ABSTRACT
In 1937, Maxine Gonong appeared before the Methodist Episcopal Woman's Home Missionary Society (WHMS) annual meeting in Seattle, Washington. Gonongs appearance in front of the Woman's Home Missionary Society points to the significance and politics of dress within American imperialism. Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Congregationalist missionary societies from the US worked collaboratively to civilize and Christianize the Filipino population, the majority of whom had converted to Catholicism over the centuries of Spanish rule. The US declared victory in the ensuing Philippine-American War, a conflict that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. But guerrilla resistance continued for decades in Cavite and Mindanao. The visual economies of missionary projects relied particularly on images to connect domestic supporters to faraway outposts. The terno developed and became popular in the period of American colonization, and its basic silhouette followed European fashion of the day.
