Title
Jacket
Year/Period
mid 18th century
Region
South Sumatra
Dimension
Gross measurement: 142 x 161.4 cm
Accession No.
2011-00091
Collection of
Credit Line
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Lee Kip Lee
This ‘baju panjang’ or jacket is tailored from hand painted, mordant and resist-dyed cotton. It has a motif of large flower heads. The sleeves have a border of similar flowers in red, blue, purple, green and yellow against a cream ground.The Malay baju panjang is a sort of long, loose coat once popular with both men and women. It relates to the Indo-Arabic banyan worn by Gujarati merchants, which came to be popular with Europeans. Malay popular tradition holds that the baju panjang was introduced with the arrival of Islam in the Malay World which required a more modest form of dress.
