BANGKOK: Upper-class ladies during Siam’s Sixth Reign were as primly stylish as their English peers in Edwardian Britain. They were also equally enthralled by women’s suffrage in Britain and among the first to adopt aspects of Western modernity without losing any of their Thai identity. Nowhere was this cultural expression more obvious than in the sartorial sense. At least that’s how costume historian Lupt Utama interprets the Edwardian sensibilities in Siam during the reign of King Vajiravudh (Rama VI).

Lupt is an expert in Thailand’s 19th-century court textiles and the curator of a new exhibition on Edwardian fashion in Siam. “Chattharat Bhastraphorn: Women’s Fashion through Glass-Plate Photography during the Reign of King Vajiravudh” zooms in on the fashion trends that swept the kingdom during the reign of Rama VI, who ruled from 1910 to 1925 as Siam’s first foreign-educated monarch and was a strident advocate of Siamese nationalism.

“I’ve always wanted to do an exhibition on the fashion of the Sixth Reign because it’s less known than that of the Fifth Reign,” he says. The exhibition runs until Oct 10 at The National Library’s King Vajiravudh Memorial Hall.

The exhibition showcases 45 amazing photographs of Thai ladies including members of the Thai royal family and aristocrats captured with and without their spouses or relatives. The photos have been developed from the glass-plate negatives kept at the National Library.

The exhibition brings together the opposing concepts of the Edwardian fashion of Britain’s liberated age with Siamese open-mindedness and the nation’s apprehension about European colonialism. The subjects look as though they’ve stepped out of a garden party in TV’s Downton Abbey and everyone seems to possess the Edwardian silhouette complete with restrictive corsets, long skirts and elaborate hats.

Edwardian fashion refers to the clothing that was in style between the late 1890s and 1914 or the beginning of the Great War (World War I). Also called La Belle Epoque (the Beautiful Era), this was a time when women’s fashions took on a new opulence and extravagance, inspired by the hedonistic lifestyle of Britain’s King Edward VII. The British royals were the trend-setters of the day. Members of British high society were regarded as the cultural elite and Edward’s own extravagance set the tone for behaviour and fashion. Middle-class women looked up to the elite for inspiration and hoped to emulate their “betters”.

In the Sixth Reign, as in Britain, the tight-fitting blouses and corsets of the previous generation were banished. High-class ladies opted for free-flowing blouses with loose sleeves, bras and shorter skirts, and wore their hair long. They added a Thai touch by replacing the traditional jongkraben (trouser-like lower garments) and the corsets with pha-sin, the tubular skirt worn by women in Thailand and its neighbouring countries.

Lupt divides the fashion of the Sixth Reign into three periods: the Beginning of the Reign (corresponding to the late Edwardian Era), the Middle Years of the Reign (from circa 1912 to 1915) and the Final Years, from 1916 on.

The first period saw the rise of lace dresses, as adopted, for example, by Queen Saovabha Phongsri. She wore her hair short and favoured pearl and diamond necklaces — a style reminiscent of Queen Alexandra.

During the mid-reign period, younger members of the royal family were depicted in photos wearing their hair long, though still comfortable with the jongkraben. Their blouses had V-or round-neck designs and elbow-length sleeves. Shorter skirts were beginning to crop up in the upper-class women’s closets and the jongkraben were gradually being replaced by pha-sin, most often worn with long crepe blouses embellished with pieces of lace or bead work.

In the last period, the dresses were even more loose-fitting and straight. The hip- or thigh-length blouses came sleeveless, or with very short sleeves hovering just above the elbow. Pha-sin and skirts were common and worn knee-length. The ladies also favoured short, usually bobbed hair, as well Art Deco cocktail dresses, hats, stockings and court shoes.

Lupt explains that the Edwardian fashion in the Sixth Reign was important because it reflected the changing status of women in Britain. And like their English counterparts, Siamese women also had more freedom to develop culturally and socially.

“But Thai ladies at the time were not at all pro-Western. They still preferred to wear the pha-sin. Britain and France were exerting their power on our borders and while we looked more modern, we still maintained our cultural uniqueness and identity in those volatile times,” he says.

Women’s suffrage was the biggest reform in Britain during the Edwardian era. Not only did the ladies obtain the right to vote but felt sufficiently emancipated — and relieved — to ditch the unfriendly corset for a bra.

“Women wanted to be free from restrictions, both political and cultural, such as the social obligation of wearing a corset,” he says.

The Nation / Thailand

Published in Dawn, August 24th, 2016