Colonial women wore local dress only for labor while insisting on European evening attire.

Evidence

I am busy sewing my household linen. Also kabaai must be made as I am planning to start wearing sarong and kabaai. Of course, only in the mornings, when I have to do the household chores. In the evening I will always keep dressing: I don’t want to adopt that bad habit. … “Of course” marks off the world from which she distinguishes herself; of those “who stay on” (the blijvers) like the Lucassen women and what she vows she will never become. The daily accoutrements of Europe continue to hold her fast and she insists she must have them. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1517

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Dress as identity-boundary distinction across a colonial everyday — sarong and kabaai relegated to the ‘work’ hours as the Lucassen women’s shame.
• SEED: The ‘of course’ as a rhetorical marker of unspoken racial-class commitment is a lovely close-reading hook for the epistemic anxieties piece.