The illustrations featured here are alternate colorations of Tipos Filipinos. Mestiza Española. Mestizo Español. [Filipino Types. Mixed blood Spanish woman. Mixed blood Spanish man.] (1872) by Francisco Ortego y Vereda and Tomás Carlos Capuz.
Ortego was a Spanish caricaturist, illustrator and painter; and Capuz was a Spanish engraver and printmaker. This piece appeared in the illustrated Spanish magazine La Ilustración Española y Americana, which was a weekly and biweekly periodical self-described as covering the “sciences, arts, literature, trade and useful knowledge.” It was founded in 1869 in Madrid, and it published many illustrated scenes of daily life in Spain, Spanish America and other Spanish territories.
The scene depicted here shows a mestiza woman in a traje de mestiza (mestiza dress), otherwise known as a Maria Clara dress, which is an aristocratic version of the baro’t saya (top and skirt). The sleeves are shaped like angel wings or bells, which are the precursor to the butterfly sleeves of the terno dress. The woman also wears a pañuelo over her shoulders to cover up her nape and upper body. She stands between a side table and a potted plant with stand.
The mestizo man wears a full button down Barong Tagalog with two vertical front strips of embroidery, which may be one of the first ever documented of this style. He also wears dark slacks, leather shoes and carries a cane and a western style hat. This man’s clothes and accessories appear to all be made of fine materials. The way he is dressed suggests he is upper class. A man dressed like this in this era was referred to as a dandy, an especially neat and stylish man.