Bolivia Women's Pearl Wedding Fashion Jewelry 72

Bolivia Women's Pearl Wedding Fashion Jewelry.

By Aamir Mannan. 

Bolivian clothes are different in Potosí and Chuquisaca where, although the chola costume is sometimes used and adapted to the local culture, it isn’t truly representative of these two departments. Typical clothing in Potosí does still somewhat hail back to what the Incan Empire imposed in this area, as women use a long woolen tunic and their skirts are not wide or bell-shaped. These are almost always made of lamb’s wool or llama and alpaca fibers, died black, and have geometric designs embroidered around the bottom hem of the skirt, on the collar and on the wrists and the tunic is tied at the waist with a faja (wide belt) similar to that used by the Incan women, which is usually red. This is complemented by a cape of the same color with adornment along the borders, abarcas for shoes, and a very short-

brimmed hat in the shape of a bowl, surrounded by a leather tie. Men use straight pants, usually of a raw fiber or black color, a rectangular shirt (long or short-sleeved, according to the weather), also of a raw fiber color and made of wool, and a very colorful belt around their waists. The abarca is also their typical shoe and they wear a chulo (a knit cap with ear coverings) usually woven with geometric, zoomorphic or anthromorphic designs. Women carry their children, food, market produce and anything else they need to carry on their backs, wrapped in an aguayo, a very colorful woven sling made from woven fabric. Cholas in La Paz do too.

Typical Bolivian clothing in Chuquisaca is similar to what is used in Potosí, with variations only in the patterns with which the clothing is adorned, the weaving style, and the hat with is similar to a three-cornered hat with many colorful embroidered adornments, predominantly in red and ochre colors, with ribbons hanging from them. The radical difference can be seen in the men’s clothing as indigenous men from Chuquisaca use a very wide-legged straight pant that is cut short slightly below the knee, and a wool shirt under a colorful poncho with multicolored horizontal stripes. Their abarcas have a very thick, or high, sole with spurs (copied from the spurs worn by Spaniards when they rode horses), and theirs are the most interesting of all Bolivian hats, which resemble the Spanish iron armor helmet used by the Spanish conquerors.