MoDERN DRESS AND IDENTITY
The globalization of dress fashions in the twentieth century was the most visible marker of the end of autonomy discussed in Chapter 11. Before 1900 the few elite Asians who dressed like Europeans stood out as anomalies, by 1960 it was survivals of locally particular dress in urban settings that seemed anomalous and in need of explanation. Nothing better than dress tortured conflict between desires to emulate the modern status of the European and to reject his alien arrogance. Each time and place revealed different nuances in the nature and outcome of this conflict. There were dramatic moments of overturning tradition or asserting neo-tradition, but the overall current was irresistible in the direction of globalized modernity.
Status hierarchies were everywhere expressed in but these differences had seemed relatively minor to Europeans Southeast Asia. In whether male and female dress and hairstyles seemed it was the "masculine" short brush look of Thai women or the "feminine 1ong locks of Bama, avanese, and Viet men. Palace sumptuary codes and hierar- chies became stricter as the courts became defensive, but did not extend to whole societies as they had in Europe. It was the Europeans in Asia who became obsessive about dress codes as ideas of racial hierarchy took hold. Experimentation and hybridity was no longer acceptable to the Europeans who set the tone from 1900, so that men and increasingly women should dress as they did in Europe. The British officials, accustomed to wearing shoes as a mark of identity wherever they went in India, seemed willing to risk war or rebellion in Burma rather than remove their shoes in palace and pagoda.
"Protected" royals in the colonial context tended to insist on distinctive dress styles held to be traditional among their own subjects, since it imposed a pattern of deference in walking, crouching, and speaking which was seen to be under attack elsewhere. In Siam, however, the determination of successive rul ers to achieve "civilized" status in the eyes of the powerful Europeans drove the most explicit and orderly westernization. King Mongkut (1851-68) already required those attending court to wear shirts, and began the habit of wearing a military uniform in emulation of the most powerful of his European visitors His successor Chulalongkorn wore immaculate European dress on his travels in the 1890s (Figure 14. l), and full dress uniform for his public representation at home in statues and portraits. Government officials the epitome of the thrust to modernity, wore a white uniform A hybrid style of sarung-like cloth tucked in such a way as to resemble knee-length pantaloons was fashionable into the twentieth century, but increasingly was replaced by western trousers for the intelligentsia and fashionable urbanites, Chinese At a popular and Thai level, a decree had to be issued in 1899 imposing fines for women who did not cover their breasts and men who did not wear the sarung down to knee length during the visit of Prince Heinrich of Prussia to Bangkok
The imposition of global modernity reached its peak after the absolute monarchy was overthrown in 1932, and particularly under the wartime dictatorship of Marshall Phibun Songkhram (1938-44). Decrees of 1941 insisted that Thais must be dressed properly when in public to uphold the civilized status of the country. This meant European dress or the approved hybrid style of national dress. Women were not excluded, and a "Miss Thailand" competition was officially encouraged in which from 1941 only European dress should be worn, complete with gloves, hats, and high-heeled shoes. Ahead of the rest of the region, Thailand appeared to have made its choice.
The same desire to claim the modern, civilized, and free status elite Europeans weighed even more heavily on the radicalized status hierarchies of colonies. Men who dressed, acted, and spoke like Europeans were more likely to be treated respectfully and feel the equal of their masters, so national it's became the foremost westernizers. In Indonesia a radical young Soewardi Soerjaningrat (1914, 267) had marveled how "a slavish attitude and manners yes even opinions, change into ways which are unforced, free through the Change of clothes Filipino politicians of the 1982 discarded Spanish or local style for a dark jacket, the americana, once they had to deal with Americans Those engaged in revolution, whether in 1890s Philippines or the 10 elsewhere, were particularly eager to embrace European military or civil dress
Burma proved the exception to this westernizing pattern, perhaps initi because of the influence of Gandhi's ideas during its administrative inco tion into British India until 1935. The first generation of English-educated nationalists in the YMBA of the 1920s did adopt western dress as a mark of equality. Their more radical successors of the 1930s, however, who adopted the respectful term of address to Europeans, Thakin, as their own badge equality, preferred a Burmese style of pinni Gacket) and long i Csarung-like wrap-around, with an opening at the front war politicians, concerned to assert Bama distinctiveness, were more concerned than elsewhere with uniform ity of dress. U Nu already emphasized national dress as the "very backbone" of the culture of the race or nation" in 1951 (cited Edwards 2007, 133).Th advent of military rule in 1962 brought to a new level the enforcing of a dress code centered on the longoi, which had the probably intended effect of making trousers, the symbol of assertive male modernity, the prerogative of the ruling military alone
The same nationalist men who embraced modernity in dress often pre ferred the presumed delicacy and deference of traditional dress in women Another struggle between equality and identity took place here, the battle lines being drawn differently. The first women to achieve high levels of education or political office adopted modern western dress, like Sundanese lawyer Maria Ulfah Santoso (1911-88) or Filipina pediatrician Fe del Mundo (1911-2011) the first woman (accidentally) admitted to Harvard Medical School. The ives of political leaders were more likely to appear in a distinctive Asian style, however modernized. Once the revolutions were over, a "national" style of female dress became established in the 1960s and 1970s in each of the new countries. For men too there were experiments with adding a "national" touch to a fundamentally modern/universal dress, beginning with the Indonesian headdress. Javanese might combine their blangkon in batik cloth with a European suit, while Sukarno popularized a black fez (pic) as a unifying symbol for all Indonesian men
The antithesis of modernizing nationalist dress was the undress of those most recently incorporated into the world system through colonialism. For lowlanders in the early 1900s, the wearing of a simple loin-cloth or sarung without clothing the upper body became the preeminent sign of savage and marginal status. As education spread to the highlands, particularly if at missionary hands, cheap manufactured shirts were accepted as the price of acceptance in the broader society.The cultural conservatism ofiate colonialism however, allowed this relative undress to survive, notably in the cultural museum's of Bali and in Rajah Brooke's Sarawak. Nationalism was more confident of its mission to civilize, and these pockets disappeared quickly after 1945. Yet there is evidence at least from the Luzon Cordillera that highlanders understood and used their undress as one of the weapons against incorporation, against President Marcos in the 1970s.
politics, emphatically joined the new interna Southeast Asia's dress, like its tional pattern during the middle third of the twentieth century. Once the diverse local patterns of dress had gone, however, and the struggle for equal dignity won, elites made a return to local color from the 1970s and 1980s. Batik shirts became pervasive on even formal occasions in Indonesia and Malaysia, as did the barong Tagalog in the Philippines The graceful ao dai, hunned by revolutionary Northviet Nam during the war, made a great come back thereafter beginning with the tourist trade.Weddings in particular became occasions for experimenting with modern adaptations of traditional where competitive ethnic pride could be displayed within accepted national and international parameters. This kind of sartorial display became a feature of the many international summits held the region, each country feeling in obliged to produce its "national" dress at its turn as host.