Clothing has always been part of a human cultural system functioning to provide utilitarian needs and informational and aesthetic presentation. The series of national-bourgeois revolutions of 1848–1849 essentially influenced the tradition of wearing the folk costume and its components to demonstrate the person’s national identity. From the second half of the XIX century till the early XX century, an adaptation of the items of the traditional garments to personal wardrobes of the Ukrainian intelligentsia persisted. This problem was discussed in studies by O. Matyukhina, S. Yekelchyk, G. Makogin, O. Vilshanska, M. Oliynyk, and others. Nowadays, the Russian military aggression against Ukraine is accompanied by the fakes, generated by the official imperial rhetoric, which denies the existence of Ukrainian identity. So, the scientific studying of the continuity of tradition to express the national identity through the Ukrainian costume is re-actualized. A diffusion of garments with the Ukrainian markers started in the second half of the XIX century. Awareness of the need to manifest Ukrainian identity through clothing with national markers has become a powerful stimulus for adapting folk clothing to the urban cultural system. The illustrations, written and material sources, which prove the new “invented tradition” (according to E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger) of expressing the patriotic position via the costume, are considered in this study. Special attention is paid to the literary narratives of witnesses of historical reality. Memoirs and letters by O. Kosach, M. Starytsky, O. Rusov, V. Lysenko, B. Poznansky, O. Slastion, O. Lototsky, Lesya Ukrainka, I. Antonovych, M. Galagan, M. Livytska, K. Antonovych and others have been processed. The project “Embroidery in the clothes of prominent Ukrainians” is being implemented in Ukraine to reproduce the embroideries from the memorial items owned by the founders of the national culture.