“From Pineapple to Pañuelo: Philippine Textiles” by textile historian Angela Hermano Crenshaw is on exhibit at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum
On an early winter night, a balmy summer breeze floats through New England. The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum in chilly Providence, RI, US unveils its latest exhibition, “From Pineapple to Pañuelo: Philippine Textiles,” on view from Dec. 7, 2024 to August 24, 2025.
Curated by textile historian Angela Hermano Crenshaw, “From Pineapple to Pañuelo: Philippine Textiles” focuses on piña—a cloth made of pineapple fiber from the Philippines. It’s also RISD Museum’s very first show with all-Filipino pieces.
“I originally took this class last spring 2023 that focused on East Asian fashion and culture,” recounts Hermano Crenshaw who is Filipino-American and a PhD student at the Bard Center in New York City. “I never had any classes to study materials related to the Philippines. This is part of my heritage, my culture.”
The lack of representation of Filipino culture in academic settings inspired her master’s thesis on colonial Filipino fashion and, now, this exhibition. Through “From Pineapple to Pañuelo: Philippine Textiles,” she aims to show the beauty and ingenuity of piña and how this fine fabric weaves together history from the Philippines, Spain, and the Americas.
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Piña’s beginnings
Piña is a hallmark of traditional Filipino attire. Today, Filipinos reach for billowy blouses (kamisas) and shirts (barong Tagalog) made of piña or abaca (a textile of banana fiber) to celebrate weddings, graduations, and baptisms. But, piña’s beginnings aren’t exclusively Filipino.
During the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines from 1565 to 1898, the Spaniards introduced the pineapple, originally from South America, to the Philippines. “This thing that’s become part of Filipino culture, the pineapple, is not originally from the Philippines,” Hermano Crenshaw explains. In 2024, the country is the second largest exporter of the fruit just behind Costa Rica.
As pineapple farming expanded in the archipelago under Spanish colonization, local communities integrated the crop with existing traditions and crafts. “People had been weaving out of abaca for a long time before the Spanish arrived, Hermano Crenshaw adds.”
Along with the pineapple, the Spanish brought in floor looms. At the time, Filipino weavers mostly used portable backstrap looms. With floor looms, young weavers experimented with new techniques for piña weaving. The practice’s popularity reached its apex in the 1800s.
In 1815, the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade ended, which led Filipinos to grow wealthier. Affluent Filipinos or ilustrados took to garments made of piña due to the fabric’s lightness and transparency relative to abaca clothes. Soon enough, associations between the fabric and that time’s elite formed.
The process of turning pineapples into pañuelos
There was another reason why the ilustrados could enjoy piña: It was—and still is—expensive to create. “Making piña garments is very time-consuming,” says Hermano Crenshaw. After scraping pineapple fibers using coconut husks or porcelain shards, weavers knotted each thread together by hand. “The fibers are too delicate to be spun like cotton.”
The process of producing piña fabric was mainly in Panay Island. Weavers, like those in Aklan and Iloilo, shipped the fabric to be embroidered or embellished in Luzon, particularly in the town of Lumban, Laguna. Before reaching the closets of the upper class, one piña blouse, handkerchief, or shawl (pañuelo) passed through multiple hands, towns, and cities in the Philippines.
In the 1800s, more Europeans and Americans flocked to the Philippines. “They were kind of shocked and scandalized by the transparency of piña,” Hermano Crenshaw chuckles. “But, at the same time, they were really intrigued by it and wanted to collect this textile.”
Visitors acquired piña in the Philippines and brought them home as souvenirs. Eventually, collections of piña—and even abaca—found their way to estates, archives, and museums across the United States.
Piña at the RISD Museum
While researching for her 70-page thesis in NYC, Hermano Crenshaw poured countless hours into reading articles and historical documents on piña. This process was slow and steady yet “From Pineapple to Pañuelo: Philippine Textiles” came together quickly. “I pretty much started working on that over the summer of 2024.”
In May and July, Hermano Crenshaw visited Providence—a four-hour train ride from NYC—to look at Philippine clothes and fabric samples at the RISD Museum. She also visited the Ayala Museum and the National Museum of Anthropology during a short trip to Manila. “Looking at pictures is very different from studying objects in person, especially with textiles. You need to look at all the details.”
The show’s curator, along with textile conservator Jess Ulrick, inspected different fabrics under a microscope. Though initially unfamiliar with this process, Hermano Crenshaw deemed it an essential step in curating the exhibition.
“There’s this problem in a lot of US museums where pieces of piña and abaca are confused,” she explains. When Americans collected piña and placed the fabric in museums, they often didn’t note the fabric type. “The American collectors back then just didn’t know.”
Another challenge of identifying piña is that fabric changes over time. The piña and abaca on display at the exhibition date back to the 1800s. “Things can happen to textiles over a hundred years old that’ll make them more brittle.”
Though fragile from weathering seasons and oceans, the piña pieces at the RISD Museum found their place in the spotlight. Hermano Crenshaw exclaims, “It’s rewarding to share this tradition that is not widely known outside the Philippines.”
Bringing heritage to the future
Currently, synthetic fabrics like nylon and polyester dominate the fashion industry around the world. Yet, piña persists. In 2023, UNESCO included Aklan piña handloom weaving in the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. UNESCO deems piña “a vehicle for innovation and creativity, as practitioners constantly develop new designs and patterns even as they preserve the old ones.”
Philippine-based designers and manufacturers now push the boundaries of traditional Filipino attire and textiles. Lulu Tan-Gan launched a collection exploring piña’s sensitivity to pressure and heat at the 2024 Red Charity Gala. Lakat uses pineapple-based cotton to create sustainable and stylish sneakers. The brand also collaborates with artists and designers, like Doktor Karayom, Liliana Manahan, Garapata, and Nazareno/Lichauco.
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Weaving together Filipino identity
At the RISD Museum, visitors gather around gauzy fabric from worlds away encased in glass. “From Pineapple to Pañuelo: Philippine Textiles” not only celebrates one facet of Filipino design but also educates American audiences about their country’s history. After all, the Philippines was an American colony from 1898 to 1946.
“Next, I want to explore people bringing back piña to the US, and then making them into American-style dresses,” Hermano Crenshaw says. “There are at least 10 examples in museum collections. Nobody’s really studied this before.” This textile might be a curious rarity stateside, but it’s as common as apple pie in the Philippines.
Piña often flutters in weddings, baptisms, and the Filipiniana section of air-conditioned Manila department stores. The fabric’s ubiquity in modern Filipino life shouldn’t discount its layered history. Like how individual pineapple fibers come together under a weaver’s hand, colonial influences, pre-colonial ingenuity, and global trade intersect to become something quintessentially Filipino.
“From Pineapple to Pañuelo: Philippine Textiles” is now on view at the RISD Museum in Providence, RI, USA from Dec. 7, 2024 to August 24, 2025.
