Power Dressing: Female Court Dress and Marital Alliances in Lan Na, the Shan States and Siam

By Susan Conway

From the twelfth century onward, the princes of the inland Southeast Asian principalities of Lan Na (northern Thailand) were linked by marriage with the royal families of Chiang Tung (eastern Shan State), Lan Xang (western Laos) and Sipsong Pan Na (Xishuang Banna, Yunnan province in southwestern China). Intermarriage was common among royalty living in the valleys, but marriages were also arranged with powerful families who occupied the hills. These alliances helped sustain good relations between ethnic groups and were a way of maintaining the balance of power in a land where political boundaries were generally unmarked. On marriage, it was common practice for the bride to move to the court of the groom.

Court dress Burmese, mid-19th century Victoria and Albert Museum IM 45 E1912

Marital alliances were important to the stability of Lan Na, particularly in the late eighteenth century when the Burmese were expelled after 200 years of occupation. A new power base was quickly established under the authority of Prince Kawila of Chiang Mai (r. 1781-1813). Princes in the other major principalities of Lamphun, Lampang, Nan and Phrae were also appointed to rule by a Lan Na Council (khao sanam luang) made up of senior members of the royal family and senior monks. Thus elder sons did not automatically inherit. In order to consolidate his influence, Prince Kawila formed marital alliances with the ruling families of Sipsong Pan Na and the Shan States. He sent his sister Sri Anocha to Bangkok as a consort for the brother of King Rama I (r. 1782-1809) to secure relations with Siam. Meanwhile Prince Attawalapanno of Nan (r. 1786-1810) took consorts from the cities of Chiang Mai and Phrae, and from Sipsong Pan Na, the Shan States and Siam. Lan Na princesses were sent as consorts to the courts of Vientiane and Luang Prabang. Throughout the nineteenth century marital alliances continued to be an important way of maintaining political stability in the region.

It was a convention that princesses, like village women, would continue to wear the dress of their homeland when they were sent to live abroad. Princesses wore dress that could be identified with village dress (for example, horizontal stripes in skirts, but silk for the rich and cotton for villagers; patterned hem borders in silk, silver and gold metal thread for royalty and in cotton for villagers). However, there were no sumptuary laws to prevent a rich peasant from wearing silk if she could afford it. Archibald Colquhoun had noted this custom in Chiang Mai and observed that female immigrants `still adhere to costumes worn by their race previous to leaving the Burmese Shan States for these parts' (Colquhoun, p. 127). William Clifton Dodd recorded that when the Tai Khoen princess Nang Wen Tip from the central and eastern valleys of the Shan States married the Prince of Chieng Rung, Sipsong Pan Na, she moved to Chieng Rung but continued to wear Tai Khoen dress (Dodd, p. 201). If a prince had gained a number of consorts, particularly from more powerful states and from different ethnic groups, bringing them together publicly in their various indigenous costumes signalled the extent of his influence. This symbolism was important within the polity of the inland states, and in the nineteenth century, it was intended for a wider audience as the British and the French expanded their interests in the region. Published reports and surveys by British and French government officials include descriptive passages, and occasionally illustrations and photographs, of the forms of dress worn by consorts of the princes with whom they held audiences.

When a princess moved to the bridegroom's residence, she was usually accompanied by a number of attendants, including some of her relatives. If there were weavers among them, they were responsible for making the garments of their homeland. Because trade routes extended to all the main towns in the inland states, it was possible to buy the same types of yarn, fabric and haberdashery. Where this was not feasible, clothing and textiles were sent from the home court. Wearing `traditional' dress did not require adherence to strict sumptuary laws as applied at the Burmese and Siamese courts, where every item of dress and regalia was graded according to rank. Women from inland courts who married into the Lan Na royal family wore some clothing that identified them with a particular group or homeland, and other garments that reflected their personal taste and current fashion. The item of clothing that consistently identified them with `traditional' dress was the phasin, a tubular, ankle-length skirt, as seen in eighteenth and nineteenth century mural paintings and manuscripts in the Buddhist temples of Lan Na.

One of the most significant marital alliances of the nineteenth century was arranged between Princess Dararatsami (1873-1933), daughter of Prince Inthanon of Chiang Mai (r. 1871-97), and King Chulalongkorn of Siam (r. 1868-1910). Dararatsami became his fifth consort. The marriage was intended to improve relations between Lan Na and Siam at a time when the British were expanding their authority in the neighbouring Shan States and were perceived as a threat to Lan Na sovereignty. In keeping with tradition, Dararatsami moved to Bangkok accompanied by her entourage.

Princess Dararatsami and her ladies kept Lan Na Tai dress conventions at the Bangkok court. They wore hand-woven phasin with decorative hem borders and kept their long hair fastened with pins and flowers, in contrast to the ladies of the Bangkok court whose traditional dress included loincloths (phanung) draped like pantaloons and short, cropped hair. The phasin had plain cotton waistbands and central silk panels patterned with horizontal bands of supplementary weft in silver and gold metal thread. The wide hem borders were woven in multicoloured silk and silver and gold metal thread, worked in a complex discontinuous supplementary weft technique (jok) that took at least six weeks to complete (Figs 1a, b and c). Dararatsami's mother Princess Tepa Kraisorn, organized the weaving and dispatch of these beautiful phasin from Chiang Mai to her daughter and attendants in Bangkok. Once she had established herself at the Bangkok court, Princess Dararatsami developed her own style of dressing. She continued to wear hand-woven Lan Na fabrics but had some phasin made up with Burmese silk tapestry weave (luntaya) in the central panel, either with a plain silk hem or with the traditional Lan Na jok (Fig. 2). Burmese luntaya fabric was available in the Chiang Mai cloth market and was among the trade goods brought from Mandalay. At the Chiang Mai court, it was worn during some dance performances. In Bangkok, Dararatsami combined her phasin with Edwardian-style lacy blouses, long strings of pearls and pearl chokers that were fashionable among Siamese consorts at the court (Fig. 3). However, she never cut her beautiful long hair, which was always dressed in Lan Na style with gold and silver pins and ornaments. The photographs taken of Dararatsami in the privacy of her court apartments, and in the company of Siamese court ladies, show the informal side of her life when she wore very simple horizontally striped phasin, like those worn by village women in Lan Na (Fig. 4).

Dararatsami was a popular resident at the Bangkok court, and her hand-woven Lan Na silks were greatly admired by Siamese ladies, who asked for copies. To cope with the demand, Princess Tepa Kraisorn employed more weavers in Chiang Mai and parcels of hand-woven phasin and other Lan Na textiles were sent on the long overland and river route to Bangkok. Reginald Le May, the British consul in Chiang Mai, reported this increase in trade to the British embassy in Bangkok, noting that `nearly all Siamese ladies of good social position are adopting the sin [phasin] instead of the phanung for daily wear' (Le May, p. 102). There are many photographs of Bangkok society ladies wearing the phasin. Some even grew their hair and adopted the Lan Na hairstyle (Figs 5 and 6).

After the death of King Chulalongkorn in 1910, the widowed Dararatsami left Bangkok to return home to Chiang Mai. A palace was built for her at Mae Rim on the outskirts of the city. She gathered together a number of skilled weavers who had worked at the Chiang Mai court and personally supervised the production of Lan Na textiles while also creating some new designs. Today, descendants of the Lan Na royal family still continue to run a workshop in Lamphun where hand-woven silks are produced for Queen Sirikit, the royal princesses and the Bangkok court. In Lan Na, many women in the cities and villages wear phasin on formal occasions, produced in Lamphun and other districts such as Mae Chaem, where highly skilled weavers keep the tradition alive. The horizontally striped phasin with a decorative hem of jok remains an important symbol of Lan Na culture (Fig. 7).

As well as looking south to Siam, the Lan Na princes made alliances with principalities on their northern and western borders. Their closest relationship was with the Shan State of Chiang Tung (Keng Tung), which from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century was regarded as a `younger brother kingdom' or dependency of Chiang Mai. It transferred its allegiance to Burma in the seventeenth century when Burma also occupied Lan Na. In the nineteenth century, after the Burmese were expelled, diplomatic relations with Lan Na were restored. A community of Tai Khoen from Chiang Tung, including members of the royal family, chose to settle in Chiang Mai and built residences on land allocated to them on the south side of the city (Ratanaporn Sethakul, Political, Social and Economic Changes in the Northern States of Thailand Resulting from the Chiangmai Treaties of 1874 and 1883, PhD dissertation, University of Illinois, 1989). An important marital alliance was formed between Princess Chantima, daughter of Prince Sethi Kham Fan of Chiang Mai (r. 1822-25), and Prince Mahaphrom, younger brother of Prince Sirichai of Chiang Tung. Unfortunately there are no surviving records of the clothes worn by Princess Chantima or Prince Mahaphrom. In 1920 Prince Phrom Lue of Chiang Tung married Princess Thippawan, daughter of Prince Bunyawat of Lampang, strengthening ties between the Lan Na principality of Lampang and Chiang Tung. A coat believed to have been worn by Prince Phrom Lue is now held in a private collection in Chiang Mai (Fig. 8). The knee-length coat has a mandarin collar, long sleeves and flared side vents. It is made of pale pink silk with a supplementary weft of gold metal thread. The front facings, hem, side vents and sleeve cuffs are trimmed with couched gold wire and sequins arranged in a flower-and-leaf pattern.

A sepia photograph of 1933 records the union of Princess Nang Sukhanta, daughter of Prince Kon Keao of Chiang Tung and Prince Inthanon, son of Prince Kaeo Nawarat of Chiang Mai (r. 1911-39) (Fig. 9). Princess Sukhanta is photographed in a front-fastening jacket with a loosely fitted bodice and long sleeves. There are wing-shaped scallops attached to the shoulders and the sleeves and a separate scalloped collar fits over the neckline. The jacket is decorated on the front and sleeve edgings with sequins and embroidery. From the photograph it is clear that the jacket resembles a more elaborate sample in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum (Fig. 10). This particular jacket was part of the court dress worn by a senior Burmese queen during the reigns of Mindon (1853-78) and Thibaw (1878-86). As Chiang Tung had been a tributary of Burma, it is probable that this style of jacket was issued according to Burmese sumptuary laws and was worn by Shan royalty when they went to Mandalay to pay tribute. Throughout the nineteenth century the Chiang Tung court maintained a grand Mandalay style, including its dress codes, a tradition supported by the British colonial authority, which wished to secure the loyalty of the Shan princes.

