Māori cloaks: korowai, kahu huruhuru, graduation

A Māori cloak is a kākahu ‘garment, cloak’, and the one most people mean is the korowai: Te Aka Māori Dictionary defines it as a cloak ornamented with black twisted tags or thrums, and adds that in modern Māori the word is sometimes used for any cloak woven from muka ‘prepared flax fibre’. Other cloaks are named for what covers them: the kahu huruhuru ‘feather cloak’, the kahu kiwi ‘kiwi-feather cloak’, the dogskin kahu kurī and the kaitaka, a prized flax cloak with a woven border. Graduates wear a korowai with their academic dress as one of what Victoria University of Wellington calls “garments of honour from your cultural tradition”, which Victoria, Massey and Otago all welcome at their ceremonies, and a cloak worn that day may be a family heirloom. This guide sets out the kinds of cloak and what their names mean, how they are woven, why they are treasured, what the universities say about wearing one, and the cloaks seen on a casket at a tangihanga.

Updated 24 October 2026 · 12 min read

Tap 🔊 to hear an example. Māori examples play Papa Reo, the te reo Māori voice made by Te Hiku Media from recordings of native speakers.

The kinds of Māori cloak

Kākahu is the general word: Te Aka gives it as garment, clothes, cloak, and as a verb, to put on clothes. Kahu also means garment or cloak, and it is the first word in most of the names below. Te Ara says there was a great variety of garments, including many kinds of cloak, and that names varied from region to region, so some iwi may use different terms from these.

Māori	What it is (Te Aka)	What Te Ara adds
korowai	a cloak ornamented with black twisted tags or thrums; in modern Māori, sometimes any muka cloak	It evolved from the rain cape and became popular in the first half of the 19th century.
kahu huruhuru	no headword; kahu is cloak and huruhuru is feather	A cloak with bird feathers added, often arranged by colour into striking patterns; now the most prestigious cloak.
kahu kiwi	kiwi feather cloak	Kiwi feathers are among the native feathers prized for cloaks.
kaitaka	a highly prized cloak of flax fibre with a tāniko ‘finger-woven’ ornamental border	Very large, worn draped around a person several times; a plain, golden, silky body.
kahu kurī, kahu kiri kurī	dogskin cloak, highly prized at the time of early contact with Europeans and worn by high-ranking chiefs	The most prestigious garments by the later 18th century; known as war cloaks.
māhiti, kahu waero	a cape covered with the long white hair of dogs’ tails, worn over cloaks; a cape of dog-tail skins	A cloak with tassels of hair from the underside of the dog’s tail.
kahu kekeno	sealskin cape	Told of in stories, but gone by the time of James Cook’s voyages.
pākē, pūreke	a rough cape of undressed kiekie or flax leaves; a rough rain cape of undressed flax	A rain cape; some tribes call the pākē a pūreke.
korirangi	a cloak ornamented with black and white thrums of unscraped flax	Not described.

Korowai: the cloak with tassels

What makes a korowai is its tassels. Te Ara describes them as hukahuka ‘thrums, tassels’, long cords of rolled muka, or as pokinikini, dried cylinders of flax with bands of black-dyed fibre. Some korowai were dyed with kōkōwai ‘red ochre’. In the 19th century korowai, like kaitaka, came to carry woollen designs, and makers combined tassels with feathers and tāniko borders. Te Ara’s weaving story names two kinds: the korowai hukahuka, adorned only with tassels, and the korowai kārure, adorned with a twisted tag called a kārure. Te Aka’s own illustration of the word is Te Whiringa Rongomaiwhiti, a korowai woven by Gloria Taituha of Ngāti Maniapoto, set with pūkeko and kererū feathers.

Kahu huruhuru: feather cloaks

In a kahu huruhuru each feather is woven in twice: Te Ara explains that the shaft is bent back on itself and twined into the weft a second time, so a full cloak holds thousands of feathers, each attached by hand. Red kākā feathers were especially prized, because red stood for power, sacredness and prestige across the Pacific; kiwi, kererū, kākāpō, tūī, kākāriki and albatross feathers were also used, and in later cloaks the feathers of introduced birds. Te Ara dates the flourishing of the full-feather cloak to the second half of the 19th century, though one thought to be more than 300 years old was seen in a burial cave in Fiordland. The only cloak known to be fully covered in kākāpō feathers, some 11,000 of them, is in Perth Museum in Scotland. The bird names are in Māori birds and animals.

One kahu kiwi shows how a cloak travels through a family. Te Ara records that in 1932 Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana gave it to Eruera Tirikātene to mark his election as the first Rātana member of Parliament; Eruera later gave it to his daughter, Whetū Tirikātene-Sullivan, a long-serving Labour MP, and she in turn gave it to her younger brother Kukupa, who has worn it on ceremonial occasions.

Kaitaka and the tāniko border

A kaitaka is the opposite of a korowai: its body is left plain, and the decoration is in the side and lower borders, woven in bands of geometric tāniko. Te Ara lists several kinds, among them the paepaeroa, worn with the weft rows vertical, and the kaitaka huaki, with two or more tāniko borders that look like layered cloaks. A whakataukī Te Ara quotes names the dress of a chief:

He māhiti ki runga, he paepaeroa ki raro
Koia nei te kākahu o te rangatira!
A dog hair cloak on top, a fine cloak underneath: these are the garments of a chief! (Te Ara’s translation)

The tāniko designs themselves, triangles, diamonds, bars and steps, and why some of their meanings have been lost, are in Māori symbols and their meanings.

Dogskin cloaks

The kahu kurī had a base of closely woven muka covered completely in stitched strips of dog skin or dog hair. Te Ara says they could be worn hair-in for warmth but were more often worn hair-out, to display a chief’s status, and that James Cook recorded them in 1769–70. The colour schemes had names: a tōpuni has a body of dark hair with white borders, an ihupuni the reverse, and an awarua alternating dark and light bands. The dog itself, and why it disappeared, are in Māori pet names.

Rain capes

The everyday cloak was the rain cape: shorter than a cloak, and covered in rows of fibre strips that lie like thatch and shed the rain. Te Ara lists the pākē, also called pūreke by some tribes, among several kinds, made from harakeke, kiekie, cabbage-tree leaves, sedges and grasses. They have come back: in July 2011 the crew of the waka taua Te Hono ki Aotearoa wore specially made pākē as they paddled towards London Bridge.

How a cloak is made: harakeke, muka and whatu

Cloaks are made from harakeke ‘New Zealand flax’. Te Ara explains that the settlers from East Polynesia found that the aute, the paper mulberry they used for bark cloth, did not grow well here, and turned to native plants instead; harakeke became the main one. Its inner fibre, muka, is the preferred fibre for cloak weaving. The weaver strips each leaf, draws the fibre out with the edge of a shell, washes and beats it with a stone pounder, and rolls it, often against the leg, into the whenu ‘warp threads’ that hang down and the much finer aho ‘weft threads’ that cross them. Bark dyes gave yellow and red-brown, and fibre soaked in bark dye and rubbed in swamp mud turned black.

A cloak is not woven on a loom. Its technique is whatu ‘finger-weaving’, twining the weft around the warp by hand, a method Te Ara says was adapted from making fishing nets and traps. The work starts from a cord stretched between two weaving pegs, turuturu. There are two main forms:

Whatu aho pātahi, single-pair twining: quicker, and used for tough, practical garments such as rain capes.
Whatu aho rua, two-pair twining: used for the fine cloaks worn by people of rank. Sydney Parkinson, an artist on Cook’s 1769 voyage, wrote that the cloth was “white, and glossy as silk … wrought as even as if it had been done in a loom”.

Whatu is not the same as raranga. Te Aka glosses whatu as to weave garments and as finger-weaving, and raranga as to weave or plait mats and baskets; Te Ara calls raranga the related style used to make kete ‘baskets’ and food baskets. Te Ara adds that a fine cloak might take a skilled weaver several years to finish.

Weaving was taught within families, usually by a mother, aunt or grandmother, and traditionally in te whare pora, the house of weaving, with karakia and strict rules. Te Ara quotes a whakataukī that shows how a weaver was valued:

Aitia te wahine i roto i te pā harakeke.
Marry the woman found in the flax plantation. (Te Ara’s translation)

The art declined in the early 20th century and was revived from the 1950s by the Māori Women’s Welfare League and weavers such as Rangimārie Hetet and her daughter Diggeress Te Kanawa; a national weaving school, Te Rito, opened in Rotorua in 1969. Six generations of that family’s weaving, with more than 25 kākahu and a portrait of two of Dame Rangimārie’s descendants wearing korowai she wove for children, are on show at Te Whare Taonga o Waikato in Hamilton from 16 October 2026 to 7 March 2027, RNZ reports.

Cloaks as taonga

A fine cloak is a taonga ‘treasure’, and Te Ara gives several reasons. It connects to the spiritual world through the whakapapa of the materials it is woven from. A well-known weaver gives it mana. And it grows in cultural value with each generation. In the past it signalled rank: Te Ara says the most prestigious garments were worn only by people of high status, that a chief could reserve a gun he wanted by tying a piece of his cloak’s fringe round it, and that a fine cloak could be exchanged for a war canoe or for the work of a tattooist. Because a chief’s clothing carried his mana, discarded garments were hidden or buried, which is why early chiefly cloaks are so rare.

Cloaks are still made for occasions and as gifts. Since 2004 the flagbearer of the New Zealand team at the Olympic Games has worn Te Mahutonga, a cloak woven over seven months by Te Aue Davis and Ranui Ngarimu, named by the Māori Queen, Dame Te Atairangikaahu, and set with kiwi, saddleback, albatross and kākāpō feathers; Te Ara notes that such cloaks are sometimes made to be worn by non-Māori as well as Māori. The Kīngitanga she led is explained in the Māori kings and queens.

A cloak can also be a taonga tuku iho ‘heirloom’. Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal writes in Te Ara that family heirlooms such as korowai become the property of all the descendants of their owner, and are cared for by one kaitiaki ‘custodian’ on behalf of the group, who brings the cloak to important occasions such as funerals and holds the knowledge about it. The wider idea is in Māori words with no English equivalent.

Why graduates wear a korowai

Universities in Aotearoa welcome a korowai at graduation, alongside the garments of other cultures, and say so in their dress rules. The gown, hood and cap are still required; the cloak is worn with them:

University	What it says	Where the cloak goes
Victoria University of Wellington	Embellishing your regalia with “garments of honour from your cultural tradition, such as a korowai or ta’ovala” is “a welcome enrichment to the colour of the ceremony”.	Under the hood or stole.
Massey University	You may wear a korowai, Pacific cloaks or your national dress with academic regalia.	Over the gown and under the hood.
University of Otago	Korowai and equivalent ceremonial garments of other cultures may be worn with academic regalia.	Not specified.

Victoria also holds Te Hui Whakapūmau, an official graduation ceremony based on tikanga Māori, in May and December, where academic dress is required and “the wearing of kākahu Māori is also encouraged”.

None of these pages says what a korowai means at a graduation; they call it a garment of honour and leave it there. The closest thing to an answer in the sources is the weaver Toi Te Rito Maihi’s list, quoted by Te Ara, of what a garment might be made for, which includes “to acknowledge an important event”, “to enable recognition” and “to proclaim status”. A graduation is all three.

Whose cloak it is matters more than the dress code. Royal’s account above explains why a family korowai is not simply one person’s to lend or keep. No university page or other source read for this guide lays down how a borrowed cloak should be worn, cared for or returned, and this guide will not invent a rule: if a korowai is lent to you, ask the people who lent it. The songs sung at graduations are in waiata tautoko.

Korowai at a tangihanga

A cloak is also seen at a death. In Rawinia Higgins’s account in Te Ara, the body was traditionally prepared by specialists and wrapped in mats, cloaks and other finery. Te Ara’s photographs show cloaks on coffins in the 20th century and since: the coffin of Makere Wikitoria Taitoko draped in a cloak at Pūtiki in 1912, and the casket of Sir Robert Mahuta draped in a kahu kiwi in 2001. Royal names funerals among the important occasions to which a kaitiaki brings a family heirloom. A korowai is seen beyond the marae too: when Senior Sergeant Lyn Fleming was farewelled in Nelson in January 2025, RNZ reported, her casket was carried in wrapped in a New Zealand flag with her police hat and a korowai on top.

What to say to the bereaved family, and how a tangihanga runs, is in condolences in Māori.

Where the accounts differ

Point	One source	Another
What “korowai” covers	a cloak with black twisted tags or thrums (Te Aka, sense 1)	any cloak of muka, in modern Māori (Te Aka, sense 2); Te Ara describes korowai that combine tassels with feathers and tāniko borders
What the tassels are	hukahuka: a thrum or tassel of two strands, a fringe (Te Aka)	long cords of rolled muka (Te Ara)
The kārure tag	a three-ply tag (Te Ara)	a two-strand cord, or strands twisted into a cord or tassel (Te Aka)
The dogskin cloak’s name	kahu kurī (Te Ara)	kahu kiri kurī (Te Aka)
The māhiti	a cloak with tassels of hair from the underside of the tail; also kahu waero (Te Ara)	a cape covered with long white tail hair, worn over other cloaks (Te Aka)
Where a korowai goes at graduation	under the hood or stole (Victoria)	over the gown and under the hood (Massey)

The Māori names of the universities you may graduate from, and what they mean, are in Māori names of NZ universities.

The great canoes, their parts and the waka revival are in Māori waka.

Going further

Cloaks belong with the other taonga made by hand, from the instruments in taonga pūoro to the hand weapons in Māori weapons. Most of the words on this page, among them kākahu, korowai, kahu, huruhuru, muka, harakeke and taonga, are in our own free te reo Māori course, which teaches them one lesson a day.