Gabs Guthrie | 2026 I.S. Symposium
Name: Gabs Guthrie
Title: “Maraming salamat po sa service”: Religion, Labor, and Dress from the Philippines to the Diaspora
Major: Religious Studies
Minors: French and Francophone Studies; Middle Eastern and North African Studies
Advisor: Chan Sok Park
Traditional dress is often overlooked when it comes to contemporary fashion, which instead tends to focus on fast fashion production and consumption models. As a result, various forms of ethnic dress, like the terno, are labeled as “other” or “costume鈥 and are placed outside of the dominant understanding of fashion, despite the continued use of these garments by these communities. Within the Filipinx diaspora, the terno has received a similar reputation as costume, despite its continued use in community settings. This study was split into two parts, first, contextualization of the terno through a history of colonization, class, and migration, and second, analysis of contemporary sources on the terno in the Filipinx American diaspora through online blogs, magazines, and news articles. By placing the terno within its own history, we can understand how the terno continues to exist today amongst transnational contexts and people, not as a “costume” of the static past, but as an object that has continued to exist in the lives of many Filipinx as they move through today’s world. This will help illuminate the problems with the current understanding of what is and is not considered fashion, as well as provide insight into how overlooked ways of producing and consuming clothing can provide new ways of fashioning the body.
Posted in Symposium 2026 on May 1, 2026.
