A Mother Hubbard dress is a long, wide, loose-fitting gown with long sleeves and a high neck. It is intended to cover as much skin as possible. It was devised in Victorian western societies to do housework in. It is mostly known today for its later introduction by Christian missionaries in Polynesia to "civilise" those whom they considered half-naked savages. Although this Victorian garment has disappeared in most of the world, it is still worn by Pacific women, who have altered it into a brighter and cooler garment, using cotton fabric, often printed in brightly colored floral patterns. It is today seen as smart or formal attire and is often worn to church. History In the 1880s the artist Kate Greenaway illustrated popular books of English nursery rhymes showing children in smock dresses. These came to be a popular style of children's dress which were given the name 'Mother Hubbard' by fashion writers at the time after the nursery rhyme character in the books. Around the same time a dress reform movement arose that sought to free western women from the tight and relatively impractical fashion of small, corseted waists and heavy skirts. The smock dress with full length sleeves proved very adaptable to both size and shape and migrated up the age groups until it became comfortable day wear for women of all ages and across social classes. Contemporary with this in Victorian times missionary movements attempted to spread what they saw as the benefits of western religion and morals to native peoples under the rule of the imperial western countries. The Mother Hubbard garments were insisted upon by missionaries who were often horrified to find a flock of near-naked people in their churches. They were distributed widely in Africa, South Asia, and the Pacific. They have influenced modern dress in all these areas, but particularly in the Pacific islands where they persist today. Pacific island dress Names and designs vary. In Hawaii, it is called holokū. There, a derivative, the muumuu, is highly similar, but without the yoke and train, and therefore even easier to make. In Tahiti, the name was ahu tua (empire dress, in a sense of colonial empire); now, ahu māmā rūau (grandmother's dress) is used. In Samoa and Tonga, the design has taken on a two-piece form, with classic mother hubbard blouses (long, wide, loose-fitting with puffy sleeves) over ankle-length skirts, called "puletasi" and