Woman's garment (kira)

The national dress of Bhutanese women, a garment known as the kira, is composed of three loomwidths of hand-woven fabric sewn together. The kira is worn ankle length, wrapped around the body, secured at the shoulders with silver ornaments, and belted at the waist.

Woven in the northern region of eastern Bhutan, aikapur-the type of textile of which this kira was made- is characterized by alternating bands of plain weave and supplementary warp patterning. Highly prized, it is saved for special occasions. Aikapur is woven in combinations of five colors. This particular combination- with alternating red and green supplementary warp patterning on an orange ground separated by rainbow plain weave-is called lungserma (meaning "yellow valley- woven cloth").

This antique garment was woven of eastern Bhutanese wild silk (bura), a prestigious fiber. Unlike cultivated silk, which is unwound from the cocoons of domesticated silk moths, bura is woven from moth cocoons collected from forests. The long fibers can only be unwound from the cocoons after they have been boiled. Because of their belief in the sanctity of life, many Bhutanese people do not use cocoons with living larvae in them. Instead, they gather cocoons in the forests after the larvae have already metamorphosed into moths and have eaten their way out of the cocoons.