Fates, Interwoven
I talk about my recent visit to the Garment Capital of the Philippines in Taytay, Rizal. Halfway through, I get lost in the intricacies of piña production in Kalibo, Aklan.
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At two o’clock on a Monday morning, the open-air markets of the tiangge complex in Taytay, Rizal are already bustling with movement and sound. Family-owned jeepneys rumble in the background, running idle as their contents—t-shirts, blouses, shorts, pants, underwear, socks, shoes, bags; of every color and pattern—are emptied into wood-and-iron kiosks. All at once: the crinkling of plastic bags, a stray dog’s incessant barking, neighborly chatter mingling with the garbled crooning of an 80s OPM hit on the local radio.
Shop owners begin setting up their displays at midnight, eager to show off the week’s stock of clothing and accessories. Some sellers source their inventory from factory overruns, thrift stores, or other countries, like Thailand and South Korea. Others buy fabric from the textile factories, most of which are now Chinese-owned, that line the highway, then employ their own workers to cut and sew patterns of the latest fashion trends.
The growing reliance of the Taytay garment industry on Chinese imports has forced local factories to shut down, and those who have survived depend heavily on Chinese-made products.1 Local dressmakers, who were previously subcontracted by wholesalers, now fear that factories will subcontract labor from China instead. In my recent trip to the tiangge, a Filipino shop owner shared her struggles in wanting to pay her employees a livable wage and competing with the impossibly cheap and fast labor outsourced from the mainland by Chinese businesses here.
Down south, the women of Piña Village in Kalibo, Aklan also start their day before dawn. They spend their morning wading through the long, spike-edged leaves of ‘Red Spanish’ pineapples, a cultivar introduced by Spanish settlers and grown for textile use since at least the 17th century.
Under Spanish rule, young Filipino women in convent schools and orphanages were taught to integrate European-style needlework with indigenous piña weaving. Their handicrafts were considered luxury garments, particularly preferred by royalty in Spain.2
Centuries later, with their machetes in hand, women harvest mature leaves to be used for piña weaving. On other days, this work is mostly silent; today, they talk about the fire in neighboring Andagao, how thankful they are that no deaths have been reported.
Later, they take leaves that have already been soaked and are soft enough to be handled. They pick the thorns from the sides of a leaf, then scrape off the leaf’s outer layer using a dull implement (pagkigue), like a coconut husk or the blunted shard of a broken plate.
Once the leaf epidermis is discarded, they extract the first layer of fiber—called “bastos”, too strong and coarse for garments but perfect for household items like rugs and twine. Repeating this process yields the desired liniwan fiber, more refined than the initial extracts.
The strands of liniwan are washed in running water (paghugas), then combed with a clamshell until they turn into the color of flax. By now, the sky is clear, the sun relentless—it’s time for lunch.
When they return, the women wax and whip the strands, now dried from the sun, to remove any effluent and remaining imperfections (pagpisi). The strands are then tied to a wooden pole, and the women use their dexterous hands to manipulate the fibers, knotting one strand to another to form a seamless thread (pagpanug-ot). This thread is run through sand to prevent knotting and pulled onto the spindle of a spinning wheel (pagtolinuad).
Weavers warp and weft the spun yarn on a loom, using their feet and hands to operate the compound machinery (paghaboe). These artisans move with remarkable celerity, their limbs and senses in perfect rhythm. One such artisan might color the fabric before weaving, using natural dyes like indigo, talisay bark, kogon grass, and young coconut husk.3 Another might choose, after weaving, to embroider ornate designs in the calado style of the Laguna province.
In nearby Iloilo, the piña fiber was traditionally used for the hand-woven hablon, which is characterized by vibrant, geometric patterns that earned the city its former distinction as the seat of the Philippine textile industry. In the 19th century, hablon weaving languished with the arrival of the British and their cheaper, machine-made fabrics.
After relieving ships of their fabric cargo, the British wanted to import the abundant sugar in the lowlands for trade in the metropole. In response to foreign demand, the land-owners of Iloilo shifted their attention and capital to producing sugarcane, draining resources away from hablon production.4
Still, weaving houses like the Camina Balay na Bato and the Indag-an Primary Multi-Purpose Collective are fighting to keep this tradition alive. Instead of the now expensive piña, they use polyester and other synthetic fibers to create colorful garments. One particular maker, Arevalo Handwoven Products, has been producing the sablay—the sash conferred to University of the Philippines students upon graduation—for 20 years.
While foreign competition threatens to outpace local production in Taytay, traditional industries like those in Aklan and Iloilo face competition against both foreign imports and modern garments like those sold in the tiangge. Moreover, environmental degradation has jeopardized the raw materials on which these traditional industries were founded.
Islands apart, the garment and textile industries in Taytay, Aklan, and Iloilo share similar stories of artisanship and entrepreneurship surviving in global markets that seek to specialize and standardize production. The stories of these industries reflect how local talent develops against and alongside foreign influence.
Unfortunately, these stories are often ignored. Last week, I was so proud to have scored a linen set for a measly 200 pesos ($4 USD). Shoppers like me walk away with pride from tiangge stalls after haggling for the lowest price possible, while media outlets extol the efforts of fashion designers who are “saving” endangered industries. Rarely, if ever, do we think, much less talk, about the time, toil, and sacrifice that goes into producing the cheap clothes and beautiful fabrics that we so love.