The face of a cloth: from a weaver's perspective

 Frequently it is difficult to ask questions in another language because basic concepts are understood differently. I wanted to find the Batak word for the surface of a cloth that is visible to the weaver while she is weaving, and for the underside of the cloth that is not visible while she is at work. The question sent me down a rabbit hole into a maze that is taking me a few days to find my way out of. Truly a maze. Several times I have set off on a path only to bump into a wall. I have turned around and set off again only to bump into another wall. Eventually, though, it has all added up and some dark spots on my mental map of the Batak loom have been filling in.

 

While I have spent a long time in North Sumatra gathering weaving words, I still  encounter gaps in my knowledge and then I am grateful for WhatsApp. It is a brilliant tool for the anthropologist far away. Most Batak weavers nowadays have telephones and are familiar with the app. It allows me to parachute into their world, where I interrupt them and take up their time. I know that I am an imposition and ask ‘stupid questions’ about ways of seeing. Just as I am confused by their answers, they are confused by my questions. But how generous, gracious and patient they are with me! 

 

In my quest to find the Batak word for the part of the cloth that the weaver sees while weaving, I decided to contact a weaver in Silindung with whom I had spent time two years ago and who understood my work. She immediately answered my What’sApps. We conferred mostly in Indonesian, and a bit in Batak. I launched in by asking her, in Indonesian, the Batak word for the ‘face’ of the cloth, the part that is visible while she is weaving. I assumed that the use of the word ‘face’ would be a concept that we shared and we would be able to build a cultural bridge starting with that word. “Bohi” was her immediate response, the Batak word for ‘face’. I was delighted! Easy! A direct translation! The face of the cloth. “Thank you! Precisely what I am looking for,” I wrote back. 

Ompu Elsa weaving a Simalungun head cloth called 'Bulang'
The slope of the loom is evident as well as the circularity of the warp. The warp beam is the horizontal beam furthest from her, while the cloth beam is in her lap. The top layer of the warp is 'split' by the heddles to facilitate weaving.

 

“And what is the back called?” I asked. “Panutup,” she said, a word that denotes ‘closing’ or 'finish'.  My elation ended abruptly. How could ‘a closing’ be the opposite of the ‘face’? How could 'a closing' be the ‘underside’ of a cloth? An unbidden image of a loom rose up in my mind, with thread ‘endings’ dangling down like something a cat had fought with. “I think we might have a misunderstanding, here” I wrote. “I am looking for the word for ‘below’, the opposite side of ‘bohi’.” 

 

Then she told me that a cloth has a ‘face’ (bohi) if it contained ikat. Now I was truly confused. What could ikat have to do with the front and back of a cloth in the loom? “Ikat appears the same on both the front and the back of the cloth,” I wrote in return, indicating that I knew that there would be no visible difference between the two sides of an ikat cloth. “Ikat also has a face/bohi,” she wrote. “It has an upper and a lower part.”  Now the image of a dangling hank of ikat-patterned yarn rose up and I tried valiantly – but unsuccessfully -- to understand where its ‘face’ or ‘upper part’ might be located.

 

I decided to give it a rest. This wasn’t working. We were using the same words, but we were not communicating. There was a lingering misunderstanding. Had I not explained it well? Was it my choice of words? In Indonesian, neither of us was communicating in our mother tongue. Where did the problem lie? Was I failing to understand the word bohi?  Was I not understanding her conception of beginning and end? Was she not understanding my conception of front and back? I thanked her for her trouble and tried to make sense of it all, but I needed more help.

 

Awhile later, I contacted a weaver who makes the kind of cloth called ‘Sadum’, the only Batak cloth where the back side of the cloth faces upward, toward the weaver while she weaves (because of the supplementary weft patterning). I thought she would be very sensitive to the notions of underside and upside of the cloth since she worked in the inversion. We exchanged pleasantries and then I mentioned that the Sadum’s underside was what was visible in the loom. “Yes,” she said, “the inside is what shows.” The inside? Yes, I could imagine the underside of the cloth being referred to as ‘the inside’ because it is worn next to the body. It is also 'inside' when the cloth is in the loom. I looked for confirmation, “You say ‘the inside’ and not ‘the underside’ or ‘the lower side’?  Is this the 'bohi' of the cloth? 

 

“The 'bohi' is the first part. The ‘inside’ is the part that is not visible when weaving, but when the weaving is finished and the cloth is being worn, it is the ‘outside’. That is, in the case of the Sadum.” Hmmm. She had explained it perfectly, as I was to discover later, but at the time I was still fixated on finding the word for the upper plane, the ‘face’ of the cloth (in my world) and thinking there had been a misunderstanding.

 

“If you say ‘bohi’, I went on doggedly, then there must also be a ‘back side’? What is the word for that?”

 

“What is certain is that the ‘bohi’ is the first part,” she said in response. “That is the word used most often.”

 

I was beginning to get the idea that the ‘bohi’ of the cloth was not perceived by her as a surface. “So, the word relates to time!” I said, thinking I had made a significant conceptual leap. 

 

“No, she said, it is the first part that is woven.” Dashed again. So how did that not relate to time? What was I not getting?

 

I thought of how the Batak use the word ‘ulu’ or ‘head’ for a pattern that appears in the 'end' of a cloth. Maybe it was a spatial reference. If a cloth has a head, why not a face? “Is it like the ‘head’ of a cloth?” I asked.

 

“No, it is the beginning,” she said.

 

“Maybe I am having trouble understanding,” I responded. “We have different cultures. How do you describe the ‘beginning’?” I asked.

 

“It is the first part that we weave,” she responded.

 

“The first weft?” I asked

 

“Yes,” she said. “Only, the first part.”

 

Ok, so the 'bohi' was neither a temporal concept nor a spatial concept. It seems to be the collapsing of the two, the spacetime of the process of weaving: the beginning. As one might say about a project: "I've only just begun". Interesting! I was clearly using the wrong word ('face') to elicit the Batak word for the upside of a cloth in the loom! 

