Sarong: The Body Sheath
The *sarong* is one of the oldest garment types in the world — a length of cloth wrapped around the body — but the English word for it is relatively young. It comes from Malay *sarung*, meaning "sheath" or "covering," and entered English through colonial contact in Southeast Asia in the early 19th century.
The Malay Word
In Malay and Indonesian, *sarung* is a general word for any covering or enclosure: a pillow case is a *sarung bantal* (pillow sheath), a glove is a *sarung tangan* (hand sheath), and the wrapped garment is simply *sarung* — a body sheath. The word captures the essential action of the garment: wrapping and enclosing, like sliding a blade into its scabbard.
A Universal Garment
The sarong belongs to a family of wrapped garments found across tropical and subtropical cultures worldwide. The Indian *lungi* and *dhoti*, the Polynesian *pareo*, the East African *kanga*, and the Samoan *lavalava* are all variations on the same principle: a flat piece of cloth shaped by wrapping rather than tailoring. This is likely one of the earliest forms of clothing — predating sewing, buttons, and all forms of fastening.
What makes the sarong distinctive in this family is the Malay innovation of sewing the cloth into a tube. A traditional Malay sarong is not a flat rectangle but a cylinder of fabric — you step into it and fold the excess at the waist. This is the "sheath" that gives it its name.
Hollywood and the West
The sarong entered mainstream Western consciousness through cinema. In the late 1930s and 1940s, Paramount Studios cast actress Dorothy Lamour in a series of South Seas adventure films in which she invariably wore a sarong. *The Hurricane* (1937), *Her Jungle Love* (1938), and the *Road to...* comedies with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby made the sarong synonymous with tropical glamour. Lamour was marketed as "The Sarong Girl," and the garment became a symbol of exotic escapism for wartime audiences.