“This book is, to date, the most comprehensive and rigorously-researched study on the forms of dress worn by almost all types and classes of inhabitants of the Philippines under Spain from 1820 to 1896.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, it systematically and perspicaciously shows the inextricable links between these attires and the rapidly changing economic, political, religious, and social conditions of the nineteenth century, which, among others, witnessed the opening of the islands to international trade, the consequent rise of a mestizo elite, and the formation of groups of Filipinos who would eventually assert their identity through the ideology of reform, and later, revolution at century’s end.

Written in a lucid style and appropriately documented with prints and photographs of the period, this work is an indispensable source book for all artists who design for theater, film, television, and the fashion industry, as well as historians of all persuasions and Filipinophiles of all nations.”

— Nicanor G. Tiongson, PhD, professor emeritus, University of the Philippines-Diliman