A long shirt - halav was considered as a national costume of Eastern Armenian women (Eastern Armenians wore red shirt. Red color was a talisman, a symbol of femininity, fertility, and Western Armenians preferred white.). Halav had oblique gussets on the sides, wide and straight sleeves with gores and a round neckline with an embroidered slit on the chest. Women wore long pants -pokhan under halav. Lower part of pokhan was made of an expensive, ornamented, embroidered fabric.
Eastern Armenian women wore shoulder dress over the long shirt. That was a long dress like an arkhalukh fastened at the waist and made of cotton, satin or silk, usually blue, green or purple, with an elegant long neck on the chest. Below the hips arkhalukh had side slits turning into three laps - a broad one from behind and two narrow ones, opened in front.
On solemn occasions women wore mintana dress over an arkhalukh. The dress looked like an arkhalukh but without side slits. Like arkhalukh, the edges of dress sleeves (with a cut from elbow to wrist) were sewn with a thin lace. The sleeves were fastened on the slits with silver buttons in the form of beads, and delicate chain with leaves or berries sewn at the wrist instead of buttons (probably, it’s a relic of the magic of fertility) or silver tubes strung on a thread and hanging in the form of triangles.
A silver belt or a silk/wool long scarf was tied around the waist and folded into several layers.
Women's Dress of Western Armenia was not very different in style, but different in detail: shirt was white, embroidery and aprons were widely used. Western Armenians wore antari, zpun over the underwear. It was silk or cotton dress with side slits below the hips. On solemn occasions as well as during the cold season other slitless dress was worn over antari, and edges of the broad arms of antari should be seen under the sleeves. This outerwear of Western Armenians had several names: dzhuppa, khrkha, khatifa, putali.
These types of dresses were almost identical by the cut, but were made from different fabrics. Thus, the everyday dzhuppa was usually made of dark blue cloth, holiday khrkha - from burgundy or purple velvet, khatifa - from the wine red, blue silks, and holiday putali - from color and striped wool fabric.