Tradition

Khmer traditional clothing

Khmer traditional clothing centers on three lengths of cloth: the sampot wrapped at the waist, the sbai over the shoulder and the krama.[1][2] Khmer statues trace the way these cloths were worn from the sixth century to today, and Khmer temple inscriptions name some of them from the ninth century.[1][3]

Garments and cloths

  • Sampot (សំពត់): the lower garment, worn drawn between the legs as chang kben or hanging as a skirt.
  • Sbai (ស្បៃ): the long shawl worn over the left shoulder and across the breast, above all by brides and dancers.
  • Krama (ក្រមា): the checkered cloth worn as scarf, head wrap, belt and much more.
  • Av phay (អាវផាយ): the long, open ceremonial robe worn by men at court rites and weddings.
  • Hol (ហូល): silk woven with weft ikat, the most common cloth of the ceremonial sampot.
  • Chorabap (សារបាប់): silk woven with gold- or silver-colored metallic thread.

History

Funan and Chenla

A stone statue of a standing woman in a tall headdress, wearing a long skirt cloth that falls to the ankles.
Standing female deity, probably Durga, Chenla period. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Chinese histories of Funan, the early kingdom of the lower Mekong, tell that its people at first went unclothed. In the founding story, Hun Tian taught the queen Liu Ye to wear a cloth through which she put her head. In the third century, King Fan Xun ordered the men to wear a cloth wrapped around the body. Great families cut it from brocade, and the poor used plain cloth.[4]

The statues of Phnom Da, from the sixth century, show men in a light, short sampot held by a simple belt, with one end passed between the thighs and fastened at the back. Women wear a thin skirt cloth to the ankles. Both leave the upper body bare.[1] In the seventh century, at Isanapura, now Sambor Prei Kuk, men wore the same short sampot, and women's long skirt cloths were held by flat belts with clasps decorated in repoussé, metal beaten into relief. In the eighth century the front of the men's sampot was folded into a pocket at the left hip, and goldsmith's belts appear.[1]

Angkor

Through the Angkorian period, statues show the upper body bare. Men wore a short sampot, sometimes pleated with an anchor-shaped double fall in front, and women a long pleated skirt cloth. In the eleventh century the sampot grew shorter and rose high at the back in a shape like butterfly wings. By the thirteenth century women's skirt cloths were patterned with small flowers and held by wide goldsmith's belts with pendants.[1] Temple inscriptions list fine cloths among offerings, among them a sacred stole (spai) with a gold border given at Preah Ko in 893.[3]

The Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan, who lived at Angkor in 1296 and 1297, saw everyone from the ruler down, men and women, with the hair in a knot and only a cloth wrapped around the hips. Going out, they added a larger cloth over it. Patterns marked rank: only the ruler could wear densely patterned cloth. The ruler wore a gold diadem or garlands of jasmine, heavy pearls at the neck and gold bracelets and rings set with cat's-eyes.[5]

Middle period

A painted woman in a red top and a long checked skirt cloth facing a man bare to the waist in a short wrapped cloth with a green sash, who holds out a dish.
People from Cambodia in a Qing court painting by Xie Sui, 1759.

In the statues of the sixteenth century, the front of the sampot is folded, rounded and turned over the belt, sometimes over undertrousers to mid-calf. Women's dress is completed by a scarf, at times worn across the chest.[1] The coronation manuals of the court at Oudong, of 1613 and 1629, dress the prince, the Brahmins and the dignitaries in a wrapped lower cloth and the ceremonial robe phay (ផាយ) by rank. The king changes into the color of the day. Foot soldiers wore cotton jackets.[6]

Nineteenth century

Two young women standing barefoot in front of a wooden house, each with a cloth wrapped around the chest and a sampot wrapped at the waist.
Young women in Phnom Penh, on an old postcard.

A British officer who visited King Ang Duong at Oudong in 1854 saw the king with his upper body bare, in a wrapped lower cloth held by a gold belt with a clasp of diamonds and rubies. The palace women wore a long silk scarf over one shoulder and across the body.[7] Around 1859 the King of Cambodia "generally wears nothing but the langouti, the native dress", his of yellow silk. Some women of the court wore a tight jacket buttoned over the chest, and Battambang was known for silk langouti of bright colors.[8] In 1863 the scholar Pétrus Ky described women wearing the langouti as a skirt, with a buttonless tunic above, and keeping their hair long until marriage.[7]

