APEC leaders' shirts once a symbol of inferiority

APEC leaders' shirts once a symbol of inferiority

By Angie Ramos

MANILA (Reuter): When the leaders of 18 Asia-Pacific economies
meet for their annual summit next Monday, they will be donning
traditional Filipino shirts that were once a symbol of inferior
status.

The barong tagalog, influenced by the European dress shirt,
was first worn by Filipino men during the Spanish colonial
period.

Constrained by the strictly hierarchical colonial society, the
native Filipinos were not allowed to dress up like their
colonisers who normally tucked their shirts in, according to
historians.

The Filipinos thus had to wear the barong with the shirt-tails
hanging out of their trousers.

The barong was also made of fabric derived from coconut fiber
and woven so fine it was transparent, a way for the Spanish
colonizers to reassure themselves that the natives were not
concealing machetes or knives.

The Spanish ruled the Philippines from the 16th to late 19th
centuries.

The elaborately embroidered barong tagalog, typically the
unbleached linen color the fashion world calls ecru, has now
become a national costume, worn by Filipino men on formal
occasions.

"They wear it proudly because ... all the artistic nature of
the Filipinos are impressed on the barong," designer Jean
Goulbourn told Reuters.

Goulbourn and her Korean partner Eun Ill Lee, 38, have
designed the barongs which the leaders will wear at the annual
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Subic Bay
north of Manila on Nov. 25.

Philippine President Fidel Ramos will present the shirts as a
gift to the leaders when he meets with each one of them before
their meeting in Subic.

At their 1994 summit in Bogor, Indonesia, the leaders also
wore that country's colorful traditional batik shirts.

Goulbourn says that her design was based on various window
styles used in Philippine architecture.

"When you open windows, you see the world and the world sees
you, so we're sharing our culture with the rest of the world and
here (in APEC) we are aware that the whole world is looking in to
your country," said Goulbourn.

The designer, a Filipino married to a Canadian, got the
leaders' vital statistics from their embassies, then sent a rough
prototype back to the missions to be sent on to the leaders'
staff for feedback.

"We did some alterations for Chile, but that wasn't much. We
did also some for China and not so much, it was just little
things," said Goulbourn.

Designing for the leaders without looking at each personality
was not an easy task, Goulbourn said.

But in the end, it was down to the basics of designing -- what
would look good on whom.

"The one that was easy to focus on was President Clinton
because he's the tallest one, so that needed a little bit of
attention so that the embroidery would come out in proportion to
his height," said Goulborn who added that it took three days for
the women weavers in Laguna, south of Manila, to finish each
shirt.

The barongs cost between 10,000 (US$381) to 13,000 pesos
($496), which is twice the price of a regular barong.