Ayutthaya Fashion – Clothing and Hairstyles

Posted by Chaytanya August 13, 2019

Ayutthaya Fashion – Clothing and Hairstyles

During the 14-18th century, Ayutthaya clothing was the style. Ayutthaya City has been the Thai Kingdom's capital for 417 years, Thailand's longest period under one monarch. Many styles of clothing followed the Ayutthaya period, but under the impact of different nations that come into contact and trade with the kingdom, fashion commonly changed.

In the Ayutthaya period, three clothing styles were obvious.

Every style relied on the class of society.

Court clothing (worn by the king, queen, concubines, and
senior government officials):

•     Men: The king wore mongkut, like headgear, round Mandarin collar with khrui and wore chong kben, like trousers.

•     Officers of the court (who worked in the royal palace) wore lomphok, like headgear, khrui, and wore chong kben.

•     Women The queen wore chada, like headgear, sabai (a breast cloth wrapping around cheast and back over one knee) and wore pha nung, like a skirt.

•     Concubines wore long hair, sabai, and pha nung.

Nobles (rich citizens):

•     Men: wore mandarin collar shirt, a mahadthai hairstyle, and wore chong kben.

•     Women: wore the sabai and pha nung.

Villagers:

• Men: wore a loincloth, displayed a naked chest, a mahadthai hairstyle, sometimes wore sarong or chong kben.

•     Women: wore the sabai and pha nung.

o  The pha nung – It is the Thai name for a cloth worn around the lower body that resembles a long skirt.

o  Chong kraben or Chang kben – It's a wraparound, lower-body cloth. It is synonymous with the sampot from the Khmer. But the chong kraben looks more like trousers than skirts. It is a three-meter-long and one-meter broad rectangular piece of cloth. It is worn by wrapping around the waist, stretching it away from the body, twisting the ends together, pulling the twisted fabric between the legs and tucking it in the back of the waist.

o  The sinh – It's a tube skirt wrapped around the waist. There are typically three components of a sinh: hua sinh, tua sinh, and tin sinh.

o  Sabai or pha biang – It's shawl-like clothing or cloth for the breast. It is possible to use sabais by women or men. Also known as the sabai is a long piece of silk, about a foot wide, draped diagonally around the chest by covering one shoulder that drops its end behind the back. You could wear sabais around the naked chest or on top of another cloth.

o  Suea pat – It's a long-sleeved button-free shirt. It is worn by wrapping the correct side of the shirt's front panel over the front panel's left side and tying the two panels through strings together. Northern Thai women typically wear Suea pats.

Historically, in a loincloth wrap called Chong kraben, both Thai men and women dressed. Men were wearing their Chong kraben to cover the waist halfway down the thigh, while females were covering the waist well under the knee. 

>> Before the 20th century, the primary markers that distinguished class in Thai clothing were the use of cotton and silk cloths with printed or woven motifs, but wrapped, not stitched, clothes were both commoners and royals.

>> Thai males and females held their hair long before the 1700s. However, after the Burmese-Siamese wars of 1759-1760 and 1765-1767 and repeated invasions of Burmese into Ayutthaya, central Thai women started to cut their hair in a brief crew-cut style that stayed the domestic hairstyle until the 1900s.

>> Bare chests and bare feet were recognized as part of the official Thai dress code and are seen in walls, illustrated manuscripts, and early pictures up to the mid-1800s.

>> From the 1860s onwards, Thai monarchs selectively embraced
Victorian corporeal and sartorial etiquette to fashion contemporary people who were advertised domestically and abroad through mechanically reproduced pictures. Stitched clothes, including court clothes and ceremonial uniforms, were created during King Chulalongkorn's reign.

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