Pareo

The pāreu or pareo (see below) is the Cook Islands and Tahitian word for a wraparound skirt. Originally it was used only to refer to women's skirts, as men wore a loincloth, called a maro. Nowadays the term is applied to any piece of cloth worn wrapped around the body, worn by males or females. It is related to the Malay sarong, Sāmoan lavalava, Tongan tupenu and other such garments of the Pacific Islands such as the islands of Hawaiʻi, Marquesas, Aotearoa, and Fiji.

In contemporary Tahitian the right word is pāreu (singular: te pāreu, plural: te mau pāreu), with the pronunciation of the word with a long a (hold the sound for two beats rather than just one) and the e and u pronounced separately, rather than slurred into a diphthong. It is not clear where the variant pareo comes from. It might be an old dialectic variant or an early explorers' misinterpretation. But both terms were already used in the 19th century (the Dutch geographic magazine De Aarde en haar Volken of 1887 had a few South-seas articles, some of them using pāreu, others pareo). Nowadays, however, pareo can be considered as the English-language form of the word (plural pareos), much less likely subject to mispronunciation.

The Tahitian pāreu are among the most colourful and bright of the Pacific. Originally flower patterns, the hibiscus flowers in particular, or traditional tapa patterns, were printed in bright colours on a cotton sheet of about 90 or 120 cm wide and 180 cm long. Nowadays they are also made in Tahiti itself and dye painting with varying colours is popular as well.

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