MANILA, Philippines – Once a coveted status symbol among stylish Spanish women at the height of the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade, the manton de Manila is getting a 21st-century makeover from 19 artists within and outside the fashion industry.

As the subject of its ongoing exhibit, “Draped in Silk: The Journey of the Manton de Manila,” which runs until December 29, the Yuchengco Museum on Ayala Avenue focuses on the manton—that large, embroidered silk shawl with long fringes.

Featured artists include Steve de Leon, Jean Goulbourn, Katrina Goulbourn, Danilo Franco, Amina Aranaz, Margarita Fores, Dan Lichauco, Araceli Dans, Michelline Syjuco, Maxine Syjuco, George Tapan and Wyg Tysman.

Their respective takes on the manton reflect the medium they’re most comfortable in. Thus, we see the likes of Franco and De Leon doing shawls and various articles of clothing reminiscent of the manton, but with a difference.

Vibrant images

Franco, one of the industry’s best illustrators, used a combination of piña and jusi silk from La Union as his medium for acrylic illustration featuring vibrant images of roses and roosters.

For his second piece, he used a more muted color palette as he drew inspiration from a Juan Luna painting.

De Leon favored piña silk embroidered and appliquéd with intricate pieces inspired by the Spanish fan, another iconic piece of the period. He also did a tapestry of a collage of banana, jusi and piña with fringes, birds and flowers, which mirrored his trademark origami technique.

“I applied these various techniques and inspirations to produce a wedding gown,” says De Leon. “The manton de Manila and abanico (Spanish fan) were also popular accessories in the Philippines in the 18th and 19th centuries. To give my manton a twist, I used piña silk in white and beige instead of the usual black.”

Others, like Fores, a restaurateur, chose to go out of their comfort zones. Instead of food, for example, Fores chose to express herself through her floral arrangement inspired by bright blooms typically embroidered on a manton.

Fores chucked the usual Dangwa blooms in favor of bright red flowers that grow abundantly in the countryside. Apart from red achuete fruits and wild berries, her floral arrangement includes rubias, wax flowers and green palm components that mimic the manton’s fringes.

She juxtaposed them with rusty scrap metal and found objects like chips of tree bark to lend some tension to the arrangement. Unlike most of the pieces, Fores’ work needs to be maintained once a week for it to remain fresh.

“Working with flowers is instantaneous,” she says. “It can’t be repeated and doesn’t have a recipe. On a deeper level, the floral arrangement is my interpretation of what makes a Filipino unique.”

“We’re gregarious like Latinos, but we’re a bit restrained like Malays,” she adds. “We’re ingenious and resourceful, which I guess comes from being part Chinese, but we’re also modern and edgy because of what the Americans taught us.”

Private collections

Their reinterpretations, which also include framed photographs, visual art pieces, fashion accessories and home vignettes, are interspersed with vintage mantons on loan from private collections such as those of curator Sonia Ner and the Yuchengco Foundation.

“Mantons really originated from China,” said writer and Yuchengco Museum curator Jeannie Javelosa. “Since they arrived in Spain via the Philippines, they eventually became known as manton de Manila.”

These and other iconic but hard-to-find items were staples during the galleon trade, which saw the unprecedented exchange of products as well as ideas between the Philippines and the rest of the world.

Products from the Orient intended for Spain and the rest of Europe went through the Philippines before they were shipped to Mexico and eventually to Spain. Products from Spain intended for the Philippines and other Asian countries went through the same route, but in an opposite direction.

Apart from reinventing the manton, the exhibit aims to project its origin and the vital role the Philippines played as repository of Oriental art and commerce in the Spanish era.

A section of the museum is devoted to galleon trade, with maps and routes taken by these merchant vessels as they crossed the high seas loaded with goods from either Asia or Europe.

Javelosa and her collaborators try to present a parallelism between Chinese—as seen in the mantons—and Philippine embroidery. This is to show that the country, although perhaps not as sophisticated as China back then, also had a rich tradition of embroidery.

An entire story line of native embroidery on piña and jusi is displayed in glass cases at the museum’s mezzanine, most of it from private collections.