 

I plagued the poor weaver with another question. “In that case, what do you call the part of the cloth that faces you while you are weaving,” I asked.

 

“I am singing in a choir right now,” she said, “and cannot concentrate. Maybe later?” I had been driving her mad.

 

I screwed up my courage and contacted another weaver who has a good grasp of English. I tried again to pose my question clearly. “How do you name the ‘above’ part of a weaving in the loom and the ‘below’ part?” Her answer, in Indonesian, was clear, ‘depan’ (front) and ‘belakang' (back). Well, it wasn’t that difficult after all! At least I had the terms in Indonesian, and they expressed the same thing as the English. All I still had to do was obtain the Batak words. I asked for the translation.

“Tu jolo tu pudi” was her response. Oh no! Not again! Once more I was thrown into confusion. I knew the words ‘jolo and ‘pudi’; I had translated them as ‘forward’ and ‘backward’. ‘Jolo’, as it pertains to the loom, means ‘towards the weaver’ and ‘pudi’ means ‘away from the weaver’ along the plane of the cloth in the loom. Clearly, the Indonesian words for ‘front’ (‘depan’) and ‘back’ (‘belakang’) were not the words that I was searching for. They were good translations of the English words ‘forward’ and ‘backward’ but they were not translations for the Batak ‘front’ and ‘back’ of the cloth. I had to let it go, and sleep on it for a night.

 

This morning, I had renewed courage. Nothing like a good night's sleep and the penny seems to be dropping. The weavers had all been referencing the circular warp, which shifts in the loom in front of them while they work, and which has a beginning and an end, and is situated at an incline, while I had been referring to a surface, the part facing the weaver and the backside of that, as perceived by an onlooker. The Sadum weaver, if I had been more mentally agile, had told me that to refer to the ‘front’ of a cloth I had to think in terms not of direction but of clothing! The ‘underside’ (from my perspective) when the cloth was in the loom was, for them the 'inside’, the surface of the cloth that is next to the body when the cloth is being worn, and the part that the weaver could see as she wove is the 'outside’, the part that is visible when the cloth is being worn (except in the case of the Sadum). For them the directional words ‘above’ and ‘below’ related to the angle of the loom. And ‘face’, in their world, was a word that related to the process of weaving.

 

When I contacted the Simalungun weaver, Mak Sandi, this morning to obtain the words in the Simalungun language, it all fell into place and she was crystal clear. She understood it in the same way as the Toba weavers, although she used Simalungun words.

 

The words that I had been searching for were ‘inside’ (habbagas in Simalungun / ‘dalam’ in Indonesian) and ‘outside’ (haddarat in Simalungun / 'luar' in Indonesian), the concepts that relate to the use of the cloth as clothing. The ‘outside’ is what the weaver sees when she is weaving (except in the case of the Sadum) and the ‘inside’ is what the weaver does not see when the cloth is being worn. But I still don’t know the Toba words. The search isn't over yet.

This vocabulary reminded me that the Batak weavers' words relate to their embodied experience, strapped in the loom, their way of seeing things as they go through the process of weaving a cloth. My own (scientist's/observer's/ foreigner's) vocabulary is that of an outsider watching. The word 'textile' is another example of that. Batak weavers don't weave 'textiles'; they make clothes on looms that are extensions of their own bodies! How deeply this perspective permeates their vocabulary. My need, as it turns out, had not just been to get the right word, but to understand more deeply the way the weavers understand their craft.

Thanks to the following kind, generous and patient weavers:

Renny br. Manurung, Nai Tiara br.Siahaan, Lasma br. Sitanggang, br. Tobing, Duma br. Tobing, Ester br. Simorangkir.

 

In the fingers and between the ears: tangible skill and intangible knowledge

Two years ago in North Sumatra, I met Gresia Simanihuruk in Lumban Suhisuhi, one of the few remaining active centres of Toba Batak weaving. Gresia was in her late teens, polite and friendly, like girls brought up in the kampung. And what a fast weaver she was! I watched her work. She was making what everybody there makes: a shoulder cloth (uwis nipes) for the neighbouring culture, called Karo. Her village has become a major supplier of shoulder cloths for the Karo. When the Karo became connected to the city by a road a century ago, the women there stopped weaving because they could earn more from gardening. Gresia's village took up some of the slack.

 

Gresia was working with her mother. Her mother would wind the warp and instruct her on how to weave it. When Gresia got home from school she would diligently and dexterously throw the weft between the warp yarns, managing the supplementary weft more than competently. She wasn’t able to answer many of my questions about the details of weaving, however.  “I don’t really know anything about wrapping a warp,” she said. “My mother does that.” Warping is when the design and quality of a cloth are determined and where weaving knowledge is key.

 

At her age and with her education, Gresia bridged generations and worlds. I found her easy to talk with and she gave me her What'sApp number in case I had any further questions. Yesterday I made use of it. "Gresia, do you remember me? I visited you a couple of years ago..." She responded immediately, and I plied her with questions.  I wanted to know about the classification and construction of warp stripes in her region. She excused herself. “I’m sorry, bu (a polite way to address someone of my age), but I don’t know how to make an ulos.” (Ulos is the name of ritual cloth in her Toba Batak culture.)

 

Then she told me that she was now studying in Medan, the capital city of her province, a good 6-10 hours away from her village by bus. She had chosen to study law. She kindly offered to put my questions to her mother and get back to me. 

 

In the meantime I pondered her response.

 

In my book, Legacy in cloth (2009), I cite M. Joustra, who wrote about the Batak weaving arts more than a century ago. He pointed out that weavers could be highly skilled and knowledgeable, but if they didn’t have the opportunity to express the extent of their knowledge and skill, the weaving arts would fall into decline. Here I was seeing something different: knowledge was not being transferred from one generation to the next. This young woman’s skill throwing weft while sitting in the loom was nothing short of impressive, but she did not "know how to make an ulos".

