May, 2025
What the Queens Wore - the Silk of Angkor is out, on Amazon!
191 pages
215 color photographs!
Pattern in textiles suddenly appeared at Angkor as if by a sorcerer’s magic. Worn not by a queen, but by a higher being – a gentle earth spirit guarding a door of the inner sanctum of a royal temple, and the treasure beneath the statue inside it. A yakshī.*
Brocade was haute couture in India in the early 12th century, and Sūryavarman II wanted it. I believe he simply put in an order – for the fabric for the royal family, and for looms and weaving instructors so that he could establish his own brocade atelier. Space would have been made alongside the other royal workshops, just outside the walls of the palace compound in Angkor Thom – you can still see their remains.
With a research grant from the Victoria and Albert Museum, Karun Thakar Fund, I set out to discover the origin of those early patterns. But first, I would have to document them. I went to the sanctum atop the Bakong temple, Beng Mealea, Thommanon, Chau Say Tevoda, Sikhoraphum and Angkor Wat, and then to Jayavarman VII’s temples. I compiled a photographic record of each pattern worn by the elite of Angkor. Surprisingly, there were only fifty. The same patterns were used over and over again, reshuffled into different combinations.
With a tip from fashion designer Gunjan Jain of Vriksh Designs in New Delhi, I flew to India. To Ahmedabad, Gujarat, to meet with Paresh Patel of Royal Brocades. He identified 60% of the fifty Angkorian patterns as Ashavali brocade patterns.
Success, yes! But was it easy to do this research? No! In What the Queens Wore I take you with me. Dodging snakes, wary of landmines, climbing way too high up to get the best photo of each pattern that I could. Every temple held a differentchallenge. And India? The narrow strips of brocade that we see on Sūryavarman II's first temple structure nine centuries ago were made in Ahmedabad until the 1990’s!
So order the book, strap in, and come with me on the adventure of a lifetime. Glad to have you along.
* The form of the yakshī came from India, but its name changed in Cambodia over the course of a millennium. In modern Khmer “yakshī” means, “female demon” – the Sanskrit word, “yakshī” (यक्षी) appears to have been confused with the Sanskrit word, “yakshinī” (यक्षिणी), defined as “a sort of female demon or fiend attached to the service of Durgā”.