Island Dresses

Island dresses were introduced by the missionaries when they came to Vanuatu. They are baggy, usually have scallop edged hems, may have little E-shaped bits of fabric called wings at the hips, and always, always, always come in a bright color. The mamas on my island wear them just about every day. As time goes on, an island dress that was good for church becomes only good for the house, and eventually, everything is only good for working in the garden. If you think of a Hawaiian muumuu, you won’t be far off, although the biggest style influences for island dresses currently come from Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and New Caledonia.

I don’t have a PNG style island dress, but their style is a loose hip length shirt with puffed sleeves over a skirt. Fiji style is similar but much more body conscious—the skirts really follow the line of the hips and the shirts are usually more tailored. Fijians do wear dresses, too, but they're more like new style Vanuatu dresses--puffed sleeves, no wing flaps. (In every Pacific fashion, by the way, skirts are long—usually around calf-length to floor length.) I don't know what the ladies up in the Solomons wear--I haven't actually met that many woman solomons!

What I do have are old style Vanuatu, new style Vanuatu, and a few New Caledonian island dresses. I’ve currently got about thirteen of them, all as gifts. I don’t wear them too much—only to church on Sundays or to important holiday events—but it was so sweet of everyone who gave them to me. I think right now I have three from Buninga, one from Makira, one from Emau, and the rest were given to me by people on Tongariki.

Here's an old style dress:

This is a pretty standard kind of dress. It's got a round neck (usually they're V necks, but not this time) and all the color on it is just fabric paint. It's baggy with big wings at the side. The photo is from swearing in; on the right is my friend Jen who lives on Tanna.

Here are a few newer style Vanuatu dresses:

This is a newer style island dress and a lot fancier than the one on top. Instead of having wings shaped like an E, it's got square wings. The square neck is also more stylish. It still makes me look like a house. This is me with my tawi Nerry at my counterpart's birthday party in March.

Here is New Caledonia style:

New Caledonia style has long bell-shaped sleeves. Usually it has a square neck, too; this one is not totally standard. If you look at the sides, right around my hands, you see square wings—that’s a new thing. Honestly, a lot of New Caledonian dresses don’t even have wings. Sometimes they don’t even have all that lace everywhere (although my one is admittedly decked out.) What they usually are, though, is flas (fancy, good looking, nice.) I’ve seen a fair number of NC dresses around town, and my counterpart has confirmed that they’re the newest popular style. My mom took this photo at Christmas.

There you go! Island fashion.