The lower garment of the man is a pair of trousers, generally of native cotton and abaká fiber, reaching somewhat below the knees, with cotton embroidery in the above-mentioned colors on the sides and at the bottom. The ends of the draw string that holds the trousers in place hang down in front and are ornamented with tassels of the same colors.
The lower garment of the women is a doubled sacklike skirt of abaká fiber, almost invariably of a reddish color, with beautiful designs in horizontal panels or with a series of horizontal equidistant black stripes. A girdle of human hair or of plaited vegetable fiber, held in place with a shell button or with a plaited cord, retains this garment in place. The consequent gathering of the capacious opening of the skirt at the waist and the bulging out at the bottom (which is just a little below the knees), detracts not a little from the gracefulness of the Manóbo woman's figure. From the girdle hang, in varying number and quality, beads, hawk bells, redolent, medicinal, and magic seeds, sea shells, and fragrant herbs.
The hair is worn long by both sexes. It is dressed much like that of a Chinese woman except that it is twisted and tied up in a chignon on the crown of the head.
The man wears a long narrow bamboo hat which protects only the top of the head, and which is held on the head by two strings passing from end to end behind the ears. It usually has a plume of feathers standing up at right angles to the back part. The woman wears no hat as a general rule, but in lieu thereof adorns her head with a bamboo comb, at times inlaid with mother-of-pearl, at others covered with a lamina of beaten silver, but nearly always ornamented with decorative incisions. A pair of ear plugs with ornamental metal laminae are placed in the enlarged ear lobes.
I have seen men who had each ear lobe pierced in one or two places and small buttons fastened over the orifices, but I never saw a case of a Manóbo woman with any other perforation in the ears than the great aperture in each lobe for her ear disks.
Around the neck the woman wears in more or less profusion, according to her means and opportunities for purchase, necklets of beads, and necklaces of seeds, beads, shells, and crocodile teeth.
On her forearms she wears one or more sea-shell bracelets, circlets of black coral or of copper wire, and a close-fitting ringlet of plaited nito. This last adornment is also worn by men, who dispense with the use of other forms of bracelets, but who usually adorn the upper arm with a finely plaited ligature made of a dark fibrous vine. Both men and women frequently wear similar ligatures just below one or both knees. On solemn and festive occasions the woman decks her ankles with loose coils of heavy wire.
A square knapsack of hemp, frequently fringed with cotton yarn of many colors and suspended from the back by strings passing over the shoulders and under the arms, constitutes the man's receptacle for his chewing paraphernalia. It may be more or less elaborate in beadwork and embroidery, but as a rule there is no ornamentation of this kind.
Both sexes blacken the lips with soot black, and continually keep them more or less in that condition by the use of a large quid of tobacco, mixed with lime and máu-mau juice, the whole being carried between the lips. This mixture serves not only as an indispensable and pleasing narcotic, but also as the principal factor in bringing about the complete and permanent staining of the teeth.
In order that "they may not look like dogs," both sexes have the upper and lower incisors ground at an early age. They proceed at once to stain what is left with frequent applications of the above-mentioned masticatories.