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A loincloth is a one-piece garment, either wrapped around itself or kept in place by a belt. It covers the genitals and sometimes the buttocks. Loincloths which are held up by belts or strings are specifically known as breechcloth or breechclout. U.S. National Park Service. Retrieved on 2009-12-22. Native Languages . Retrieved on 2009-12-22. Often, the flaps hang down in front and back.
The loincloth, or breechcloth, is a basic form of dress, often worn as the only garment. Men have worn a loincloth as a fundamental piece of clothing which covers their genitals, not the buttocks, in most societies which disapproved of genital nakedness throughout human history. The loincloth is in essence a piece of material, bark-bast fibre, leather, or cloth, passed between the legs and covering the genitals. Despite its functional simplicity, the loincloth comes in many different forms.
The styles in which breechcloths and loincloths can be arranged are myriad. Both the Borneo sirat and the Indian dhoti have fabric pass between the legs to support a man's genitals.
A similar style of loincloth was also characteristic of ancient Mesoamerica. The male inhabitants of the area of modern Mexico wore a wound loincloth of woven fabric. One end of the loincloth was held up, the remainder passed between the thighs, wound about the waist, and secured in back by tucking.Local names: Nahuatl maxtlatl, Mayan languages ex.
In Pre-Columbian South America, ancient Inca men wore a strip of cloth between their legs held up by strings or tape as a belt. The cloth was secured to the tapes at the back and the front portion hung in front as an apron, always well ornamented. The same garment, mostly in plain cotton but whose aprons are now, like T-shirts, sometimes decorated with logos, is known in Japan as .
Some of the culturally diverse Amazonian indigenous still wear an ancestral type of loincloth.
Until World War II, Japanese men wore a loincloth known as a . The is a piece of fabric (cotton or silk) passed between the thighs and secured to cover the genitals.
A Native American woman or adolescent girl might also wear a fitted breechcloth underneath her skirt, but not as outerwear. However, in many tribes, young girls did wear breechcloths like boys until they became old enough for skirts and dresses. Among the Mohave people of the American Southwest, a breechcloth given to a young female symbolically recognizes her status as Two-spirit.Conner, Sparks, and Sparks, eds. (1997) Cassell's Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol, and Spirit: Covering Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Lore
Throughout the pre-colonial period, the bahág was the normative dress for commoners and the servile class (the alipin caste). (2025). 9789715425148, UP Press. ISBN 9789715425148 It survives today among some indigenous tribes of the Philippines, most notably the various Igorot peoples in the mountains of inland northern Luzon. (2025). 9781405392075, Rough Guides UK. ISBN 9781405392075
The bahág was also favoured by the pre-colonial Maginoo ( tumao) and Timawa ( timawa) classes of the Visayan people, as it showed off their elaborate, full-body tattoos ( batok) that advertised combat prowess and other significant achievements: (2025). 9781468315455, Abrams. ISBN 9781468315455
One method of wrapping the bahág involves first pulling the long rectangular cloth (usually around ) in between the legs to cover the genitals, with a longer back flap. This back flap is then twisted across the right leg, then crossed at the waist in an anti-clockwise direction. It then goes under the front flap, then across the left leg. It is twisted back across the back loop, above the buttocks. The result is the two rectangular ends hanging in front of and behind the waist, with a loop around the legs resembling a belt.
The native Tagalog language word for "rainbow", bahagharì, literally means "loincloth of the king".
The use of breechcloths took on common use by the Metis and Acadians and are mentioned as early as the 1650s. In the 1740s and 1750s they were issued to the Canadien as part of their war uniform and in 1755 they even tried to issue them to soldiers from France.
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