Title
Turquoise Jacket with Beads
Year/Period
1960s-1970s
Object Type
Material
Technique
Dimension
Gross measurement: 63.5 x 100.0 cm
Accession No.
2020-00318
Collection of
Credit Line
Gift of Dr Joseph Sheares, Mr Edwin Sheares and Ms Constance Sheares
This jacket 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 jacket reflects a trend in the 1960s in which women wore Western-style jackets over the cheongsam to provide a more formal look.
