The lambamena is the burial cloth of the Merina highlands — landibe wild silk, hand-loomed and dyed with madder, mud and charcoal, its name reading "red lamba" for prestige rather than for any literal scarlet. What the loom actually yields is a russet field banded lengthwise, thick and thin in the same thread.

This system takes the cloth at its word. Everything runs as a stripe along one axis, widths varying and direction never. Panels stack with a slight offset, the way each famadihana lays a paler wrap over the one already there, and edges terminate in selvedge and fringe instead of a cut.