 

I imagine her life while she was growing up in the village. Weaving knowledge is typically passed down  starting when children are very young. They learn to wind the weft for their mother, a straight-forward, time-consuming and relatively mindless task. Once they master the skill, they are able to save their mother a lot of time. As girls grow older, they take on other tedious tasks like starching yarn and winding it into balls. Eventually they may climb into the loom and learn to weave. This is probably how it had been for Gresia because she grew up in a weaver family. By the time she was in the 6th grade, she was a  proficient weaver, helping her mother earn the income needed by the family. 

 

This video shows Gresia weaving with three shuttles and numerous sets of supplementary weft.

Winding a warp is something Batak weavers once relegated to older generations of women, the ones with grandchildren. Winding a warp has to be done carefully and without error. It is absolutely key to the success of a cloth because it determines most of the design features. So it was normal that Gresia's mother performed this task and that Gresia herself had not yet learned it.

 

As I try to fathom the vocabulary of weaving, I am learning how ‘shaping’ the cloth is the central challenge for the makers.  A weaver has to keep her wits about her. She has to be skilled at a unique weaver-oriented way of counting, be able to focus, have knowledge of designs within her tradition, be able to wind with an even tension and have the ability to correct errors. The steps in the process are expressed using specialized words that frame a unique understanding of the unique way that yarn is manipulated in that culture. Weavers use this specialized language when they compare their work, discuss their challenges, share their inspiration and innovations, and teach others. They 'think' their designs and techniques in this language. It captures the conceptual core of their tradition. They can only weave 'in Batak'. A child will progress from the 'mindless doing’ of tedious, time-consuming tasks, and gradually become inducted into a more conscious awareness of her art. She will learn the designs and technical rules and also her creative latitude within that complex. Eventually, she will have developed a mental map of how it all fits together. Only then will she have the capacity to invent and transform designs in a way consistent with her tradition. Many weavers have told me that learning about weaving is a never-ending proposition; there is always more to learn. 

 

Gresia's shirt reads, "I am a Weaver"

Gresia had moved to the big city and was now focused on her books. She had developed superb weaving skills, but her mental map of her weaving tradition was unfinished. “I don’t know how to make a cloth,” she had said. Now, far from the village, she would probably never have the opportunity to pick up that missing knowledge; it takes time and focused learning, endless discussions. What she is missing out on back in the village is complex and rigorous. Even if that knowledge is rarely recognized by non-weavers.

 

I think of another skilled weaver whom I met on Samosir Island years ago who marketed her weavings through Gresia's village to the same Karo market. “I would like to learn how to weave the cloths of my ancestors,” she told me, but she had no access to the knowledge, equipment and materials to be able to do so. Moreover, she was poor, and couldn't spare the time to travel around and search for what she was missing. She was a proficient weaver, but alienated from her heritage. She represented the end of her tradition. I assumed that Gresia's mother was in the same position, knowing only how to make uwis nipes for Karo. It turned out that Gresia's mother once did weave in her own tradition. But if income is meagre, the need for cash is acute, and a weaver can earn more by weaving for another ethnic group, she will be enticed to leave her own weaving tradition behind. Thus a cultural tradition can dwindle away. 

 

How often skill is confused with the knowledge needed to maintain an art. How commonly intangible cultural heritage is confused with the tangible because people do not know the difference. Gresia knew the difference intuitively: she could weave but she didn't know 'how to make an ulos'. She was good at the tangible but was not yet fully inducted in the intangible. In my experience, Fashion brands and even Fashion scholars, regularly fail to register this distinction. Many congratulate themselves on keeping a heritage alive by hiring skilled indigenous craftswomen to perform their craft for the needs of the industry (embroidery, dyeing, beadwork etc.). However, the industry of Fashion is like the Karo market. It can  seduce craftswomen away from their own traditions with the promise of a wage. Accurate performance of technical skills is tremendously important but it is not the same as perpetuating a tradition. A tradition is also about what is between the ears. It, too, can be forgotten and lost if it is not exercised. Working independently and creatively within the cognitive frame of one's own knowledge system is different from being a skilled labourer for an employer within a different cultural system. Even when the skill is the same, there is a cognitive world of difference. Indigenous traditions can be eroded even when intentions are the best. A wage is critical for craftspeople, as it is for everybody, but when it costs them their tradition, it is a stiff and eternal price to pay for a wage.

 

In Gresia's case, the end of her role in her tradition is paired with gaining a formal education, no doubt something her mother strongly supports so that her daughter will not be trapped in tedious craft labour that is poorly remunerated and has no future. In the city and at the university, Gresia has entered a different cultural universe. Distance is a factor. If Gresia is able to build a career, she will only occasionally have the opportunity to return to the village -- for marriage and death rituals -- and never for long periods.  Craft is socially so poorly valued that she may be pushed to feel shame that her family had to rely on weaving for income. But even if she is able to maintain a feeling of pride for her skill, without the accompanying intangible knowledge she will not be able to pass her tradition on to her children. 

The comb is used to assist with creating supplementary weft pattern sheds in the sides of the uwis nipes. 

Undocumented Weaving and Dyeing Techniques in SiLaen

 

fig. 1 Ikat in the Sangkarsangkar 

The weaving tradition in the area Southeast of Lake Toba was once unique and rich. Various types of traditional cloths (ulos) were made here that are not found in other Batak areas, such as the Ragi Harangan and the Sangkarsangkar, remarkable for their ikat patterning and deep, rich dyes. The weaving tradition in this region has never been well studied. Weavers there resisted commercialization and commodification of their work longer than in other regions, but in the 1980s and 1990s this resistance was finally broken. Many old pieces appeared on the tourist/collector market and the tradition lost its vibrancy.  

