Hornbill Festival

What is worn for Hornbill Festival

The Hornbill Festival is held every year from 1 to 10 December at Kisama Heritage Village near Kohima, the capital of Nagaland. It brings together the Naga tribes, each with its own dress, songs and dances. Women of the tribes wear wrapped skirts and woven shawls, with strings of beads, shell and, for some, ornaments of silver and brass. Each tribe has its own shawl patterns, in stripes, bands and motifs in red, black, white and blue. Woven mostly on the backstrap loom, these shawls once told of the status and deeds of the wearer. The sarees of the plains are not the dress of the tribes, but the wrapped skirts and shawls are cousins of the mekhela and show how wide the wrapped cloth tradition runs in the northeast.

The sarees

Mekhela chadorThe wrapped dress of neighbouring Assam.