The barong Tagalog has had a long life, and though some may remark that it bears a striking resemblance to the "Mexican wedding shirt" also known as guayabera (said to be Cuban in origin), others would insist that its true precursor is the pre-colonial (ergo, pre-galleon trade) "baro ng Tagalog" (clothing of the Tagalog) called canga. Few, however, would say that the traditional Filipino dress shirt has become passé.
The seminal canga was a collarless, open-front sleeve-doublet of rough cotton in red (for the chief and his braves), white, or black (and sometimes blue) that modestly fell a little below the waist during a time when pants weren't a sartorial staple. Inevitably, Chinese and Hindu influences were added-on (including embroidery), and when the Spanish reached these shores, the European dress shirt became a model for ornamentation.
In the 1700s, the collar became a fixture. In the 1800s, the Spanish educational system had trained the female populace in the art of embroidery and lace-making, and so the pechera and all-over calado became perennial design elements, to the gratification of the French and Belgian nuns. Styles shifted, and one moment fashionable men wore a kerchief called the putong in place of the cravat, the next they've revived the neckpiece as a narrow black tie, and then it became dashing to come baro cerrada or bare-necked.
There is some debate whether the barong Tagalog was imposed on the Filipino to delineate the inferiority of the indio and the superiority of the Spanish colonizers - being limited to indigenous textiles like piña and jusi (a blend of pineapple and raw silk) and banned from imported materials, the transparency ensuring that no weaponry could be concealed, and the manner of wearing the barong loose and untucked supposedly meant to put the wearer in his place, never mind that doing so guaranteed comfort and better displayed the stiffly embroidered designs.
The newest word on the debate is the book "Garment of Honor, Garment of Identity," published by EN Barong Filipino, producer of barong Tagalog since 1961. The new book is authored by two professors at the College of Fine Arts of the University of the Philippines, Ma. Corazon Alejo-Hila and Mitzi Marie Aguilar-Reyes, alongside editor Anita Feleo, with layout design by Felix Mago [Miguel] and photography by Neil Oshima.
On the one hand, the intent of the book is to document the painstaking process behind the production of a single garment (e.g. a barong made from piña and embellished with full hand embroidery takes 462 days to create), and thereby pay tribute to the unsung heroes behind the industry, from the planters to the weavers to the bordaderas or embroiderers—some of whom, according to the authors, passed away during the making of the book. On the other hand, and based on the title alone, the new book is meant to underline the symbolism of the barong Tagalog and establish the Filipinos' total ownership of the garment.
"The barong is ours. It was not forced on us… In the first place, the material is truly ours and the embroidery, though it would seem to have [come] from the Chinese [and] from the earlier Spaniards who came over, we made it our own," Barong Filipino President Emil Nadres, son of founder Felicidad Eguia Nadres, told BusinessWorld during the book launch last December.
"Some [people] are injecting a more modern look to it because younger people tend to want something different… We've done it in hot pink, bright orange, violet… There are styles of barong that are for women… But then again, the traditional style never loses its appeal," he added.
Traditional vs. trendy
"Traditional" can be traced to the 1920s barong (then made of abaca) in natural beige or ecru with plain collar and pleated back worn over a camisa de chino (collarless shirt),
while "trendy" has run the gamut from the Commonwealth barong Tagalog with a
Tydings McDuffie motif (crisscrossed Commonwealth flag and U.S. flag, embroidered all over) worn by former president Manuel L. Quezon, the American pilgrims and Indians motif during the American Period, or the post-war era barong with the inner pocket on the left side and Philippine tableaus (folk games, nipa hut, carabao and plough, flora and fauna)
as embellishments, some of which were worn and popularized by former president Ramon Magsaysay in the 1950s.
Various designers have made their mark on the barong, whether it was to add a Chinese collar, make the fit narrower, change the sleeve lengths (most notably in the short-sleeved 1960s polo barong now considered office wear), or play with embroidery motifs (the book
has a chapter on this topic alone, itemizing such popular patterns as the kadena or chain outline, the romantic pinuso or heart-shaped petal or leaf, and the sulsing abot-abot or running stitch).
The newest innovation, care of EN Barong Filipino, is the so-called pintados barong, designed by artist Roberto Feleo from tattoos of the indigenous Filipino tribes of the Cordilleras and Panay (the moniker pintados was given to the tattooed denizens of the Visayas, dubbed Islas de los Pintados or Island of the Painted Ones, by the early Spaniards).
"Basically an interest in Philippine art history led to the exposure to native tattoo" led to the use of the tattoo designs— based on the Boxer Codex, a book of drawings of Filipinos in native dress dating back to the 1590s—found in the pintados barong. These range from tattoos from the Cordilleras (which served as a form of hunter's uniform that recorded his kills), and to the Panay-anon designs (from Iloilo, Bacolod, Aklan). "In the Visayas, what you have would be [tattoos as] a celebration of trying to please God," Mr. Feleo told BusinessWorld, indicating that such designs are part of Philippine heritage.
Nowadays, a man needn't subject himself to the application of soot and sugarcane juice (or failing that, lard, gall or chicken excrement) and repeated punctures from needles embedded in a bamboo stick or carabao horn (90 to 120 taps a minute on average) to get a Bontoc chaklag, the warrior tattoo running from each nipple and curving out into the shoulders and upper arms, one for each head brought back from battle. He can just don the pintados barong.
While tattoos mark the courage, rank or tribal seniority an strength of warriors, they also served as beauty enhancements for both men and women, and some designs were actually lifted from woven materials. This time the process is reversed, with the tattoos being embroidered on the textile. Whether or not the tribes would object to this stylized tribute is a matter of debate.
"It's our own adaptation; it's definitely, exclusively ours. The design was taken from the tattoos of the warriors from way back, and then we translated it into the barong. We're here not to denigrate the tribes who own these designs but actually to enhance awareness. We're actually putting them up on a pedestal. We're making people more aware of what we have here," assured Mr. Nadres.
A network of producers span Bacolod, Iloilo, Aklan, Dumaguete, Palawan, Batangas and Laguna. Farmers in Aklan alone earn P80 million for producing 1.3 million kilos of piña and abaca. Barong Filipino's factory in Quezon City actually churns out more than 100,000 barong Tagalog each year, some of which make it to OFWs abroad, and Thais, Malaysians and Indonesians who may have their own national costume but delight in wearing the barong. Even the Hollywood red carpet got a dose of Filipino ingenuity with Quentin Tarantino sporting the Filipino national costume. Locally, a new practice is pairing the barong with denim jeans, which is an attempt to make the dressed-down look more formal, and is meant to encourage continued patronage by the casual youth.
Despite the problems besetting the industry, not the least of which is the slow degradation of the craft as weavers and embroiders get older sans apprentices, bursts of inspiration in design and continued attempts to increase awareness via information dissemination keep the barong continuously evolving.
"One reason why we made this book, is to give a more general awareness of the industry, of fiber-weaving and embroidery, so that the more people are aware of it, the more chances [there are] that the industry will survive," said Mr. Nadres.
Garment of Honor, Garment of Identity is available in National Bookstore and Kultura Filipino. Orders are also being accepted at garmentofhonor@gmail.com. For more information, visit www.enbarongfilipino.com or call 455-0430 or 920-4952.
Originally published on 12 January 2009 in BusinessWorld.