Silk Clothes To Honor Thailand’s Queen

[george]

Silk clothes to honor Thailand’s Queen

John Le Fevre

HM Queen Sirikit – Thais urged to wear

silk in her honor

BANGKOK (thaivisa.com): -- Thais around the world have been urged to wear clothes made from silk for the first 12 days of August in honor of the birthday of the person who has been a driving force in reviving the Thai silk industry, HM Queen Sirikit.

The Queen will celebrate her 77th birthday on August 12 and since the 1960s, has been played a pivotal role in nurturing and growing the traditional skills involved in the craft.

The Queen adapted traditional national dress designs into those suitable for the modern day, giving Thai women the world over a national dress that is distinctive and immediately recognized as being Thai.

It was while touring villagers in the Norhteast of Thailand that the Queen found mudmee silk and propelled it from the relative obscurity of a northeastern cottage industry to one acknowledged for its quality and uniqueness.

The Queen’s patronage of the silk industry also saw the introduction of the silk-weaving apprenticeship project aimed at giving fully integrated silk-weaving training to a new generation.

The project covers the cultivation of mulberry trees, the rearing of silkworms, reeling, dyeing, and then weaving threads into fabric, using various techniques.

Queen Sirikit has long been an ardent ambassador for Thai silk, wearing the fabric and clothes made from the different styles of Thai silk, locally and abroad.

The Wear Silk campaign has been suggested as a suitable way for Thais to acknowledge the Queen’s role in an industry responsible for millions of dollars of income annually.

-- thaivisa.com 2009-07-24