This white cotton blouse trimmed with handmade lace is known as a 'kebaya'. Such garments were thought to have originated in Java and were initially popular with both Dutch and Indonesian ladies in the cosmopolitan centres of Java. The term kebaya is thought to be derived from the Arab word ‘kaba’ which means clothing. By the 1920s and 30s kebaya came to be worn by women of many communities in both the Dutch East Indies and British Straits Settlements. Kebaya were traditionally worn together with a kain jarit or kain panjang, an unstitched length of cloth, typically batik, wrapped around the lower half of the body, sometimes referred to as a ‘sarong’.
