"I first got my custom baro't saya when I was 15 years old, when I had just graduated from girls' school. I was going to wear this dress to our family dinner party. But my grandmother insisted on embroidering my dress (saya) with a few feathers, a symbol of the Filipino spiritual world. I remember how delicate the feathers were embroidered, as if they could actually be touched on the light blue material. "
I asked my grandma, "why do you do this?""
She said, "this belongs to us.""