he year 1521 marks the beginning of the westernization of the archipelago, the blend of east and west, and consequently of two sets of costume traditions. Perhaps inevitably, the encounter created a hybrid dress sense, combining the tradition-laden systems of the indigenous and the alluring superficiality of the superimposed. At this historic juncture, two Hispanic dress themes predominated: the militia gear of the expeditionary forces, on one hand, and resplendent varieties of clerical garb, on the other. These two concepts, under the sword and the cross, reoriented the Filipino costume.

Colonization and Christian conversion shaped a manner of dressing exhibiting the social, political, religious and economic changes. For the Spanish missionaries were regularly scandalized by the unselfconscious nudity of the natives, and indeed imposed sanctions on them for not covering more areas of their bodies. Concurrently, the notion of opulence, largely absorbed from the trappings of the Roman Catholic church, became the source of heightened desire: display of wealth!

But underlying the drastic transition was the endurance of vernacular forms of dress and native sartorial customs which resisted radical alteration or challenged extinction.