 

In 2016, when I was trying to learn more about the use of Morinda citrifolia, a tree that yields red dye, known amongst the Batak as bangkudu, I drove through SiLaen, about a half hour away from Porsea at the S.E corner of Lake Toba. When Batak weavers still relied on natural dyes, bangkudu was still a common tree found in every village. Now it is rare because weavers use commercial, synthetic red dye that they purchase on the market. A bangkudu tree in SiLaen caught my attention, therefore, when I drove past. I wanted to know if there was a weaver in the vicinity and so I knocked on the door of a house near the tree and I was invited in.

 

My host was an elderly weaver, probably in her 70s, who had some ulos for sale. I was in luck because when I enquired, it turned out that her grandmother had worked with natural dyes and she had observed her grandmother until she was 18 years of age. I asked the elderly weaver some questions. I couldn’t understand her answers in their entirety. Nevertheless, I was able to take a few notes during our brief stay. I believe that the techniques that she described are unique to her region. 

 

She remembered that yarn had been locally spun using the spinning wheel (sorha) in 1942. Cotton (kapas) was planted and after 6 months the cotton bolls could be harvested.  It hurt, she said, “Hansit ma hape”, and my sense was that she was referring to the hard labour involved in making yarn.

 

Then the yarn was dyed. She mentioned the distinction between blue yarn, dyed solely in an indigo solution, and black yarn (na itom) made using the sigira technique. I was familiar with this from all over the Batak region. She said that the yarn (1 kumpal, a skein-like measure) was first dyed in an indigo solution (mansop) for three days, 6 hours at a time each day. This turned the yarn blue. When the indigo process was finished and the yarn was dry, the next stage could begin. This was when they put the blue yarn into a red dye (bangkudu) bath. The use of Morinda citrifolia as part of the sigira process was new to me. In other regions, the sigira process involves putting the indigo-dyed yarn into black mud where the iron content of the mud interacts with the indigo, turning the yarn black.

 

There were no restrictions on who could fetch the bangkudu root; it could be harvested by both men and women. The dye material was dried and then brought to a boil (together with other ingredients), but not boiled for long, at the edge of the river. The weaver said that a hole was dug in the ground beside the river and the liquid bangkudu dye was poured into the hole. It was not clear to me whether the earth of the hole was sufficient to make the desired chemical reaction, or whether additional earth, which she said was fetched from the foot of the mountains, was needed. Water with high iron content was added to the mixture (aek sibaungbaung: na tasihan, tasik, aek na karatan) meaning rusty water, or water with iron content. One would not wash clothes in such water, the weaver said, or they would turn yellow. ‘Rusty water’ is an ingredient when dyeing with Morinda citrifolia elsewhere as well. The weaver said that this combination of red and blue was used for various ulos design types and she gave the design types called Ragi Pangko and Antahantak (fig 2) as examples. (Legacy in cloth, Fig Cat 4.4 p. and Fig Cat 5.6 p. 304 – 305).

 

The information given (or that I managed to understand) was limited, but it gave me pause to reflect on her tradition and of course it raised several additional questions.  

 

1.     The weaver did not show me an example of the result from dyeing yarn with both blue and red dyes, and the colour that it yields is not clear to me. However, reviewing the cloths from the weaver’s area, I see a range from deep blue with a reddish-purple sheen, to a deep chocolate red. My awe for the prowess of the dyers explodes. The dyers knew how to create quite a variety of deep colours.  Evident in fig. 1 is the white of undyed yarn, the deep chocolate-red colour, and also bright red ikat. One question that comes up is whether the deep chocolate-red colour results just from bangkudu combined with the iron-rich mud and water (or perhaps tanin), or whether there is also indigo dye involved.  In fig. 2 a weaver in Porsea is holding up a lighter-coloured cloth of which the sides have a red/purple hue. Could this be the result of indigo dyeing with sigira that includes bangkudu? By combining blue and red by dyeing the yarn successively in these two colours followed by the mud bath, could the weaver achieve a whole gradient of colours along a blue – red – black spectrum? Deeper colours are produced by dipping the yarn in the dye over and over again. However, the elderly weaver told me that the dip in sigira was done only once. The proof would be in experimenting with the dye baths, or listening to elderly weavers – of which few, anymore, know the dyeing tradition. None practise it anymore.

fig. 2. A weaver in Porsea holds up
the design type called  Antakantak

 

2.     Special, in this region, is red-dyed ikat patterning in indigo-dyed yarn. I don’t think that the weaver was describing how this was done because she didn’t mention ikat – except to say in passing that she had taught all of her daughters how to make ikat. To yield this result, the yarn would be dyed with indigo after the yarn was wrapped with ties to resist the dye. When the ties were removed and the yarn was dipped in the red or bangkudu dye, the spared bits would turn red (fig. 2) (see also Legacy in cloth, p. 305 Fig. Cat 5.6b). The question that arises here is whether the weaver would submerge even the blue parts of the yarn in the red dye, thus dyeing it both blue and red, or whether she would bind off the blue part? Given the colour variation in old cloths, they may have practised both strategies.

 

3.     How important and prevalent was the use of the iron-rich water when dyeing in this region? As the weaver mentioned, it would turn clothing yellow. Certainly, many red cloths from this region have a deep maroon-chocolate colour (fig. ) e.g. Legacy in cloth, p. 268, 278). This could be from tanins, but also from the iron in the water.

 

fig. 3 resist-dyed ends of the Sangkarsangkar ulos

I became very excited when the weaver remembered that a resist dye technique had been followed to make the ‘white ends of a cloth’. This is evident in fig. 3. It was also sometimes practised when making the most extraordinary cloth from the region, the Pinunsaan (Legacy in cloth p. 363), but also other weavings with white ends, such as the Simpar (p. 300 Legacy in cloth). However, I had never met a weaver who was familiar with the process. This weaver in SiLaen was able to let me know that the end (of the warp, not the whole cloth) was dibungkus or tied off using part (leaves?) of the banana tree. The reed-like sungkit could be used as well. It is easier just to sew a white piece of ulos onto the middle section to produce white ends in the cloth, and this is done in 'morden times'. It is unclear whether the resist dye technique was always practised in the past to achieve this design result. This would be consistent with the deep Batak conviction that the warp should not be broken, but rather continuous.

