East West - The Asian American Lifestyle Magazine

By Ruth Carlson

Government and fashion aren't terms normally found in the same sentence, and rarely are the two industries teamed up together to fill your closet. But, in an ambitious new movement in Thailand, the government is pushing local designers onto the world runway. The Bangkok Fashion City project intends to place Thai brand-name fashion firmly on the world map with the ultimate aim of Bangkok taking its place alongside Paris, Milan and New York as the world's fashion capitals.

It is an innovative venture that appears to be paying off as three of Thailand's leading ready-to-wear brands, Grey, Senada Theory and Fly Now, returned from recent Paris shows with large, unprecedented distribution contracts and placements for their spring 2006 lines in North America, Europe and East Asia.

"The government supported our Paris runway show in order to change the attitude of people abroad that recognize Thailand as a place for just silk and handicrafts or worse, a copy market." says Bhanu Inkawat, Grey's Creative Director. "We want shoppers to realize that Thailand can also offer quality of design and production that is competitive with the fashion business in Europe."

Dr. Surapone Virulrak, director of the Bangkok International Fashion Academy (BIFA), a fashion school that began as part of the fashion project, says to be competitive, the fashion industry in Thailand must move from cheap manufacturing to creative design.

Students at BIFA are exposed to the latest fashion technologies and learn from visiting faculty members from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, Institut de la Mode in Paris, University of Central England in Birmingham and Bunka Kaguen University in Tokyo - all steps, experts say, to help the country differentiate the "made in Thailand" label.

"When the cheaper merchandise orders turn to China, Thai designers have to merge into selling high-end products," Virulrak says. Right now, he says, the fashion industry is segmented, and to be successful, designers need "to join the effort to develop the business in the same direction and fill in the gaps to push Thailand into the world market."

"Thailand is like many growing countries," Inkawat adds. "We have been through the phase of learning from other people but eventually we have to explore and utilize our own unique identity and resources."

Thailand's fashion tradition blossomed relatively late compared to Western countries, not until the 1900s, but this lag may be one reason Thai fashion is so unique; the people have held onto their traditional arts. "Her Majesty the Queen encourages all Thai women who are keen in weaving to earn extra income for the family, and it is a success story that Thailand has maintained its traditional weaving art and technique while it is almost gone in Japan," Virulrak says. "The Thai people are keen in hand-woven textiles, both silk and cotton, with extensive colors and patterns, which can be a large source of creative design."

Many of the country's top ready-to-wear lines rely on these traditional arts as the base of a design, while bringing in modern twists. The appeal for fashion buyers is a mix of ancient art forms with street chic.

"We are modern and glamour Asian chic while definitely including Thai elements in our collections," Inkawat says about the Grey line. "In this spring/summer collection we adopted a lot of techniques from the needlework of the Northern Thai Hill Tribe in our work. Also if you see the collection closely, you will see that even the patterns of many jackets, pants and skirts are from the Hill Tribe as well. Their patterns are cut in a very basic fundamental way, squarish without much flare, but they end up very unique and surprising. We blend yesterday's cultures, traditions and beliefs with the modern attitude and current issues of the world today."

Photo captions

Top: Senada Theory, which is available at Fred Segal in Beverly Hills and Barney's department stores. Middle: The Grey ready-to-wear line. U.S. stores carrying Grey include Vagabond (Miami), Heist, Bird and MOMO (Los Angeles), Talya Fashion Art (Laguna Beach, CA), Paparazzi (San Francisco) and Churchill (Kansas City).