An elegant Thai socialite poses in sunglasses, a designer handbag discreetly visible in the Instagram photo, her stylish outfit completed by a pair of... elephant print pants?
Infamous across Southeast Asia, so-called elephant pants made of thin baggy cotton were once synonymous with grubby backpackers in search of themselves -- and the nearest Chang beer, a popular local lager.
The pachyderm pants were adopted by foreigners during an early wave of budget Southeast Asia travel, as visitors sought to appropriate “authentic” culture, despite there being little truly Thai about them, researchers say.
Photo: AFP
While they are still sold from stalls alongside Bangkok’s tourist haven Khaosan Road for about 150 baht (US$4), young Thai influencers and the kingdom’s high society are increasingly reclaiming them.
“The pants are dope,” said influencer Dalintan “MoRich” Promphinit, after cavorting in a bright yellow set for his two million TikTok followers in April.
“They’re not just souvenirs foreign tourists buy,” he said. “Thais are rocking them too.” “It’s like a fashion statement,” with a “teen street fashion vibe,” said the 19-year-old. His fans instantly loved his latest look.
Photo: AFP
“They kept asking where I got it,” he said.
‘A SENSATION’
Posing at Chiang Mai’s ancient wall, Toei, 27, who only gave her first name, is clad head-to-toe in the “adorable” elephant print.
Photo: AFP
“Initially, they were a hit among tourists, but now they’re trending on TikTok, thanks to influencers,” her 28-year-old friend Ong, also sporting the print, added. “So, we embraced the trend.”
A half-hour drive away is Kingkarn “Jack” Samon’s factory, where rolls and rolls of pachyderm-inspired prints are measured, sliced and stitched.
“The pants have become a sensation in Thailand,” she said during a tour of the facility, which has around 100 workers, producing 1,000-2,000 items daily.
Orders — including shirts, dresses, even handbags — are up 30 percent since the end of the Covid pandemic. The pants account for 85 percent of sales.
Hers is just a small cog in the kingdom’s textile and garment industry, which accounts for about three percent of its GDP.
Kingkarn imports the fabric from China, shipping it to Bangkok for printing, before it returns to her factory, 700km away.
The design’s popularity, however, has not been without controversy.
An online debate brought local reporters to her door after some Cambodians claimed Thailand had appropriated the elephant print, Kingkarn said.
Refusing to be drawn on the latest iteration of the historic rivalry, she did admit with a grin: the debate has boosted sales.
‘THINK VERSACE’
Ultimately, little about the pants are Thai, said Kanjana Thepboriruk, an associate professor at Northern Illinois University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
Their adoption by foreigners, attempting to stake a claim on “authentic experiences,” instead meant Thais viewed them as international, she said.
“I see the elephant pants as the latest way that young rich Thais or aspiring middle-class Thais align their identity with Westerners,” she said.
And high-end retailers have quickly cottoned on.
Inside a luxury Bangkok mall, Bangkok Tales’s elephant pants sell for 1,090 baht (US$30). “When people think about elephant pants, (they think of them as) really cheap, but I want to make them look like Versace,” explained founder and designer Rawiwan “Gigi” Worasinsiri.
Rawiwan initially targeted tourists, but the pandemic flipped her business model, with Thais filling the deficit.
“I was surprised,” she said, crediting TikTok for her success.
At the other end of the spectrum in Bangkok’s sprawling Chatuchak market, 32-year-old Onnitsa Kuren already owns three pairs.
“Elephant-patterned pants go with anything — just pair them with a T-shirt,” she said.
Musing as she browsed, she added, “I’m currently on the lookout for a red pair.”
Common sense is not that common: a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania concludes the concept is “somewhat illusory.” Researchers collected statements from various sources that had been described as “common sense” and put them to test subjects. The mixed bag of results suggested there was “little evidence that more than a small fraction of beliefs is common to more than a small fraction of people.” It’s no surprise that there are few universally shared notions of what stands to reason. People took a horse worming drug to cure COVID! They think low-traffic neighborhoods are a communist plot and call
It is barely 10am and the queue outside Onigiri Bongo already stretches around the block. Some of the 30 or so early-bird diners sit on stools, sipping green tea and poring over laminated menus. Further back it is standing-room only. “It’s always like this,” says Yumiko Ukon, who has run this modest rice ball shop and restaurant in the Otsuka neighbourhood of Tokyo for almost half a century. “But we never run out of rice,” she adds, seated in her office near a wall clock in the shape of a rice ball with a bite taken out. Bongo, opened in 1960 by
Over the years, whole libraries of pro-People’s Republic of China (PRC) texts have been issued by commentators on “the Taiwan problem,” or the PRC’s desire to annex Taiwan. These documents have a number of features in common. They isolate Taiwan from other areas and issues of PRC expansion. They blame Taiwan’s rhetoric or behavior for PRC actions, particularly pro-Taiwan leadership and behavior. They present the brutal authoritarian state across the Taiwan Strait as conciliatory and rational. Even their historical frames are PRC propaganda. All of this, and more, colors the latest “analysis” and recommendations from the International Crisis Group, “The Widening
From a nadir following the 2020 national elections, two successive chairs of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) and Eric Chu (朱立倫), tried to reform and reinvigorate the old-fashioned Leninist-structured party to revive their fortunes electorally. As examined in “Donovan’s Deep Dives: How Eric Chu revived the KMT,” Chu in particular made some savvy moves that made the party viable electorally again, if not to their full powerhouse status prior to the 2014 Sunflower movement. However, while Chu has made some progress, there remain two truly enormous problems facing the KMT: the party is in financial ruin and