In contrast to her jacket, Princess Sukhanta's phasin and hairstyle can be identified with the Tai Khoen style of Chiang Tung. The phasin has a cotton waistband and a central panel with horizontal bands of silk and gold metal thread, interspersed at intervals with floral patterns woven in supplementary weft with gold metal thread. Attached at the lower edge of the central panel is a band of silk embroidery decorated with floral and leaf patterns, worked in satin stitch with multicoloured Chinese floss silk and couched with silver and gold metal wire and mother-of-pearl sequins. Below this band is a panel of green satin embellished with silver sequins produced by Chiang Tung silversmiths. A narrow band of Chinese silk brocade with floral patterns is sewn to the lower edge and the hem is purple silk with mother-of-pearl sequins arranged in triangles. The skirt in Figure 11 is in a style worn by a Chiang Tung princess. The phasin was worn over a petticoat decorated with sequins on the lower hem that would have been visible when the princess walked (Fig. 12). The spectacle of this colourful and elaborate Tai Khoen style affected even the restrained sensibilities of the missionaries. William Clifton Dodd, who was present at a court gathering, wrote:

The skirt with the many coloured stripes and the dark green border is the ordinary court dress. To this is added a second border of large flowers solidly embroidered in gold thread, each flower four or five inches in diameter and costing a rupee a flower. In the body of the skirt also is there wove much gold thread, and the border of green velvet is bordered on either edge with sequins in silver tinsel put on in points. The same sequins trim the two or three inches of underskirt showing, which usually trails on the ground. With gold embroidered slippers, gold bracelets and many gold ornaments in the hair set with spangles, you want to get a kun [Tai Khoen] princess out in the sunshine to see her sparkle. (Dodd, p. 201)

The waistbands, central panels and decorative silver sequins on the hems were probably produced locally but the silk brocade, satin and floss silk embroidery were imported from China. Like Chiang Mai, Chiang Tung was an important trade centre on an inland route that extended from Yunnan to Burma, and Chinese fabrics and embroidery were available in the Shan markets. Skirts like the one described above form part of the heritage of Tai Khoen families from Chiang Tung who resettled in Chiang Mai in the nineteenth century.

Princesses from the Tai Lao courts of Luang Prabang and Vientiane also married into Lan Na and Siamese royal families. The Tai Lao Princess Boonchiradorn Chutajuit (1897-1979) went to Bangkok as a child in 1906 and was married in 1922 to Prince Chutatudhtaradok. Her family, and a large population of Tai Lao people, had resettled in Ubon Ratchathani (now north-eastern Thailand) following the French annexation of Laos in 1893. At the Bangkok court, the princess kept the conventions of Tai Lao court dress, thus gaining her the nickname `Princess Laos'. The princess wore phasin with waistbands woven in a combination of cotton and silk, and the central silk panels were decorated with supplementary weft in silver and gold metal thread (Fig. 13). In contrast to Lan Na and Shan phasin, the patterns were arranged in a vertical rather than horizontal direction. The hem borders were woven in silk, and silver and gold metal thread, and were narrower than Lan Na and Shan styles. In Laos, the phasin was worn with a silk and silver and gold metal thread sash (pha sabai) that covered the breasts.

Like Princess Dararatsami, Princess Boonchiradorn began to wear Edwardian style blouses when she moved to the Bangkok court (Fig. 14). In the same way, Boonchiradorn relied on her mother Princess Boonyern to send hand-woven textiles to Bangkok from the court in Ubon Ratchathani. However, when her father died, her mother, accompanied by a group of her weavers, came to live in Bangkok. They set up a small workshop to produce Tai Lao phasin and other traditional Lao designs. As had happened with Lan Na and Shan phasin, Lao designs also became popular with Bangkok society ladies, but the princess and her mother only produced enough to give as gifts and did not develop a commercial market. Like the Lan Na and Shan princesses, Boonchiradorn wore the phasin of her homeland until the end of her life. In conclusion, the princesses described in this article wore court dress that was a refined form of inland Southeast Asian village dress, not subject to the strict sumptuary laws which were applied at many Southeast Asian courts. Although intended as an expression of the traditional dress of the homeland, there was room for personal preferences, such as adopting the latest fashions in European style blouses and jewellery. However, the princesses kept their traditional hairstyles and wore the phasin skirt on both ceremonial and informal occasions. Meanwhile some ladies at the Bangkok court took a fancy to the beautiful hand-woven phasin worn by the princesses from the inland courts, and they became a desirable fashion item. However, Lan Na, Shan and Lao court dress should be viewed primarily in terms of ethnic and cultural identity and the regional alliances that were represented.