A woman in a lilac libaas stands beside another in emerald green, leaning against a coral stone house. The photograph is from the 1970s. Nothing about it was remarkable at the time.
Traditional Maldivian dress hasn’t disappeared. It has retreated into wardrobes, weddings and official ceremonies, emerging only when an occasion calls for it – and those occasions are getting rarer.
Angel Shujau spoke to three Maldivians who never stopped wearing it every day. Niyaz, who wears his feyli deliberately inside out and asks people what makes one side the right one. Nadu, who started wearing libaas after watching her neighbours wear saris and thinking: why not us? And Muna, who wears it in memory of the women in her family who did the same, and gets mistaken for a foreign visitor because of it.
“They reminded me that tradition survives only when someone continues to practise it. Not when it is remembered. When it is worn.” https://maldivesindependent.com/arts-and-culture/the-clothes-we-left-behind-64af