Protectorate and independence

Under the French protectorate, from 1863 to 1953, women kept the sampot as a skirt while men turned to trousers, and the skirt was made into the fitted sampot bot, with a flat fold at the side. These lines grew firmer after independence, until 1970.[2] Elderly Cambodians remembered the clothing of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the long tube shirt, the "malayu shirt", "Chinese pants" and the sampot tied kben, all cut and sewn at home.[9] In the late 1950s Queen Sisowath Kossamak created the Apsara dance costume from the dress of the goddesses carved at Angkor; see Robam Tep Apsara.[2]

Khmer Rouge

Under the Khmer Rouge, from 1975 to 1979, brightly colored clothing was forbidden. Women wore black, dark blue or maroon sampot with plain short-sleeved blouses, and the cadres wore the collarless black shirt, baggy trousers and checkered krama.[10] Silk weaving was outlawed as bourgeois, while cotton krama weaving went on.[11] When the National Museum of Cambodia reopened in 1979, three quarters of its silk textiles and costumes were gone.[12]

Since 1979

Middle-aged and older women went back to silk sampot of phamuong (ផាមួង) and hol for ceremonies, while many younger women wear factory-made clothing.[2] In the 1990s, Kikuo Morimoto surveyed silk weaving for UNESCO and founded the Institute for Khmer Traditional Textiles in Siem Reap.[13] The Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts held the first Khmer Sampot Bot Gala in March 2024.[2]

Upper garments

Jackets and blouses appear in the court manuals of the seventeenth century and in nineteenth-century accounts of the court.[6][8] The long tube shirt, av bampong veng (អាវបំពង់វែង), has a tube-shaped body and long sleeves narrowing at the wrist. Women once wore it at home and in the fields, made of black-dyed cloth that washed easily and hid stains, and for festivals in brighter cloth. It is seen in old Wat paintings, and today it is worn mostly at village ceremonies such as the chol mlob coming-of-age rite and at the Royal Ploughing Ceremony.[14] The av pak (អាវប៉ាក់), "embroidered blouse", is a fitted blouse, mostly for women, decorated with lace or embroidery and worn for formal occasions over a sampot of hol or phamuong.[15] The national costume pairs the silk sampot with a jacket for men, and for women the hol with a short-sleeved jacket, its collar barely open and often embroidered.[1]

Today

The sampot is worn above all at weddings, religious celebrations and official events.[2] At a Khmer wedding ceremony the groom wears the av phay and the bride an embroidered sbai with a silk sampot.[16][17] The Royal Ballet of Cambodia keeps the court costume of sampot and sbai; see Cambodian classical dance.[18]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Agence Kampuchea Presse, Le costume khmer à travers le temps (in French, April 16, 2019)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Fashion & Market, Magali An Berthon, The Cambodian sampot: womanhood, modesty and emancipation (May 21, 2025)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 SEAlang Library, Philip N. Jenner, Dictionary of Angkorian Khmer and Dictionary of Middle Khmer: spai (2009)
  4. ↑ Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient, Paul Pelliot, Le Fou-nan (in French, 1903)
  5. ↑ Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient, Paul Pelliot, Mémoires sur les coutumes du Cambodge (in French, 1902)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Udaya, Grégory Mikaelian, Le traité de sacre des rois d'Oudong (XVIIe siècle) (in French, 2008)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Péninsule, Jacques Népote, Un visiteur britannique à la cour de Oudong en 1854 (in French, 2005)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Project Gutenberg, Henri Mouhot, Travels in the central parts of Indo-China (Siam), Cambodia, and Laos, volume 1 (1864)
  9. ↑ Reyum, Seams of change: clothing and the care of the self in late 19th and 20th century Cambodia (2004)
  10. ↑ Library of Congress, Country studies: Cambodia, dress (December 1987)
  11. ↑ Asian Textile Studies, Sue and Dave Richardson, Cambodian krama (undated)
  12. ↑ Archaeological Textiles Review, Magali An Berthon, TEX-KR project: from textile remains to lost practices (2022)
  13. ↑ National Geographic, Saving Cambodia's ancient silk legacy (December 19, 2016)
  14. ↑ Yosothor, Ja Sophary, អាវបំពង់វែង (Av bampong veng), Khmer Renaissance 7 (undated)
  15. ↑ Magali An Berthon, 100 fashion and textile terms in Khmer, English, and French (2025)
  16. ↑ Yosothor, Preap Chanmara, អាវផាយ (Av phay), Khmer Renaissance 61 (undated)
  17. ↑ Khmernote, ក្រសួងវប្បធម៌ អំពាវនាវដល់អ្នកច្នៃម៉ូតសម្លៀកបំពាក់ (Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts appeal to clothing designers) (February 26, 2026)
  18. ↑ Sounds of Angkor, Patrick Kersalé, Le Ballet royal du Cambodge au XXIe siècle (in French, April 29, 2021)
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