The Moirang Phee phanek is a wrapped sarong worn by Meitei women, and almost all of it is plain cloth. The design lives in one band — the pheejin — a file of elongated triangular teeth that step inward on odd counts, three, five, nine, eleven, read locally as the teeth of Pakhangba, the pythonic god.

Two shuttles do the work: a fine one for the body, a bolder two-ply one for the border, so the patterned band is a physically heavier cloth than the field beside it. Colour is not ornament — the mayek naibi system gives each Meitei salai its own phanek, and the border tells you the house.