Early 20th century carte de visite from France, with a photograph of a standing women wearing a dark coloured blouse with a lace edging (TRC 2020.5161).In a previous blog post, I described a box of 127 Nyonya kebaya embroidery patterns in the collection of the Textile Research Centre (TRC 2020.4874). They were used among the Peranakan Chinese in Malaysia to embroider women's blouses. Following my interest in these kebaya blouses, the director of the TRC acquired a black and white photograph (TRC 2020.5161) of a woman wearing a blouse with noticeable similarities to the kebaya.
From the text on the photograph, we know that the it was taken in the studio of Charles Bacou (officially known as Louis Jules Bacou, 1853-?) , a portrait photographer active in France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. We can assume that the photograph was taken somewhere in France, but who exactly the woman is and where she is from remains a mystery.
If we take a closer look at her blouse, it seems similar to the kebaya because of the V-shaped collar and its length, coming down to just below hip level. The bottom of the blouse also points slightly downwards, just like the shape of the kebaya.
However, there are also important differences. The front of her blouse is fastened with buttons, rather than the three brooch kerongsang that are used to fasten the kebaya. She also wears her blouse over a long white undershirt and (given the date of the photograph) a skirt, possibly of the bustle type, which gives her dress a wider European shape, in contrast to the hip-hugging batik sarong.
The blouse of this lady is trimmed and decorated with lace, rather than embroidery, and it appears that the blouse is all in one colour, probably black (although it is hard to be sure with a black and white photograph). This is a marked difference with the Nyonya kebaya, which is typically made of a brightly coloured voile and embroidered with brightly coloured thread.
However, even though we do not know the story of the woman in this photograph, the similarity and differences between this blouse and the Nyonya kebaya tell an important part of the story of the evolution of the kebaya worn by the Peranakan Chinese.
Paper pattern for embroidery on a Nyonya kebaya blouse from among the Peranakan Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore, late 20th century (TRC 2020.4874.028).It is thought that the Nyonya kebaya was perhaps adapted from European lace-trimmed blouses worn by Dutch women living in the Dutch East Indies. Because of the hot and humid climate, Dutch women often gave up their stiff and stuffy European dresses in domestic settings for a more airy batik sarong paired with a lace-trimmed white cotton blouse. White cotton was worn in the day time, while black was evening wear, and therefore a little more formal.
There are photographs of Peranakan Chinese women wearing similar white, lace-trimmed shirts in the 1920s. However, perhaps because in Chinese culture white is associated with mourning, the blouses were gradually transformed, becoming more colourful with more intricate decoration. But we can see that there are still echoes of this lace trim on some of the Nyonya kebaya.
For example, an embroidery pattern in the TRC collection (TRC 2020.4874.028), once applied to fabric, would have employed a cutwork embroidery technique (tebuk lubang in Malay). The lines coloured in blue would have been embroidered using a zig-zag stitch and then the spaces in-between would have been carefully cut out with scissors. The end effect would be a fine web or lattice made of embroidery, a pattern reminiscent of lace.
This part of the story of the Nyonya kebaya demonstrates the ability of the Peranakan Chinese women to adopt ideas from various influences and combine them create something new, beautiful and unique.
Tchi Ridley, 6 February 2021.
See also two other TRC Needle entries about the Peranakan:
