This 'baju panjang' or jacket is tailored from early European machine printed trade cotton. It has stripes of leaves of red and dark cream alternating with flower sprigs and foliage within a geometric border of small flowers of green, blue and shades of red. The motifs are roller printed and the red neck band has small flower motif prints.The Malay baju panjang is a sort of long, loose coat once popular with both men and women. It relates to the Indo-Arabic banyan worn by Gujarati merchants, which came to be popular with Europeans. Malay popular tradition holds that the baju panjang was introduced with the arrival of Islam in the Malay World which required a more modest form of dress.
