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Wedding Tapa, 19th century, from the collection of Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Tapa cloth (or simply tapa) is a barkcloth made in the islands of the Pacific Ocean, primarily in Tonga, Samoa and Fiji, but as far afield as Niue, Cook Islands, Futuna, Solomon Islands, Java, New Zealand, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Hawaii (where it is called kapa).
A taʻovala is an article of Tongan dress, a mat wrapped around the waist, worn by men and women, at all formal occasions, much like the tie for men in the Western culture. The ta'ovala is also commonly seen among the Fijian Lau Islands, and Wallis island, both regions once heavily influenced by Tongan hegemony and cultural diffusion.
The tupenu worn by men is wide enough to cover the body between the waist and knees, and long enough to wrap securely around the waist. For work and casual wear, any piece of cloth will do. On dress occasions, men will wear tupenu tailored like Western wrap skirts and made from suit material. These tupenu coordinate with Western suit-jackets.
It is worn by men and women in uses from school uniforms to business attire with a suit jacket and tie. Many people of Oceanic ethnicity wear the lavalava as an expression of cultural identity and for comfort within expatriate communities, especially in the United States (notably Hawaii , Alaska , California , Washington , and Utah ), Australia ...
Tongan outfits are often assembled from used Western clothing (for the top) mixed with a length of cloth purchased locally for the tupenu. Used clothing can be found for sale at local markets, or can be purchased overseas and mailed home by relatives. Some women have learned to sew and own sewing machines (often antique treadle machines).
A kiekie is a Tongan dress, an ornamental girdle around the waist, mainly worn by women on semiformal occasions, but nowadays also sometimes by men. At highly formal occasions both gender will settle for a taʻovala. At casual occasions no girdle is needed for any gender, although women may continue wearing a kiekie even then, as it is ...
It is now regarded as Fiji's national dress [1] even though pre-colonial iTaukei Fijian traditional clothing consisted of garments such as the malo and the liku. [ 2 ] It consists of a rectangle of cloth of varying length, between below-knee and ankle-length, wrapped around the hips and traditionally fastened by tying at the waist or has an ...
The term was originally used only for women's skirts, as men wore a loincloth, called a maro. Nowadays the term is used for any cloth worn wrapped around the body by men and women. The pareo in Tahitian and pareu in Cook Islands were the first Pacific islands and original creators of the tapa board patterned prints.