Fashion

Very little clothing is produced on the isle of Timor.  Loom made Ceremonial garb and alterations to school uniforms happen here. There are a couple of Shi-Shi boutiques catering to the upper class of the Timorese community and a couple of suit tailors I have seen.  Past that everything is imported.  Usually donated or bought remaindered and sold in great thrift store style Mercados.  This means a great cross section of styles and different cultural fads end up here. The Timorese are used to having shirts with symbols and patterns that do not fit into their culture and instead seem to pick clothes based on size cut and color.This makes mass and festas an interesting place to attend.

  It is not unusual to see the catuas in front of me at church wearing a cream colored polyester disco shirt covered in leering Jolly Rogers with sequin eyes.  One of the deacons (alter boys?) wears a button down with a huge Woody woodpecker on the back.  The girls are in the same boat and, at least in Tibar, the younger ones make their clothing decisions based on shiny and revealing.  Often the teenage girls are wearing dresses that are more suited to the clubs I went to in the early nineties.  One young lady hit the jack pot and wore a white pleather dress that put me in mind of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. 

Older women stick to flowered dresses or showy skirt and blouse combinations.  Even to the grandmothers shiny, being metallic or bedazzled, is much prized.  My first week in church two older sisters were thrilled to show off what can only be described as matching bridesmaids dresses from a very angry bride. Think of Micheal Jackson’s glove except pink ,and a dress.

A funny aside.  The middle class urban Joven consider wearing clean shirts with English lettering a status symbol, even though they cannot read it.  One of our volunteers keeps a list of shirts she has seen that make her laugh.  The winner by far was a young motor cycle tough with black leather boots and a chain around his neck wearing an oversized evergreen t-shirt with the pink lettering “I’m a woman of many moods and all of them love chocolate.”

And myself?  Well my mom, the best mom, sent me some pants that fit.  I filled in the rest of my wardrobe form the greatest treasury of weird fashion I have ever seen.  At every turn in the Mercado are loud shirts the likes of which I have never seen.  The Timorese call Loud shirts Festa shirts.  The louder the better.  Most people here can’t buy in my size so these shirts have been building up.  With my new per diem I find myself like a kid in a candy shop.  Will I buy the embroidered green and red satin dragon shirt with the reall brass and bamboo buttons?  Can I pass up the linen shirt with the gold inlay of the crying Indian from the pollution ads of the late eighties?  Shall I exploit nostalgia and buy a faded “Where’s the Beef” hoodie?  Or is it Irony I want with the full 7-11 uniform?  They are only a dollar apiece!  I must take them all!

            Do I wear these to work?  Of course not, it is all short sleeved polyester for me when I am working.  Jumar has even lent me a pocket protector because we have a pen explosion problem.  But my nightlife…  It’s going to be epic