 

The weaver also remembered the use of hori, a nettle plant that Batak weavers used to make a coarse fabric. I had never been able to find first-hand information about the use of this fiber. The fibres, if anything like the nettles in the Northern hemisphere, were probably quite long. She mentioned that they were knotted (dipuduni) probably end to end to produce a long yarn, and then wound up using the spinning wheel. To my knowledge there is only one hori in a museum collection, a coarse and simple cloth.

 

Violence by Definition

Designer and decolonial thinker, Pierre-Antoine Vettorello, together with his team, has made a Zine called 'The Yarn' devoted to decolonial dialogue on violence in the fashion school. I responded to their call with the following piece on the classic definition of fashion. The Zine was launched in December 2023.

Niessen, S. Violence by Definition. The Yarn [Zine] Issue 1. Antwerp, Belgium. 2023

Image by Adrian Vieriu-11625609 Creative Commons

 I have increasing difficulty with the definition of Fashion that has held course for so long: ‘rapid style change’. It is the essential part of a longer definition that was whittled down further every time another component of it proved false.  Finally only ‘style change through time’ remained and it seemed to sufficiently capture the essence of what was needed. In 1904 Georg Simmel wrote, “Fashion does not exist in tribal and classless societies.” This was the caveat, usually unwritten, that undergirded ‘style change through time’. The definition supported a West-Rest dichotomous hierarchy.

I never attended a school of Fashion. I am an anthropologist but ended up teaching in a Department of Clothing and Textiles in Canada where a significant proportion of the students aimed for a career in Fashion. I was writing a book then, one of the earliest non-Western histories of dress (Batak Cloth and Clothing: A dynamic Indonesian Tradition, 1993). The ‘style change through time’ definition was in the textbook that I was teaching from at the same time. Needless to say, I felt rather uncomfortable. Cultural relativity is the central pillar of modern anthropology. I liked to compare dress systems in terms of their respective, unique dynamics. It was confusing to me to be in a field that drew an arbitrary line between West and the Rest. Within a university, no less! I perceived a 19^th century bias, with no bother having been spent to scrutinize it and no intent on verifying it. It drove a fundamental wedge between me and my colleagues.

 

At the turn of the millennium the fashion world was slowly coming to agree that styles in India and Japan also seemed to exhibit ‘change through time’ and could perhaps be accepted into the Fashion fold. That didn’t make me feel much better. I wondered who the gate-keepers were and why these conclusions were being accepted without any self-reflexive analysis of the fence around Fashion’s fold.

 

‘Style change through time’. Innocent enough: a parade of lovelies. It was the gatekeeping that was exclusionary and unjust. It was the implicit power hierarchy, the dominance.  How and when was the definition applied?  On the face of things easy enough to fix: just acknowledge the universality of style change through time. But no, the definition was the flag on a colonial ship. There was that caveat untried but treated as true: “Fashion does not exist in tribal and classless societies.”  The conceptual violence had consequences.

 

As the Fashion industry expanded exponentially, we badly needed a conceptual revolution to curb it but instead ‘sustainability’ was being seen through the same materials-only lens that was ground for the definition of Fashion. Again the focus was on the styles: the fibres, and the industrial processes and energy used to make them. And then there was the after-thought: there should be better pay for slave labour. Here wasn’t just the materials-only lens, but the familiar in-built hierarchy. The implicit racism in the definition of fashion had never been fully and thoroughly debunked. How could industrial Fashion ever be sustainable when slave labour enables it and it expands through the exploitation of their traditions? I began to perceive the definition of ‘style change through time’ as both pernicious and insidious. I came to understand it as an invitation to put one’s head in the sand, to willfully close one’s eyes to protect the status quo. A definition so seemingly innocent, so apparently a-political, so focused on the lovely. How could one possibly rebel against bows and ribbons? As innocuous as pablum.

 

I learned to see the violence as not just against the peoples who had been pushed out of the Fashion boat -- except insofar as they were forced into slavery to make Fashion items for their oppressors and give up their own traditions. I perceived willful negation and erasure of the existence of non-Fashion and their makers and wearers. Racism can be as subtle as it is pervasive. ‘Style change through time’.

 

I think of my students. Some swallowed the definition of ‘style change through time’ whole, to regurgitate it on exams, and others who had come to Canada to try to make it in the global Fashion arena were quiet. What did the definition cost them? What did it reinforce? What latitude did they have to address the feelings that it called up?

 

As more time passes I am experiencing the hottest summer in the history of humankind. Global emergency is teaching me to see Fashion violence through a broader lens, violence in which we are all complicit. We struggle to understand why we have arrived at such a terrible zenith of Fashion over-production, over-consumption, use of toxins and build-up of waste. Now the definition ‘style change through time’ reveals the full extent of its capacity to blinker. It fixes attention on a parade of designs while Fashion is really what is happening behind the scenes. Cultures of dress everywhere in the world, including the West, are the victims of industrial Fashion predation. We, the consumers and users, are rendered complicit in the destruction of the biosphere. We have become the extension of our body coverings co-opted by industry and economics. We have become ensnared in the innocence of our own definition, sacrificed by our own game. We have joined all that has been exploited by industrial Fashion.

 

The scales loosen from our eyes gradually, but a way out of the trap is hard to find. Caught as hamsters in a wheel, we learn to see Fashion as a process in which we victimize and are victimized by complicity. How to stop that wheel?

 

I propose we start with a new definition: 

 

Fashion is ecologies of dress and bodily adornment through which we express our relationships with our environments.

 

It is a universal definition that avoids the dualism of Fashion haves and have-nots, ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’, exploiters and exploited. It offers a level playing field: we are all in this together. It emphasizes process, the materials of fashion being but a visual epiphenomenon. Most of all, it emphasizes connections and interactions in all of their complexity (ecologies). Environments are plural and multi-dimensional. 

