Māori: The OGs of Slow Fashion

By Cameron McCausland-Taylor

The fast fashion vs slow fashion debate has been a hot topic for a while now. Fast fashion typically means cheaper, unethically made, mass-produced options, with the trend cycle meaning a lot of these clothes end up in landfills. To contrast, we have slow fashion, with individual pieces created by hand, resulting in a higher price and higher quality. In Aotearoa, Māori are the true OGs of the slow fashion industry. Tbh, you could say we invented it.

Migrating to Aotearoa from Hawaiki, Awhina Tamarapa and Patricia Wallace share how Māori came equipped with skills in cord-making, knotting, netting and weaving (Te Ara, 2013). With them, they also bought the aute plant, which they used to make their clothes out of in their previous tropical climate. However, they had to adapt their clothing to the chilly climate of Aotearoa, with aute not suitable in our soil. They looked elsewhere for resources from the plants, birds, and mammals, using the likes of harakeke, whanake, moa, kākāpō, and kurī skin. Looking back in Māori history, two key components that are essential to traditional Māori fashion are the whatu kākahu and pounamu, specifically the iconic hei tiki.

Whatu kākahu means Māori cloaks, used in Māori culture for both functionality and prestige. As told by Tamarapa (2011) in the pukapuka Whatu Kākahu: Māori Cloaks, kākahu were worn about or over the shoulders, wrapping the wearer’s entire tinana. These ataahua pieces clothed Māori as everyday wear, a custom which has since faded. However, they are still used as markers of cultural pride, prestige and whakapapa, as well as Māori believing these kākahu are a form of protection.

Kākahu were commonly divided into two types; the practical, protective rain cloaks, and the prestigious and intricately woven kākahu worn by ariki, tohunga and rangatira. The rain cloaks were made to be bristly and durable, made by tying pieces of material to a whenu (warp thread) base. A range of different types of rain kākahu were made out of material such as harakeke, pātītī and neinei, crafted in such a way that the wearer would be guarded from the wind and that rain would glide off the materials. The more prestigious kākahu include the likes of kāhu kurī (cloaks made of dogskin), the kaitaka (a silky cloak polished off with a tāniko/patterned border), the korowai (covered in falling hukahuka threads) and the kahu huruhuru (a cloak made of an abundance of feathers).

Nowadays, we are thankfully seeing a huge resurgence in Māori weaving. While individuals did pass on their skills to others for decades leading up to the 1980s, Toi Te Rita

Maihi (2011) said these individuals typically worked in isolation. It was in 1982 when the exceptional Ngoingoi Pewhairangi formed the Aotearoa Moana Nui a Kia Weavers, which led to the establishment of Te Roopu Raranga Whatu o Aoteroa (the national Māori weavers’ collective). The kaupapa has continued to blossom, with a huge number of avenues available to explore the art of Māori weaving across the motu.

Next in Māori fashion, we have the hei tiki pounamu, explored in great detail by Dougal Austin in his 2019 pukapuka Te Hei Tiki: An enduring treasure in a cultural continuum. While pounamu and taonga come in a range of forms, Austin quotes the hei tiki being the “most highly esteemed and culturally iconic”, due to its long history and cultural endurance. Hei tiki are also revered for their emotional ties, eliciting the memory and spiritual aura of tīpuna of the past. These complex forms of taonga are believed to be the most challenging to create by hand both in ancient and modern times, with Austin talking of the extensive labour carvers put into shaping the pounamu into the necessary shapes. From there, it took a further 250 hours, sometimes even MORE, to construct the hei tiki into its final form, with the intention to create sturdy pieces that could be passed down for generations. Talk about slow fashion, āe? Traditionally, it was Māori tāne who often wore hei tiki, seen through observing the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, it was the wāhine who were the common wearers. Austin shares how this was a possible response to the declining Māori population, with the usage of hei tiki often associated with the goddess of childbirth and fertility, Hine-te-iwaiwa.

Just like Pākeha loved to colonise land, they also loved (and still love) to colonise hei tiki. From the 1890s to the present, the colonial lens of hei tiki persisted through cultural appropriation, such as imitation hei tiki being made in the thousands for non-Māori adornment from the end of the nineteenth century onwards. These non-Māori, mass-produced pieces of kaka were seen as colonial fashion accessories or ‘Māori good luck charms’. This is an example of fast fashion at its finest; lower quality, mass-produced items, this time tainted with the sour taste of colonization and appropriation. It takes absolutely no account for the high artistic talents needed for this mahi and serves to cheapen the art form of hei tiki, playing no part in ensuring that hei tiki is reinforced and maintained for future generations. Not all hope is lost, however. Austin’s pukapuka sheds a light on the hei tiki artists who have put the mahi in to making sure the hei tiki art form lives on and is cultivated properly, including the likes of Charles Wilson, Fayne Robinson, Rangi Kipa, and Areta Wilkinson, to name a few.

While we focus on slow fashion in the modern world from a sustainable perspective, Māori weavers and carvers handmade each piece with an intention to convey specific meanings, narratives and whakapapa, depending on who and what the piece was for. These artists can often look at a piece and determine things such as their time period and tribal locality, showing just how incredibly valuable whatu kākahu and the hei tiki pounamu are as art forms to Māori culture. They provide a glimpse into the past and act as evidence of the skill, talent and efforts of our tīpuna. As Maihi said, “these garments can assist us in a clearer understanding of the past, which may provide pathways to the future”. That’s something fast fashion can never touch.

Glossary:

Aute – paper mulberry

Harakeke – flax

Whanake – cabbage tree leaves

Kurī - dog

Whatu kākahu - Māori cloaks

Pounamu – greenstone & greenstone pendants

Pukapuka - book

Tinana – body

Ataahua – beautiful

Whakapapa - ancestry

Ariki - Māori chief or high priest

Tohunga – chosen expert

Rangatira – highly ranked chief

Pātītī - tussock grass

Neinei – grass tree

Motu – country

Taonga - treasure

Tīpuna - ancestors

Āe - yes/yeah

Tāne - men

Wāhine - women

Mahi – work