Khmer Clothing and Appearance

In 1296-1297, Zhou Daguan visited Angkor, the Khmer capital in present-day Cambodia. He described how people wrapped cloth at the waist, how local weavers made cotton fabric, and how access to patterned textiles and ornaments varied by rank. A sandstone figure carved in the eleventh century preserves a different set of details: pleats represented in stone and pendants on a belt.

On this page4 sections

Wrapped cloth and local textiles

Zhou says men and women wore a length of cloth wrapped around the waist, with their shoulders bare. When they went outdoors, they put a wider strip of cloth over it. For locally made cotton cloth, Zhou describes a waist-held weaving technique. A weaver tied one end of the unfinished cloth to a belt and continued working from the other end; small pieces of bamboo served as shuttles. A shuttle carries the crosswise thread through the lengthwise threads, binding them into cloth. Zhou also reports that people spun cotton by hand rather than with a spinning wheel. At the temple compounds of Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm, archaeologists recovered cotton seeds and fragments of seed coats in sampled residential contexts. The study interprets these remains as evidence of cotton processing in those compounds.

Zhou says fine fabrics also arrived from Siam, a historical name for Thailand, Champa, a coastal kingdom in present-day Vietnam, and western maritime routes. He praises imported cloth for its colors and skilled weaving.

Patterns, ornaments and rank

Zhou says only the king could wear densely patterned cloth. Princes and senior officials could wear fabric with sparser patterns. Palace people could wear cloth carrying two groups of patterns, while among ordinary people he notes patterned garments for women only.

For royal display, Zhou describes a gold diadem, a ceremonial crown or headband, or jasmine garlands wound around the king’s hair knot. He also records pearl necklaces, gold bracelets and rings set with cat’s-eye stones. The king went barefoot with his palms and soles dyed red, and carried a gold sword when he went outdoors.

Hair and social identity

Zhou says men and women tied their hair in a topknot, a knot high on the head. He describes palace service women shaving a strip at the upper forehead and applying red pigment there and at the temples, marks that identified their palace service. He reports that ordinary women wore topknots without combs, hairpins or other head ornaments, while also wearing gold bracelets and rings.

Sculpted clothing and ideal appearance

A sandstone male figure in the Asia Society collection is dated to the third quarter of the eleventh century and the Baphuon style, named for an Angkor temple. Its short wrapped garment falls in vertical pleats, with an eight-petaled flower carved into extra folds over the left thigh. Jeweled pendants hang from a low belt with a fine pattern that the museum says resembles metalwork. The museum leaves the figure’s identity unresolved: it could represent a protective temple figure, called a guardian, or a royal person, since both guardians and royalty wore such belts.

For another dated Angkorian temple example, Prasat Kravan was dedicated in 921 and preserves interior brick reliefs.