THE FILIPINIANA DRESS: THE REBIRTH OF THE TERNO

You may have seen it in old photographs of your mom or grandmother. You may have seen it in history books or random clips of Imelda Marcos visiting the White House in the ’80s. You may have seen it in Filipino beauty pageants or worn by Miss Universe Philippines 2018 Catriona Gray. The stunning, resilient, unabashedly opulent terno dress.

It can be referred to by so many names — Filipiniana dress, mestiza dress, Maria Clara dress —  but one thing’s for sure: there is no other Filipiniana attire that represents the Philippines and the country’s stride towards modernity more so than the terno dress.

So what is a Filipiniana dress? What makes the Philippine terno so symbolic of a nation? Let’s take a quick journey with the dress.

The terno dress has been through it all. It evolved from the early Spanish colonial period (1700s), the revolution against Spain and the Philippine American War (Victorian Era), the American Colonial period, two World Wars, past the atomic age, through the authoritarian rule of the Marcos regime… and then some.

A quick history lesson: the terno traces its origins to the baro’t saya, traditional Filipino clothing worn by women, which consists of the blouse ("baro" or “camisa”), a folded rectangular piece of fabric worn over the shoulders (“pañuelo” or “fichu”), and a short rectangular cloth ("tapis") wrapped over top of a long skirt (“saya”). In the early Spanish colonial period, women from Luzon and Visayas wore these garments in layers of stripes and checkered patterns, which are a display of wealth.

VINTA’s Corsage Camisa is inspired by the top of the Traje De Mestiza (or Baro't Saya) of the 1880s

By the 1860s, global trade and Hispanicization influenced the silhouette of the baro't saya. The upper garment, now called a “camisa” has become more complex with a pleated and straight pinned bodice that is delicately hand-embroidered, with voluminous bell or pagoda shaped sleeves. The camisa was usually made with pineapple fiber (piña) or muslin. The “saya” still floor length, has ballooned into a wide bell shape. The tapis is still present usually with a contrasting fabric pattern. Since Filipinos love nicknames, this ensemble was also called “traje de mestiza” (literally meaning mestiza dress, “mestiza” meaning people of mixed Filipino and any foreign ancestry). This ensemble was also affectionately named the Maria Clara dress, after the mestiza protagonist of the Philippine national hero, Jose Rizal’s controversial novel Noli Me Tangere in 1887. The dress itself was the metaphor for Maria Clara character’s modest, elegant and feminine traits in the novel.

Taken from Fashionable Filipinas: An Evolution of the Philippine National Dress in Photographs 1860-1960, curated and written by Gino Gonzales

To follow the evolution of the terno dress is to break down the Maria Clara dress of this period and its four main components. Here’s how it looked:

1. Camisa: a collarless blouse made with flimsy, translucent fabrics, such as piña. The camisa’s sleeves were shaped like angel wings or bells. The correct term for the sleeves of the camisa during the mid to late 1800s was a "pagoda," “on-trend” with Western silhouettes of the Victorian period.

2. Pañuelo: a piece of starched square cloth, usually made from the same material as the camisa, folded triangularly and worn like a big ruffle or collar over the shoulders. The pañuelo connoted modesty, as it was used to cover the nape and the upper body from the camisa's low neckline and translucency. It also doubled as an accent piece with its added embellishments and embroideries, with a pin or brooch securing it in place.

3. Saya: a skirt that hangs from the waist and covers the lower part of the body, reaching the floor. These were usually comprised either of single or double sheets, called "panels" or dos paños (Spanish for "two cloths").

4. Tapis: a knee-length over-skirt that hugs the hips. Tapis designs may be plain, or of contrasting pattern from the saya, and is usually made of opaque fabrics, such as muslin and the madras cloth.

From Álbum de Filipinas Publicación: , [ca. 1870]

During the American occupation, Filipino fashion started to change in favour of a more modern style. The traje de mestiza evolved to have bigger sleeves and a narrower, floor-length skirt with a long train (or “saya de cola”), replacing the full wide skirt of Edwardian fashion.

Fast forward to the 1920s and the wide sleeves were replaced by butterfly sleeves, which became a distinct element of the mestiza dress, with the big pañuelo also being reduced in size. Here’s where we start to see the emergence of the modern terno dress we see today — the word "terno" comes from the Spanish word “to match,” referring to a matching set of clothes made of the same fabric.

By the late 1940s, the terno's clothing meaning evolved into “a single piece dress with butterfly sleeves attached to it.” Ramon Valera, National Artist for Fashion Design in the Philippines, was credited for unifying the components of the baro’t saya into a single dress “with exaggerated bell sleeves, cinched at the waist, grazing the ankle, and zipped up at the back,” the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) said in a description of Valera on its website.

"Valera constructed the terno’s butterfly sleeves, giving them a solid, built-in but hidden support. To the world, the butterfly sleeves became the terno’s defining feature," it added. It is the terno dress that most Filipinos recognize today.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the terno saw, what many would say, its “golden era,” which coincided with the “golden era” of Philippine cinema. Films from those decades mostly featured leading ladies in gorgeous ternos. The terno was what your favourite movie star would wear, so in turn, it’s what all the fashionable women of the Philippines wore to all special events.