Sihn in Laos

Please forgive the obscure pun, which I could not resist. Sihn are Lao-style skirts, the local sarong equivalent. They are basically a large tube of fabric with two sets of hooks, attached on the inside at one hip, and on the outside at the other. They are incredibly practical to wear, given that they are loose enough to give total freedom of movement, but keep you covered as wraparound skirts sometimes fail to do. (Apparently lots of styles of sarong are like this too, though I have mostly seen the kind that you just tie around yourself.) And women in Laos - at least the women I saw in Luang Prabang - wear sihn daily. They are the girls' school uniform, and they are worn by market women and women working in travel agencies and cafes and even in the fields and rivers.

Nothing I've said so far, however, reveals the incredible glory of Lao weaving. Even though many of the sihn around are mass-produced machine fabric, the traditional patterns and colours are marvellous. As for the hand-woven textiles, in ikat (locally mat mii) and supplementary weft...well, words fail.

Suffice it to say that I fell in love with sihn (and don't want to mention how many I acquired in my brief time in Laos), but I am not the only one, as this streetsign shows. Apparently the default human who crosses here wears a sihn and her hair in a bun...