Skirts formed by attaching elaborately treated and dried flax blades to a woven waistband or belt. These are now chiefly worn during ceremonial occasions or performances by Maori men and women. The flax used to make these is stripped to the fiber in regular sections, then boiled and dried so that it whitens and rolls into tubes. These treated pieces are dyed black, the exposed fiber taking up the dye, creating contrasting motifs in the finished piupiu.
