Robes & Tunics

A festival morning in Guizhou, and a coat stitched with a hundred birds. Asian ceremonial robes and tunics were worn by shamans, pilgrims and festival dancers. Taoist priests’ robes from China are embroidered with dragons and the seven suns, cosmic diagrams worn in ritual. The Miao hundred-bird coat is heavy with embroidery and feather tassels for festivals honoring the ancestors; Dong jackets are beaten with egg white and indigo until they shine. Japanese Buddhist pilgrimage garments are stamped with the seals of temples visited along the route. From Sulawesi come the halili petondu tunics of the Kaili, and from the hills of Burma and Thailand, Karen beaded tunics.

Cotton, silk and hemp, worn soft, give these garments gravity. Hung across a stairwell, a robe says a great deal without a word.