This ‘baju panjang’ (long tunic) is thought to have originated from the Riau Sultanate. The high collar, in ‘cekap musang’ style, is fastened with two buttons and the front opening is trimmed with plaited maroon silk and silver metal thread. The fabric hand-woven Malay ‘kain songket’, a fabric made using a supplementary weft of gold wrapped threads. The threads are woven in the way that they skip over certain warp threads, thus creating floral and geometric patterns in the cloth. Dubbed as the Malay world’s ‘cloth of gold’, kain songket were traditionally strictly reserved for royalty in most societies, and were used mainly for ceremonial occasions and weddings.
