Not all peasant shirts are made equal

I spent most of the day in meetings in the city even though it was a big national holiday here today. Helga called me in the afternoon and asked me to pick up her ie, which is the Moldovan/Romanian traditional shirt, that had been delivered from Romania to one of the local shops for her. I didn't have enough time between the meetings to get to the shop on the other side of the city before its closing time, which was early because of the holiday, so I asked one of our volunteers who was hanging out with someone not far from the shop to pick it up / pay for it. I was just going to refund him in the evening when I picked him up to drive us back to the village.

He called me from the shop laughing: "Yeah, I have the box with the shirt but it costs 600 bucks and I don't have 600 bucks even if I give them all of my cash and use all of my balance on the card. It still won't be enough". It turned out to be some hand-made designer modern take on an ie (when I asked him to pick it up I assumed it was just a regular 20 bucks ie). I asked him to give the phone to the shop assistant who turned out to be the owner, she sounded like she knew Helga well and was more than happy to let us take the shirt and pay next week when I will be in the city again. She was super friendly and asked me not to worry about it all.

So this is the 600 bucks Moldovan peasant shirt that Helga will wear to the party we are going to this Sunday (this isn't Helga of course):



I'll also be wearing a traditional shirt but mine is 30 bucks. And mine is a real one and is OTT colourful af as they are supposed to be.