Whence
Manila shawl (mantón de Manila)
Fashion

Where does Manila shawl (mantón de Manila) come from?

Despite its name, the Manila shawl comes from China: these square silk shawls were embroidered in Canton, today's Guangzhou, and Macau for export. Ships carried them to the Spanish world by way of Manila, and in Spain they became part of festive and flamenco dress.

Embroidered in Canton

Silk never became an established industry in the Philippines; silk fabrics remained a Chinese monopoly. In the 18th century workshops in Canton and Macau began producing large quantities of painted or embroidered silk purely for export to the Philippines and on to the Spanish colonies and Europe. Each design was drawn on paper, pricked and transferred to the silk, then filled in with flowers, birds and butterflies in shaded silk stitches, and the knotted silk fringe was tied by hand.

From Spanish shoulders to the dance

The shawls first crossed the Pacific with Manila's trade to the Americas, and in the early 19th century direct sailings between Manila and Spain made them more popular there. When fashion left women's shoulders bare, Spanish women found the shawl a perfect wrap, and it also decorated grand pianos and sofas. Later, workshops in Spain also embroidered shawls in the Chinese style, with denser, brighter flowers for European tastes and ever longer fringes that swing as a woman walks or dances.

Why people think of Manila

The name comes from the port through which the shawls reached the Spanish world: after 1734 Spain required silk from China to pass through Manila. The shape had a Philippine model too. Women there wore square shawls folded into a triangle, and Chinese makers copied the fringes they saw on Philippine shawls. But the silk shawls themselves were made in China, and as the Victoria and Albert Museum notes, such fringed shawls were never part of the Chinese clothing tradition.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org ↗ · es.wikipedia.org ↗ · collections.vam.ac.uk ↗

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