EVERYDAY LIFE IN BALI

COSTUME AND ADORNMENT

It is unfortunate that new fashions in dress are introducing a new sort of class-consciousness. Young elegants feel superior and “ emancipated “ from the old-style peasant class when they wear a Malay sarong, a tube of cloth worn snug at the back, folded in front in two overlapping pleats and held at the waist by a leather belt. With the sarong go a pair of leather sandals, a common shirt, too often with the tails outside, and a European-style coat. This is the costume of school-teachers, clerks, chauffeurs, and those in frequent contact with Europeans, who will, in the long run, set the fashion for the rest of the population.

All women in North Bali have worn the Malay blouse (badju) for over half a century, since they were ordered to wear blouses by official decree " to protect the morals of the Dutch soldiers." Women of the Southern nobility started to wear badjus, and the fashion is rapidly spreading all over Bali. The Balinese form of badju is clumsy and ill-fitting and does not suit the huskier Balinese women as it does the slim Javanese.

Many women cannot Afford more than one badju and often let it go without washing. A girl who looks elegant and noble in the simple and healthy dress of the country, appears vulgar when " dressed up " in a tight badju of cheap cotton, not always clean, usually worn pinned up at the breast with a rusty safety-pin.

Those accustomed to associate nudity with savagery often refer to the Balinese as " charming primitive people unconcerned with clothes," but however scant and simple their daily costume may be, they love dressing up, and for feasts they will wear as elaborate a dress as they can afford, or borrow one rather than appear poorly clothed to parade at the feast.

At temple feasts, weddings, and cremations one still sees middle-aged men in the elaborate ceremonial dress of former times: the white kamben with a trailing end, a rich piece of brocade (saput) tied over the breast with a silk scarf (umpal) in which is stuck the ancestral kris, weapon and ornament, the sheath of precious wood and ivory, the hilt of chiselled gold glittering with rubies and diamonds, crimson hibiscus over their ears.

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