Walking down a busy Cebu sidewalk in full pre-colonial Visayan attire naturally turns heads. Commuters steal second glances and jeepney passengers peer out of open windows.
For visual artist, illustrator and cultural researcher Sharrie Gail Villaver — known professionally as Sharrie — that pause is neither an inconvenience nor a spectacle. It is an open door.
“I’d take comments like ‘asawa ni Lapulapu’ anytime, or even just ‘Sinulog,’” she said. “I understand that not everybody was taught about the pre-colonial era in school, and I wasn’t either. So it’s pretty normal for me when people don’t immediately understand what we’re wearing.”
In a cultural landscape where traditional Filipino garments are often kept in storage bins until Buwan ng Wika or displayed behind museum glass, Sharrie belongs to a growing circle of young Visayan creatives asking a simple question: Why should our ancestors’ clothing remain a costume?
From choir to cutting table
Sharrie’s love for advocacy did not begin overnight. It began in junior high school, when she joined a choir that competed internationally and frequently performed folk songs with traditional instruments.
On the festival circuit, she shared stages and dressing rooms with traditional dance troupes and choirs from different parts of the Philippines and the world, all wearing their own traditional garments.
“I was blown away by how beautiful their traditional clothing was,” she said. “The non-Hispanic traditional dances and music always seemed to speak to me.”
But she was a performer before she became an advocate. An artist first, she studied Arts and Design in senior high school and fine arts in college. Her love for drawing and expressive clothing often led to costume design roles.
Arts and Design also required performance-based projects, where she first learned to research traditional clothing. Her skills deepened in college, when she assisted her professor in compiling intangible heritage for Central Visayas and gained access to primary historical books.
When the pandemic came in 2020, Sharrie decided to recreate a pre-colonial Visayan outfit for the first time, working from history books. The resulting photoshoot gained widespread attention online.
Her sister, a co-founder of the pre-colonial Visayan advocacy group Karakoa Productions, invited her to join the collective that year. Since then, they have continued researching and recreating pre-colonial Visayan clothing — sometimes blending historical references with their own personal stylistic choices.
An everyday uniform
Sharrie’s personal style outside pre-colonial Visayan fashion was already expressive. Friends might even call it “costumey,” shaped by fashion subcultures and a willingness to experiment with silhouette and detail.
The shift came when she began looking at how neighboring Southeast Asian countries continue to wear traditional clothing in daily life.
“Once I realized that other Southeast Asian countries still wear their traditional clothing on a daily basis, I began to adopt the same mindset toward our own traditional clothing,” she said.
For Sharrie, pre-colonial textiles, silhouettes and jewelry stopped being history-book references when she began treating them as clothing — something one could live in, move in and make one’s own.
The tapis endures
Among the pieces she wears, the tapis, or traditional wrapped garment, carries the deepest personal meaning.
“Aside from the fact that it can be worn in a hundred different ways, I also see it as a testament to how the spirit of the pre-colonial era has endured until today,” she said.
Even as its context has changed, elderly women still wear the tapis at home, especially when bathing. Historically, it was worn on special occasions and by royalty. While the badu — the Cebuano term for the baro — became popular during the Spanish period, Cebuano women were still documented wearing the tapis into the 1800s.
“That’s why I try to represent it as much as I can,” she said.
Research before expression
For Sharrie, engaging with pre-colonial attire is less about rigid rules and more about relationships. It begins with understanding context — learning which elements hold spiritual or ceremonial meaning, and which reflect everyday artistic creativity shaped by community and environment.
‘‘There is room for both reverence and imagination here,’’ she said. ‘‘Some elements carry sacred weight, while others celebrate the joy and skill of enduring artistic traditions.’’
A specific color or symbol might tell a sacred story, while surrounding patterns may simply be beloved stylistic choices passed down through generations.
‘‘Knowing the story behind what you wear allows us to celebrate our heritage with sincerity while still making space for personal expression,’’ she said.
This thoughtful balance also guides her perspective on modern fashion’s embrace of indigenous textiles and aesthetics. She sees beautiful possibilities in weaving traditional elements into contemporary style, provided it comes from a place of curiosity and genuine understanding.
‘‘It all comes down to care and intention,’’ she said. ‘‘When we take the time to learn where an element comes from and what it represents, wearing it becomes a form of appreciation rather than just an aesthetic choice.”
Sketch later
Sharrie describes herself as an illustrator and stylist rather than a garment maker. She has only recently begun learning to rework clothes and make simple jewelry.
Still, her process is deeply tactile. “For me, a concept doesn’t start from a sketch. It starts from research,” she explains. “We learn as much as possible about the manner of wrapping a certain garment or the style of a shirt by cross-referencing multiple books and ancient dictionaries.”
Her team checks existing practices that closely resemble historical texts, then determines which aspects have evolved into the way garments are worn today.
They usually source handwoven fabrics from weavers across the Philippines. When time and resources are limited, they look for contemporary fabrics and garments that resemble the historical style as closely as possible.
“If certain styles simply aren’t produced anymore, that’s when I try to rework garments to recreate that particular style,” she says.
The same principle applies to accessories. They look for surviving jewelry, textiles and patterns still being made today. When an exact match is unavailable, they find the closest substitute — or modify and create pieces themselves.
“The important thing is that the substitution still makes sense based on what we know,” she says.
Art beyond advocacy
Outside creating and styling, Sharrie’s days in Cebu are fairly ordinary. She works as a graphic designer and spends time in creative communities online, particularly those built around niche fashion subcultures.
She is also illustrating assets for an upcoming indie folk horror game, alongside personal projects inspired by pre-colonial Visayan culture.
When she is not drawing, she plays games such as Genshin Impact, particularly enjoying how the game incorporates cultural influences into its designs. She listens to K-pop and dances as exercise.
“Not everything I do has to be connected to my advocacy, and I think having interests outside of it is important too,” she said. “At the end of the day, I’m just a regular person who happens to be very passionate about pre-colonial Visayan culture and history.”