Vanuatu - Island Dress

Broadcast: 15/02/2005

Reporter: Mark Corcoran

Transcript

VILLAGE SINGING ISLAND DRESS SONG: "Your colour is colourful. It makes a man happy and laugh a little bit. It swings around everywhere, my island dress."

CORCORAN: It�s a song every villager knows by heart, the unofficial anthem of Vanuatu. They play tribute to what�s known as the �Mother Hubbard� or �island dress�, the mother of all fashion statements.

Island dress provides a sense of identify, a combination of national costume and every day wear. Village women often hold impromptu fashion parades, unveiling their latest creations that seem to get more extravagant every year.

JEAN TARISESEI: Since independence it�s been changed a lot. Like the shops are different and they have more laces and other materials coming in and then women also have their minds open to this, how to sew these island dresses and if we look around today there will be lots of material, island dresses that are not similar.

CORCORAN: Before the arrival of Europeans in the nineteenth century, the Vanuatu people wore very little. Presbyterian missionaries introduced their own sense of fashion and modesty, insisting that the women cover up. But now chiefs and church leaders are on the warpath, declaring their culture and dress sense to be under threat.

It�s here on the streets of the capital Port Vila that the culprits strut their stuff � their crime? To forsake island dress for western style board shorts and trousers. Several chiefs have declared that it�s not on, proclaiming a taboo on such decadent fashion except when engaged in the women�s work of washing and cleaning and those who dare defy taboo are fined.

CHIEF MORRISON: We�ve made it so that girls wearing trousers when they walk along the road will be fined and the punishment is that they must kill one pig.

CORCORAN: Chief Morrison Dick Makau is from the island of Tongoa. He attempts to maintain custom among those Tongoans who now live here on the outskirts of Port Vila. Today the Chief attends a traditional wedding. The bride is given a ritual farewell by her family and after ceremonial grieving she�s presented with lengths of cloth that will be transformed into island dresses by the women of her husband�s clan. Such customs say Chief Morrison, binds the Vanuatu society, maintaining social cohesion and order in a rapidly changing world.

CHIEF MORRISON: The chief in a village or community has the power to maintain his people and make rules and one rule made by the Chief of our village in Tongoa is that we shouldn�t introduce too many white man�s clothes.

CORCORAN: Not everyone agrees. Standing among the on-lookers is Denise defiantly wearing jeans.

DENISE: The chief tried to stop us wearing trousers when there�s a ceremony or funeral or when there�s any ceremony that is our custom. Every woman must wear an island dress there but I�m not use to wearing them.

CORCORAN: Denise claims island dress is expensive, uncomfortable and a little too revealing for a city girl.

DENISE: If you wear an island dress, you have to wear an underskirt or tights with it because if you wear nothing underneath and the wind blows your dress, everyone can see you and your body.

CORCORAN: Denise also deeply resents the attempts by chiefs to control her life in the comparative big smoke of Port Vila.

DENISE: If the chief wants to give me a fine, sure I�ll get a fine but if he doesn�t tell me, because we live in Vila, it�s up to the individual. I buy my own clothes to wear � no one else buys my clothes.

CORCORAN: Some church leaders feel equally threatened by changing fashion. They take a more hell fire and damnation approach.

PASTOR SOCCORMAN [PHONETIC][to congregation]: Throughout this week I was sitting down and I head the word of God. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

CORCORAN: Presbyterian Pastor Troy Socoman says God has asked him to deliver a message, a spiritual fashion tip for the women of his congregation.

PASTOR SOCOMAN [to congregation]: I created women to wear clothes like women. What should they wear? They wear dresses and shoes. Today it is different. Men are wearing trousers, women are wearing trousers. Where do we go?


CORCORAN: The Pastor is convinced that board shorts will lead to immoral behaviour and unwanted pregnancies.

PASTOR SOCOMAN [to congregation]: You don�t have the right to wear short trousers and walk down the road in this place. You don�t have the right because this is not your life. You are exposing your body outside for men to see it. You must wear an island dress to cover yourself. Praise the master! Praise the master!

DENISE: Yes, I heard that but they�re thinking rubbish. Like they say that all girls who wear trousers look too sexy and show off their bodies and that the boys all have rubbish thoughts � but it�s their thoughts. It�s not a good idea to blame it on the girls because they wear what they want to wear. We live in town, not the islands.

CORCORAN: Board shorts aren�t the only perceived threat to the chiefs and churches social order. At the Port Vila markets a very different fashion statement now stops shoppers in their tracks. Just as Christianity was introduced more then a century ago, Islam has now found its way to these shores.

JACKLIN: The first time I came here some others saw me and maybe asked where are you from because they see I choose to dress like this. Maybe some are angry or some are � I don�t know.

CORCORAN: There are now about two hundred Muslim converts in Vanuatu. Jaclyn was the first woman to wear hijab, a decision taken two years ago after accepting a free trip to Malaysia to study Islam.

JACKLIN: I learnt lots of things about the dress of women, about how women should dress. I saw that it was true that when I cam back to Vanuatu I must do this. When I was in Malaysia they asked if I would dress as a Muslim and I said yes.

CORCORAN: Open hostility is rare. Jaclyn says many people rationalise her appearance by treating her as a foreigner.

JACKLIN: When I came back to Vanuatu I was scared. I was shy, so when I came back some people saw me and they saw that I was a Muslim woman but they didn�t call a Muslim woman, they called me an Arab woman.

CORCORAN: Perhaps the biggest threat to traditional island dress comes not from board shorts or Islam but imports of cheap mass produced island dress copies from China, undercutting a once vibrant local industry but the church warns against giving money to Godless communists.

PASTOR SOCOMAN [to congregation]: The Chinese pray to cults. The Chinese don�t pray to God. They still pray to cults! You go to their stores and they still hide all the small cult things.

CORCORAN: Apart from the fiery sermons and occasional pig fine, no one�s getting too excited. This is after all Vanuatu and just as the stiff backed fashion of nineteenth century missionaries was absorbed and adapted to local culture, any new challenges are likely to be met in a very relaxed way.

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