Dress code

I stare at my ethnic antiques and sigh. I wish my children appreciated the legends and history that they carry. Two of the kids say it’s frightening having the belongings of a dead person whom they didn’t know. That’s their idea of antiques – ghosts and Casper sitting at my dining table, which the maids swear they see.

My favorite antiques are the Maranao majestic rods that swished at a Lanao del Sur sultan’s command or when he stomped it on the ground for an order. I have Patis Tesorio’s stiff, tiny pastel baros now framed. And I value handmade baskets that have run their course through numerous hands and livelihoods, which Dave Baradas owned. I used to go nuts over Terry and Ricky Baylosis’ wooden colored dabakan (giant wooden drums) once found in mosques to call the Muslims to prayer and Henry Beyer’s Bontoc pipes and gong handles I couldn’t resist purchasing.

The patina and inlaid mother-of-pearl, colonial furniture of Paulino Que left us in awe as Omeng Esguerra’s wooden collection. In the long run, it’s better that all those collections remain in private homes so they won’t be ferried away to other countries. There are so many vanishing ancestral items gone to America and Europe.

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Disappeared as well are Parañaque’s piña embroiderers, Maguindanao’s weavers and the filigree jewelers of Ilocos. What is Filipino has become a frustrating exercise to collect and preserve.

Machines, laziness, and lack of interest in what traditionally Filipino, even ignorance of home industries and the lack of patience to work with the hands and eyes, have made the young remiss of what is Filipino. And those apply to Bagobo clothes hanging at Aldovinco Shopping Center. Muslims say they can’t find any abaca-fiber tiny tops and trousers to sell anymore from this ethnic minority that occupy the lower slopes of Mt. Apo in Davao where they migrated from fear of conquerors to preserve their spirit of worship.

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What is actually left to us now may be in Nikki Coseteng’s coffee table book Habi. The photographs by Dick Baldovino and Wig Tysmans are dramatic. You can almost feel the texture of the dyed abaca, your eyes feasting on men wearing close-fitted beaded jackets that extend to the waistline. The tight abaca male trousers with legs that have beaded edges and bells scarcely reaching the knees. I have in a frame a beaded hemp cloth bag with beads, bells, and pompoms once owned by the gentle Datu Oscar Undang, the Bagobo chieftain who wore it across his chest. His head ornaments were flowing thread pompoms that adorned his forehead to his shoulders.

In the ’80s, this tribe adopted me, and I noticed that the men wore two belts, one to hold the trousers and the other to support two knives – one was the fighting knife and the other the working knife. Working knives were meant to be worn daily when they exchanged almaciga (resin), beeswax and the fruit of the lumbang tree, the biao, for fuel, rice, iron beads, shells, hemp, clay pottery, and salted and dried fish.

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Two bolos! The royalty of Sulu wore two bladed krises signifying the male and female kris of gold and silver. One was worn on the left, the other on the right side of his waist. Both of them rest on an Ifugao bed in my living room. I like the contrast between the strong and gentle, the north and south.

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Let me tell you more about these Bagobos. Compared to the northern tribes, the Bagobo women never showed their breasts. They wore attractive cotton jackets with mother-of-pearl sewn over them that had triangle patterns on the shoulders, arms, the neck and wrists.

Like many indigenous women, their arms and ankles were encircled with shells and beads that were exchanged through barter from sea-side dwellers. Brass anklets and bracelets rattled with iron balls inside them. Did they weigh? Yes, they did, and I know this from a pair I bought in the Cotabato market.

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In contrast, the Spanish period in Luzon was indeed romantic, from satin skirts to delicate piña tops.

Compared to mountain dwellers, the Tagalog maidens of Luzon wore a rectangular wraparound skirt, the tapis. More accurately, the women wore two tapis, a white ankle-length one and over it, a shorter colored one made of Chinese cotton called kayo, the Tagalog term for fabric. If it was red, it was called bangkuruhan, named after the bark of the mulberry tree that produced the color red when it was boiled.

The more elegant tapis, called talampakan, ironically is the Tagalog word for the soles of the feet. The most prestigious tapis was of silk and gold called kalumpata. Saya was the loose underskirt. Tops were called baro. The women and men wore the anib, the Tagalog term for a cloak, or the talukbong, a shawl. The uwi was a Tagalog word for a large cloth of several panels used as an undergarment during menstruation.

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The glossary below suggests a considerable clothing consciousness among the Tagalogs.

Basahan were ordinary work clothes. Damit was clothing for either sex. Giliw was a sackcloth or rough clothing. Gimay was labeled so for poor and worn clothes. Halos meant expensive clothes worn only for festive occasions. Sapin meant lining. Takdang was a garment worn below the waist.

To my surprise, upper-class Tagalog males and females fumigated their clothes with incense. Isn’t that sophistication?

The camisa chinos were Chinese-inspired and made from fine, thin fabric from India. The chiefs had the distinction of wearing red chinanas, from the word tinina that meant tina or dyed stuff.

By the end of the sixteenth century, the manner of dressing for men had been affected by foreign influence. Dr. Antonio de Morga in 1603 said Tagalog gentlemen wore Spanish balloon pants (calzones balones) in place of the bahags worn to cover just his privy parts or loose pantaloons.