May this definition liberate and transform understandings, offer a pluriverse of ways out. 

It turns out that we are the gatekeepers. Let us get up on the bridge and run the colonial ship aground.

Our Common . Market: Some Background

 I presented this text during the webinar, 'Expanding the Frontiers of Commoning,' 16 November 2023, with the Schumacher Center for a New Economics

 

I would like to tell you about OurCommon.Market, a collection and platform of fashion commons being developed by the activist group, Fashion Act Now, or FAN, headquartered in London, England. 

You are probably already scratching your head. Fashion commons? Now, if you are thinking, “Isn’t Fashion all about showing off, and supporting, hierarchies of status and power?” you would be right. ‘Fashion commons’ appears to be a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. I hope I will be able to alleviate some of this cognitive dissonance during the next 10 minutes.

At FAN we work on dismantling the Fashion system. But first, a bit about working within FAN. Participating in this activist group I have been excited to experience how a whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. What I want to share today is very much the fruit of FAN discussions and working together; it is impossible to pinpoint the boundaries between the thinking of our individual members and that of the whole group. Many of the ideas that I will be sharing are the result of ‘group discussions’; our ideas are constructed and held in common. As we agitate for what we call ‘de-Fashion’ (i.e. degrowth, sustainability and radical fairness in clothing systems) we try very hard to learn and practice what it means to be a knowledge commons. None of us is an expert in commoning. We are learning while doing. 

The place for me to start to explain Our Common Market is with the distinction that underlies all of our thinking in FAN, namely, the difference between what we call big and little-f Fashion. If ‘Fashion Commons’ was an oxymoron for you, that is because you have big-F Fashion in mind. Not surprisingly! Most people only know big-F Fashion because it has been the dominant system of clothing production and consumption on the planet since long before all of us were born. 

Recently people have been raising their voices to decry Fast Fashion as 'Fossil Fuel Fashion' pointing out that this highly damaging form of Fashion is enabled by fossil fuels --not just for production but also for synthetic fibres. We at FAN agree, but we go much further. We point out that ALL of Industrial Fashion is Fossil Fuel Fashion. Since its inception in the Industrial Revolution in the early 19^th Century the entire trajectory has been enabled by fossil fuels, starting with coal-powered steam engines. The use of those fossil fuels has increased exponentially and Fast Fashion is only the latest stage in the trajectory.

While fossil fuels have been the true engine of industrial Fashion, Fashion theorists attributed the uniqueness of the clothing system in the West, instead, to a higher stage of cultural evolution, to a more sophisticated civilization, to racial superiority. In short, the sheer power of fossil fuels went straight to our heads and puffed up the ego of the West. The term ‘Fashion’ was co-opted for the clothing of rich sophisticates who could afford rapidly changing styles, while the rest of the world ‘merely’ had clothing rooted in tradition and slow to change. 

So there you have it, the dark side of Fashion lurking behind every catwalk and Fashion magazine: the vertical binary: the Industrial forms versus the non-Industrial forms. That simple. And thus Fashion has been celebrated while all other clothing forms, including peasant, tribal, and foreign, have been erased, ignored, undermined, plundered, and considered unimportant and bound to disappear.

I think you can see where this is going: On the one hand: the unseen, erased, carbon-sequestering, local, small-f fashion expressions  and on the other: the  growth-based, destructive, Industrial Fossil Fueled Fashion that has ballooned out to dominate the clothing scene worldwide, with FAN's interest in 'fashion commons' relating to small-f fashion expressions.

Of course the thinking of most of us has been dominated by Industrial big-F Fashion, informed by: what the shops are filled with, catwalks, fashion magazines, the styles of the rich and famous, and on and on. Small-f fashion doesn’t even appear as a blip on the screen, except maybe when dubbed ‘handicraft’. This blinkered view of big-f Fashion also dominates the framework of sustainability in Fashion, which is entirely oriented to reforming the Industry! We, at FAN, place little hope in the industry becoming ‘sustainable’, because it is growth-based and fossil-fuel based and, by definition, rooted in the unfairness of erasing small-f fashion expressions.

Long, thoughtful, soul-searching discussions amongst FAN members have led us to a fork in the road. Would we choose the Extinction Rebellion kinds of strategies of visible and audible protest against the Fashion industry, or would we choose the path of building and supporting alternatives to big-f Fashion? With the wise counsel of David Bollier in our ears, and the clear-sightedness of Sara Arnold, our co-ordinator, we chose for building and encouraging alternatives: in other words, to showcase small-f fashion. And this makes us unique as activists for a better fashion world. There are many other groups brilliantly critiquing the Fashion Industry. Make no mistake, the Fashion industry MUST BE dismantled for the well being of people and planet. But here’s the thing: when Big-F Fashion comes down, little-f fashion has to be there. Ready. Resilient. Regenerative. Small and Beautiful; Free, Fair and Alive.

Hence: OurCommon.Market, the interactive platform that we are building to connect, encourage and support small-f fashion expressions. This includes a whole array of community groups that repair, share and repurpose their clothes, farm to fashion initiatives like Fibershed (now in many countries, not just the States where it started), The Linen Project in The Netherlands, groups reviving or maintaining their clothing heritage, such as communities in the Ukraine that have produced and decorated clothing from homegrown flax and wool for generations, and so on and so on. Zoe Gilbertson, one of our FAN members, is researching bio-regional bast fibre knowledge, and is plugged into its revival in the UK. Another member, Ariel Fabbro, has constructed the website, Cobbled Goods, to profile sustainable shoes made with respect for nature.

We have constructed ground rules -- we call them the ‘Common Code’ -- for participation in Ourcommon.Market so that the communities that we on-board are not big-f Fashion wannabees waiting for their chance to ‘scale up’, but function, rather, as commons, in which the common good and fairness, not profit and growth, are central. 

