Velvet season

Velvet season (Russian: Бархатный сезон) is a Russian term for one of the most favorable periods for rest and spending time for human in conditions of the subtropics, particularly in the mediterranean climate conditions. During the velvet season weather is not so hot, such as in July, but still quite warm, including at night. In northern latitudes dominated by a temperate climate, an analogue of "velvet season" is Indian summer.

The term appeared in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries in Imperial Russia as a result with the fashion go for a vacation in the Crimea. According to Alexander Levintov, at the beginning of the twentieth century "velvet season" called several spring weeks in April and May, when the court, move along with the royal family from St. Petersburg to the Crimea, succeeds fur clothes on velvet - in Crimea at this time was still coolly. The summer in the Crimea before the revolution called calico season and September called plys season.

Although its origins relate to its noble public, the velvet season came to mean something much more, and can be better defined by the public‘s tastes, behaviors, and morals than any connection to socioeconomic status. By the 1900s, the public of the velvet season came primarily because it was the most fashionable time to come and because everyone was hoping to make acquaintances.

Well-known Russian author Alexander Kuprin, described Velvet season in his 1914 short story "The Wine Barrel" (Винная Бочка):

This is the golden days for Yalta, and, perhaps, for all of the Crimean coast. It lasts not more than a month and usually coincides with the last week of Great Lent, Easter and St. Thomas' Sunday. Some people come to get rid of sad necessity to do visits; others, as a newlywed, making their wedding trip; and the third, the majority, because in Yalta at this time gathers everything noble and rich, it is possible to express themselves with dress and beauty, strike up favorable acquaintances. The nature, of course, noticed by no one. And I must say that Crimea is truly beautiful in this early spring time, all in white and pink frame of blooming apple trees, almonds, pears, peaches and apricots, is not dusty, not malodorous, refreshed by magical sea air.

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