Title
Blue Sleeveless Cheongsam
Year/Period
1960s-1970s
Object Type
Technique
Dimension
Object size: 101.7 x 39.5 x 3.0 cm
Accession No.
2020-00314
Collection of
Credit Line
Gift of Dr Joseph Sheares, Mr Edwin Sheares and Ms Constance Sheares
This cheongsam belonged to Mrs Benjamin Sheares, the wife of Singapore’s second President, Mr Benjamin Sheares. Mrs Sheares was born Yeo Seh Geok (b.1917-2014) in Quanzhou, a small town near Xiamen in the southern Fujian province of China. She came to Singapore in the late 1930s to escape the Japanese invasion of China. Soon after, she started training as a midwife at the Kandang Kerbau Hospital (KKH). In 1939, she married Dr. Benjamin Sheares, an established surgeon who later became the president of Singapore from 1969 to 1981. The cheongsam could have been worn with a matching jacket, a trend in the 1960s which adopted the wearing of Western-style jackets over the cheongsam to provide a more formal look.
