Midsummer's Eve, which is also maybe festive enough that people won't feel like they're violating the sanctity sort of attached to folk accessories."

Every region in Estonia has its own distinct belt patterns.

"In the old days, they would also vary by farm, and even by weaver," she explained. "And we're used to seeing belts with a single pattern, but sometimes belts will actually even include several patterns; belts with two sides are characteristic of Kihnu, for example."

She added that other such belts can be found on the mainland as well, along with belts incorporating up to seven different patterns.

Every woven belt tells a story with its own symbols, language and code as well.

"It's all gotten a bit lost; their meanings were passed down by mouth," the folk culture expert explained. "We can imagine for ourselves and assign our own meanings to them, and we can guess what they may have signified."

The colors of these belts have changed over time, and for various reasons.

"[The yarn] was originally dyed with plant dyes, and would be combined with colors that would be more vivid and stand out better," Vihman said. "Later, when manufactured, aniline dyes appeared, you can actually see this change in the belts – reds got brighter, purples appeared, bright yellow and greens."

Estonian woven belts are traditionally worn with the woolier side facing out in order to show off their bright colors. She added that these belts used to be long enough to wrap around the wearer's waist three times.

"If you wear it with modern clothes, you can also let the [ends of the] belt hang freely," she noted. "You don't have to wrap it around you."

Wearing these belts together with regular clothes does have its critics, but Vihman noted that most people currently involved in Estonian cultural studies see no reason why they can't be.

"The only thing you have to maintain is respect [for it], that a woven belt isn't placed between dishes on a dining table or dragging along the ground," she emphasized. "That respect must be maintained, but I definitely encourage wearing it with modern clothes too."

Vihman estimates there to be around 100 people who weave these traditional belts. Various belt-weaving courses exist as well, and on the remote island of Kihnu in particular, weavers will often still gather in a circle to weave them together.

If one wants to wear a woven belt together with Estonian folk dress, then the patterns of the belt have to match.

"There's no room for compromise there, but if you wear one with modern clothes, then you can even combine your mother and father's family patterns if you want; you can switch up the colors of the belt or decide totally at random what patterns you like most," she explained.

The originator of the Estonian Belt Day initiative highlighted that traditional woven belts can be worn together with folk dress or paired with anything from jeans to blazers.

"Wearing one paired with a linen dress is already a [modern] classic," she acknowledged, adding that even traditionally, men in Setomaa have worn woven belts as well.

What she did warn against, however, was weaving belts using synthetic materials, from acrylic to mercerized wool yarn.

"It was wool and linen that were the main materials," Vihman noted. "Cotton has been introduced at some point too, but the main thing is that [the material] is natural. Because making it from natural materials shows respect for the belt itself too."

Click here to check out the official Facebook event for this year's Estonian Belt Day and find out more about the initiative.

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