This sleeveless lace 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. This jacket may have been worn over a cheongsam, reflecting a trend in the 1960s which adopted the wearing of Western-style jackets over the cheongsam to provide a more formal look. For instance, Mrs Sheares wore this to welcome the Prime Ministers of Sri Lanka and Mrs Ranasinghe Premadasa at the Istana in 1979.
