The Design and Manufacture of Municipal and School Uniforms for a Northeastern Thai Municipality

The Isan Culture Maintenance and Revitalization Programme is a four-year, 500,000-euro programme devised and implemented by four municipalities and the College of Local Administration of Khon Kaen University in Northeast Thailand. The design and manufacture — using traditional processes adapted for making Western-style shirts that first became popular in Thailand in the first decade of the twentieth century — of student uniforms for Ban Phai municipality is one of the action lines of the Isan Culture Maintenance and Revitalization Programme. A brief review of Thailand’s decentralization process is followed by a section on school uniforms. The project in Ban Phai had four phases: a survey of citizens’ attitudes towards the use of traditionally designed and woven clothing; a capacity survey to review the local market; design and manufacture of municipal uniforms; and design and manufacture of school uniforms. The result was the production of more than 400 hybrid jackets for municipal officers with local, national and international characteristics and more than 1,200 similarly hybrid student shirts, using both traditional and machined processes and materials.