COAT OF MANY COLOURS

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 May 1927, Page 3

COAT OF MANY COLOURS

SUNDAY AT LA PAZ, La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, lies in a ravine 13,000 feet up among the Andes. Snow-covered peaks overlook the town, which stands on both sides of the ravine. Along the bottom of the ravine runs a river on its way to the Amazon and Atlantic, and byits side a road winds down into the fruit and forest lands of the lower slopes. Up this road on Sunday morning come the Indian peasants driving pack mules to market, writes A.W.D. in the “Morning Post.” The market is held in the streets of the town, the vendors sitting on the kerbstones or the doorsteps of the houses with their wares spread before them. One street sells seeds, another clothes, and a third flowers. But at first a stranger has no eyes for anything that is being sold. He can only look at the brilliant costumes of the people. More aniline dyes must surely be sold in La Paz than in any other town of its size in the world. In fact, one corner of the market is devoted to the dyes. They are arranged in rows of little boxes and look like native medicines.

The favourite colour for skirts and mantles is the brightest orange. This is also much used for the men’s ponchos. Bright green, purple, and red are also fashionable, and a Combination of three or four tints is usually worked into the complete costume. The people dye, spin, and weave their own clothes, and as the nights at this altitude are cold they wear a series of woollen garments one over the other, each more gaudy than the last. Ti e men wear 'a poncho—that is a blanket with a slit in the middle to put the head through—and the women a shawl or mantle thrown round the shoulders and fastened with an elaborate silver pin at the breast. Over the mantle is slung the quepi—a blanket, usually brilliantly striped, in which the baby is carried. The baby is wrapped in a velvet and lace shawl before being placed in the quepi, and when the woman is sitting down selling her fruit or flowers, the baby is often lying in his velvet shawl by her side.

No colours are too brilliant for eitheP men or women, except as regards hats. Here they all conform to a rigiflly plain style, either a brown or black* felt, or in the case of the better class of women, a shiny white straw with an exaggerated crown about a foot and a half high. This is the most, absurd-looking headgear ever invented, but the young “cholas” tilt the hat so knowingly to one side and wear them with so jaunty an air that one soon accepts them as a necessary part of the picture. One of the most fascinating corners of the market is the street of the fruit sellers. The fruit is displayed in a kind of nest of hay, and the melons, oranges, limes, chirimoyas, and tomatoes are not more brilliant or more varied in hue than the dresses of the vendors squatting in a row behind.