Woman’s Skirt (liku)

Woman’s Skirt (liku)

Fiji, 1830s

Pandanus leaf, swamp sedge, grasses, and hibiscus bast
Smithsonian Institution, Department of Anthropology, E4524-0
Collected in 1840 during the United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes

EX.8785.223 Photo (c) Museum Associates/ LACMA

In the nineteenth century, high-status married women wore elaborate fiber skirts, or liku, such as the two examples shown here. Young girls reaching puberty wore small liku after the genital area, and sometimes hips and upper thighs, was tattooed. Tattoos (qia) were applied by female specialists using small adzes with blades of thorns, turtle shell, or bone dipped into a black pigment.