We hope to offer a forum that will eventually generate a significant groundswell. Will Our Common Market result in some kind of solidarity? Will the communities learn from each other and support each other? Can we collectively become a commons of commons, or a kind of what David Bollier called "a vibrant Republic of Commoners"? That’s what we hope and aim for. 

Our path will be made by walking on it. We have to trust to the group dynamics that will take place. We know that many challenges lie ahead. They will need to be solved iteratively, within and through our communities, through trial and error, and through deep discussion: differences of language and culture; differences of vision and strategy, will need to be bridged.

Inside and outside Europe there are countless groups struggling to keep their clothing traditions alive. We want to serve, not just as an alternative to big-f Fashion, but also as an antidote, by providing a space where small-f fashion communities can find each other, support each other, shine, feel pride, revive and flourish. In short, to re-emerge from two hundred years of erasure. 

The loss of these systems is not something to shrug off, and feel that they are doomed by modernity. It is absolutely crucial that they be supported:

1.    First, they provide alternative understandings of how fashion can operate for the good of communities -- and this is desperately being sought now by Fashion reformists in the Northern nations.

2.    Second, they are part of the process of becoming sustainable in the North. The process of being sacrificed by the continual expansion of big-f Fashion needs to be reversed. Small-f fashion needs to be granted the space to survive.

3.    Third, we hear so much about the loss of natural diversity and the 6^th Great Extinction. But cultural survival is a problem equally profound. That is also part of the polycrisis. Wade Davis made a prediction 15 years ago that, 

“Within a generation or two … we may be witnessing the loss of fully half of humanity’s social, cultural and intellectual legacy.” 

My time is up, but suffice it to say that I have found profound, even mind-blowing, meaning invested in indigenous Indonesian clothing systems maintained by indigenous cultural commons. Indigenous systems of dress, not just their appearance, but also how they are made and used, are imbued with what Schumacher referred to as ‘psychological structures’ and, in turn, are profoundly linked to cultural survival. I’d like to end, now, with a quote by Schumacher.

“The life, work, and happiness of all societies depend on certain 'psychological structures' which are infinitely precious and highly vulnerable. Social cohesion, co-operation, mutual respect and above all self-respect, courage in the face of adversity, and the ability to bear hardship - all this and much else disintegrates and disappears when these 'psychological structures' are gravely damaged. A  [person] is destroyed by the inner conviction of uselessness. No amount of economic growth can compensate for such losses.”

The ATBM Disaster is apparently about to strike Silalahi

 I remember the first time I saw Batak weavers at work in North Sumatra. The year was 1978. I was mesmerized watching the weft being threaded between the warp. I was privy to an act of creation; it felt like magic to see a cloth slowly come into existence from the skillful manipulation of a few yarns and sticks. 

 

It took me many years, decades even, to understand what I was seeing: the most efficient system of production that can be imagined. Batak weavers make ulos, ritual cloth of their culture. What they make may be understood as a kind of meeting point  of so many facets of their lives. It all comes together in a satisfying, sophisticated, unique, visual and material way in their ulos.

• While weaving the weavers are also looking after their household chores. They are teaching their daughters how to weave, and how to fit weaving into their daily lives. Between throws of weft, they cooking, clean, and look after the children. 
• They work in the dry season when they are free from duties in the fields. Weaving fits an annual schedule.
• Because they use local materials, they have to learn about trees and plants and their properties. They know which ones can serve as weaving equipment, yarns and dyes. Their bond with nature is profound and reciprocal. 
• The physical environment inspires almost all of the patterning that Batak weavers have invented. 
• The weavers weave together; they help each other through weaverly challenges by sharing ideas, skills, materials, insights, and successes, deepening their kinship and neighbourly bonds as they work. They share laughter and tears, stories and inspiration. 
• They also share and grow the specific language related to their technical skills and their unique equipment. 
• Their fruits of their looms were once indispensable for every aspect of their lives: for warmth and comfort, to announce social station and cultural identity, and social and ritual roles. 
• Imbued with spiritual powers, the cloths, and the way they were made, involved the maker, and later the wearer, in the spiritual complex that permeates every part of their lives. 

Totality was inscribed in every ulos: a woman’s personal, social, cultural and spiritual life, her heritage, her know-how and her skill. Ulos production was cultural reproduction of the most essential and efficient kind. The strategies of production honoured all of the elements in all of the weaver’s various environments. The cloths embodied respect, knowledge, caring and heritage. 

 

The world of pre-colonial Batak weavers exemplifies how commons work. ‘Commons’ are shared resources managed ‘in common’ by people. I learned to see the woven cloth as a kind of confluence of commons: overlapping and intersecting cultural commons. And I see reciprocity as a primary feature of cultural commons. Those who dip into it and take from it are the ones who also build, grow and store it. For example, the language used by Batak weavers is an knowledge commons; collectively they use it and at the same time build and maintain it through use. Weaving techniques and design are commons in which know-how, knowledge and memory are held and shared, used and added to. The physical environment that is used and maintained by the weavers is another and the ritual sphere yet another relative to which the weavings give and derive meaning. All of these commons are represented and inextricably woven together in a Batak ulos, a kind of total expression of Batak social, intellectual and spiritual life.  

 

In 1978 I was also witnessing weaving commons being eroded by enclosures. Enclosures are external forces that appropriate what is held in common, taking it out of the hands of the rightful stewards. The history of Batak weaving, since the Industrial Revolution and colonialism, may be framed as a succession of enclosures by outside forces. It is a familiar story the world over. 

