Looking Back
Clothes for Philippine weather
By Ambeth Ocampo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 23:52:00 05/06/2008
Filed Under: Human Interest, Clothing, history
People who complain about the summer heat in the Philippines are barking up the wrong tree. The real culprit is the humidity that makes us sweat like hogs and makes us doubly miserable. In other places where the air is dry, summer heat is just hot, not muggy.
Summers bring out the shorts and slippers. They should also make us look back and perhaps rethink the way we dress in the tropics. Hats are most practical in the Philippines, so how come we don’t use them? Umbrellas made of waterproof material are for rain, parasols are for the sun, so how come we don’t use those of lighter weight and color as much as we should? Why is the barong considered formal or office wear when it should be used more often?
A friend gifted me recently with a very stylish “guayabera,” the Cuban shirt made iconic by Ernest Hemingway. It resembles a polo barong, except that it has four pockets in front and is pleated front and back. One could say it is a cross between the bush jacket and the barong. I should wear it as often as I enjoy Mojitos, but the only people I have seen sporting these sensible shirts are much older than me, like the Cuban ambassador to Manila.
I was told that the guayabera was designed with all those pockets so Cubans could fill them with guavas or bayabas, though hybrid “guapple” from Bangkok won’t fit in these pockets. The Philippines and Filipinos should actually take credit for the guayabera because it was based on the barong Tagalog that people from the Philippines wore on those galleons that traveled with luxury goods and spices to Mexico from the 16th to the 18th centuries. However, claiming the origin of the Cuban guayabera is not half as important as demolishing the urban legend concerning the barong.
It is widely believed, without any historical source or documentation, that the barong Tagalogas we know it was a sign of colonial servitude. We have been taught: that the barong was made of light, see-through fabric so that the “indio” [native] could not conceal deadly weapons to be used against paranoid Spaniards; that the barong was designed without pockets so that the indio could not steal anything from the Spaniards; that it was worn outside the pants, not tucked in, so the poor indio could be ridiculed by the Spaniards who tucked their shirts in.
Nothing can be farther from the truth. This is yet another example of the continuing demonization of Spain, Spaniards and the Spanish period in our history. “Leyenda negra” [black legend], indeed. Common sense, which unfortunately is not common in this part of the world, would tell us that the barong is made of light material and is worn not tucked because that is the most practical way to deal with the tropical heat and humidity.
My search for the alleged decree forbidding Filipinos from tucking in their shirts was fruitless. My search for any citation or reference to the use of lightweight material to expose hidden weapons was also in vain.
If there is no documentation for this urban legend, why does it persist? I would think that from childhood we have been educated to see Spain and the Spanish period as the Dark Ages compared with the progress brought by the Americans. Spain was medieval and evil, the United States modern and enlightened.
Rereading the highly detailed and informative two-volume work “Les Philippines” by Jean Mallat, originally published in Paris in 1846, I came across the following:
“The costume of men is almost the same in the whole archipelago, except for several slight modifications in certain provinces; we will describe only that of the Tagalogs: pants called jareta, because of the way they are made, out of silk cloth or cotton which is very often striped, held at the waist either by a hem slipped through a sheath wrapped around the top, or a belt or a simple kerchief knotted around the body, the folds forming the pockets; a plain or embroidered shirt made of cotton, “sinamay” fiber or piña cloth, very well starched, reaching down to four fingers below the knee and always worn outside the pants; a European hat, often made of bamboo or rattan; sometimes a “salacot” [wide-rimmed native head cover] or hat in the style of the country, or a kerchief knotted around the temples and casually pleated in different ways; a rosary made of coral and gold, with a gold medal at the neck; finally a scapular hung on the chest, such is the most common costume among indios.
“One would say that when these peoples adopted European costume for the first time, they started by replacing the bark with which they covered their private parts with the pants, and it was only later that they took the shirt, which they did not bother to tuck into the pants, thinking that it was just as rational to leave it outside; since then everything has remained in that state.”
There are many other travel accounts that describe the clothing of the Filipinos in the past. Nowhere have I seen any reference to the Spaniards forbidding indios to tuck in their pants. Mallat even comes with a rare third volume of illustrations that show readers what was worn in the Philippines in the age before photography. We also have a number of albums made by Filipino artists that document clothing in vivid colors. These costume albums were brought back to Europe as curious souvenirs and some of them have been recently repatriated, thus enriching our visual knowledge of the past.
Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu.
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