 

For the Batak enclosures began with imported yarns and dyes in the 19^th Century. Weavers took both happily because the mechanized imports reduced their workloads. Nevertheless, that ease came at a greater cost than the money they paid for it. The imports generated relations of dependence on the market and also reduced the weavers’ reciprocal ties with the physical world: the trees, plants, insects, earth and water involved in making the yarns and dyes. Within a few generations the knowledge of making yarn and dyes was lost because this kind of knowledge is stewarded during hands-on doing. The imported yarns and dyes were just the beginning of the take-over by external markets. Cheap Western-style clothing eventually supplanted the traditional handloomed Batak clothing. Inevitably, many weavers retired their looms. The inroads that the external markets were making were also expressed in faster transportation networks. Heeding the dictates of the new markets, the weavers had to develop regional specializations to compete. Divisions of labour emerged. Weavers had to specialize in their knowledge of design and technique. In short, the market was forcing them to de-skill. It was no longer their village communities and local markets that were shaping their craft. Rather, distant market forces began to dictate what weavers wove. Government and industry brought in semi-mechanical looms with the rationale that these so-called ‘modern’ looms would allow weavers to produce faster and ostensibly earn more. The market focus was shifting weaving  away from cultural reproduction and towards speed of production and financial earnings. Working at the new looms was another part of the process of de-skilling and the loss of women’s space in their culture. Unused, the specialized vocabulary related to the ancient Batak technical heritage was not needed in the new looms. The entire conceptual system surrounding the making of a cloth shifted. The weavers no longer needed their special medium of communication that supported the unicity of their craft. The uniqueness of their craft was also giving way to standardized production. The new looms pulled them out of their homes and into hierarchical workshop settings where they occupied the lowest rungs as wage-earning labourers doing mindless, repetitive work according to the dictates of those higher up the ladder. Fashion ‘designers’ also had a role to play in this demotion of the social position of the weavers. Appropriating Batak designs to adapt them to fashion, the designers employed the weavers as mere labour. And as if that were not enough, do-gooders are now moving in with computer-generated designs. Once again, the rationale is that the new designs will ‘aid’ the weavers. At one time the unique Batak designs emerged from the village weaver commons. No one weaver was a designer, but the weavers collectively created unique designs by sharing and trying out ideas together. The unique Batak designs are expressions of a cultural commons. Today there is almost nothing left of that crucible. The weavers’ strongest ties are now with the market, and earning money has eclipsed the cultural facets of weaving almost entirely. All culturally unique facets of Batak weaving have slipped like sand through the fingers and been supplanted with the external market economy. The weavers themselves frequently complain that, while they know how to weave, they do not know how to weave their own traditions.

 

This is a familiar story. All of the time-saving and labour-saving strategies introduced have been a kind of net pulling the weavers into capitalist spheres of production. The art that once expressed the local environment now expresses  dependence on fossil fuels (for yarns, dyes, loom parts, marketing and new technologies). The confluence and congregation of commons symbolized by ancient Batak cloths no longer exists in the modern cloths. They now exemplify  how modernity can enclose indigenous commons. The work of weavers is no longer that dense and efficient reproduction of their culture.  It has been flattened and simplified into running after money, an aim propelled by joblessness and the need for cash.

 

Every Batak region, large and small, once had its own weaver commons: unique designs, unique features of loom and technique, unique kinship and political characteristics, rituals, beliefs and language. The variety of features made the Batak region around Lake Toba dynamic and interesting. But they have been almost entirely eroded by the broad brushstrokes of modernity that reduce it to one indistinct whole dominated by the quest for money and standardized looms.

 

Remnants of the rich, ancient tradition are left. In Silalahi, a bay at the Northern end of Lake Toba, and a village culturally allied with the neighbouring villages of Paropo and Tongging, weaving is distinctive with unusual techniques and ulos designs that appear to be unique in the world. While the erosive process of enclosures has been at work in this region, some of the ancient technical features of ulos are still intact. This has largely to do with the fact that the traditional looms used in this region have not (yet) been replaced by upright, semi-mechanical looms.  This is very special. The weavers of Silalahi need to be cherished, protected and encouraged. There are not many left, and most of them are elderly. 

 

I visited Silalahi again earlier this year (2023), I wanted to take a closer look at how the weavers use three heddle sticks in a single set of heddles. It is terribly complex technique, and terribly difficult to do -- so much more difficult than the mindless weaving that occurs on the upright semi-mechanical looms. The technique has never been documented or recorded. I had the great honour to be able to sit beside the loom of one of the very best weavers, a woman devoted to the Silalahi tradition, Sinta br. Sagala, Ny. Sidabariba, Op. Dita. Her son, Marvin Sidabariba, is equally devoted to maintaining his cultural heritage. Without many means and resources besides his heart, dedication and knowledge, he does all that he can to encourage the weavers in his village.

 

Recently Marvin told me that there is a government plan to bring semi-mechanical looms into Silalahi. A plan to be mourned. It fills me with deep sadness. It will mean the end of the unusual weaving techniques and resultant ulos designs, which make the Silalahi tradition unique in the world. Once again the looms are being introduced with the best of intentions: 'to increase weaver income’. But they will erode and gradually eliminate the remainder of what is unique in the Silalahi weaving tradition, which is still found in technique and design. Is there nobody in the government who understands how special the ancient knowledge and traditions are, and who can encourage these traditional elements? Why are the Silalahi weavers being pushed to work within a foreign weaving tradition? (The looms are of Western origin.) The weavers themselves are naïve and have few concerns about the impact of these foreign looms. They know how difficult and complex their techniques are, and they are correct in thinking that these techniques cannot be performed on simple, semi-mechanical looms. What they do not know, however, is that the owners of those semi-mechanical looms have no intention of replicating the unique techniques of Silalahi. In fact, they have neither knowledge nor concern about what is unique and ancient. They only want to make the designs easily and cheaply for sale and use them in fashion. Their looms will churn out cheaper products. The buyers, who also know nothing about the unique Silalahi tradition, will make their purchases based on cloth appearance and price. This has already happened throughout the Batak region. All in the seductive name of modernity.

 

And so something unique and beautiful in the world will slip away, unnoticed except by the handful of elderly weavers who are left and knowledgeable idealists like Marvin Sidabariba. The message to these weavers will be that the world does not care about their skill and art. 

 

I stand with Marvin.