The US Midwest city of Detroit remains synonymous with cars, but “Motor City” is also home to a virtual marketplace for a much smaller consumer item – sneakers.

Located on the 10th floor of an ultra-modern building in downtown Detroit and backed by investors that include rapper Eminem and actor Mark Wahlberg, StockX is an exchange to buy and sell athletic shoes, including limited-editions or collector’s items.

As with other trading floors, prices on the world’s first sneaker exchange fluctuate based on consumer perceptions, and can sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Instead of poring over the utterances of central bankers, participants on StockX – which has expanded into handbags, watches and streetwear – monitor Instagram to see what Hermes bag Kim Kardashian is carrying or what’s on Kanye West’s feet.

The market’s main floor has a display of Air Jordans and shoes by Nike, Adidas and other brands in a variety of colours. All have been verified by the exchange for authenticity.

A couple of metres away, young women inspect handbags by Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Hermes.

“StockX is a stock market of things,” says founder-chief executive Josh Luber.

“We just connect buyers and sellers but the method by how we connect buyers and sellers is exactly the same way that the world’s stock markets connect buyers and sellers.”

Not unlike Nasdaq, the electronic exchange located at Times Square in Manhattan, StockX has a scrolling display that updates prices with each new transaction.

Eminem also has conducted business on the exchange, selling a re-release of the limited-edition Air Jordan 4 Encore. The offering was part of a fundraising drive for Detroit communities.

Although most participants are in the US, the virtual exchange, which opened two years ago, also has a solid clientele in China.

StockX tracks different “sectorals”, such as the “Jordan Index”, the “Nike Index” and the “Adidas Index”, which aggregate prices for various items.

Just off the main room, a group of “analysts” glued to their screens collect and number-crunch the latest transactions and manage the catalogue.

Someone who wants to sell a pair of Air Jordans, for example, would need to open a StockX account, and then “literally all you have to do is click one button, ‘sell’ and just accept that highest offer”, says Luber, a former consultant for IBM.

Once a bid is accepted, the seller must send the item to the exchange headquarters in Detroit or to the company’s other authenticators in Phoenix, Arizona, who verify that the product is not a copy.

“Every time I get a pair of shoes, I smell them because that glue is so particular,” says sneaker authenticator Aaron Fields.

“You know, Jordans and Nikes and Adidas all have different smells and you just have to know them. Fake shoes smell a little bit different.”

The telltale signs of a knockoff vary by item.

“This one has a lot of uneven stitching, double stitching, wrong type of thread,” says Michelle Winkfield, a handbag authenticator, examining a Louis Vuitton fake.

“The hardware feels really cheap and the logo stamped on it is incorrect.”

StockX penalises sellers of fake goods, charging them 15 per cent of the transaction price, and possibly banning them from the exchange. But fewer than 2 per cent of the transactions have been cancelled for this reason, Luber says.

The exchange on trades in new sneakers, while watches and handbags must be in “excellent” condition.

The exchange charges a 9.5-per-cent commission on each sneaker transaction, which made up about three-quarters of revenues last year. It charges 11.9 per cent for watches and 14.5 per cent for handbags.

Started with just a workforce of five, including the founder, the growing exchange now has 115 employees.

The future may mean expansion into new items, like Star Wars paraphernalia, musical instruments, rare wine, collectible cars and artwork.

There are no immediate plans to raise funds from additional investors, beyond the current group that includes Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert, who also owns the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team.

Among the many emotive photographs displayed in the former family home of India’s empire-defying Rabindranath Tagore, now a museum, is one taken in Japan a little over a century ago.

It was in Japan that the poet-philosopher met his revolutionary compatriot Rashbehari Bose, who rather more forcefully took on the British Empire.

Bose was the Raj’s most wanted man, given to assassination as a political strategy. In the photo, he is stylish in a tuxedo, hands haphazard in his lap and head cocked slightly as he stares wearily into the distance.

He might well be wondering how he ended up fleeing to Japan to restart life as an outlaw after slipping out of Kolkata under the pretext of being a relative of Tagore.

Tagore is pictured with flowing robe and locks, staring commandingly straight ahead.

The worldly Bose has at his side his Japanese wife and their child. Tagore, who lost many close relatives early in life, including his wife and two children, wears his typical serene and otherworldly expression, reflecting a lifelong quest to spread the universal truths.

Tagore’s emotion-charged Bengali songs about life’s deep longings lilt through the hallways and alcoves of the estate in northern Kolkata. The house was built in 1784 and he spent his childhood there studying English, Bengali, Sanskrit, geography, mathematics, science, music, wrestling, drawing and gymnastics.

In later years he wondered aloud with the other great local thinkers of the Bengali Renaissance, the precursor to India’s independence movement, how to free the subcontinent from colonial rule and free humanity from its blights.

These are the poignant themes of “Gitanjali” (“Song Offering”), the short stories that won Tagore the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.

Particularly moving is a handwritten section of the book displayed in the room where he died in 1941. “I have tasted of the hidden honey of this lotus that expands on the ocean of light,” it says, “and thus I am blessed – let this be my parting word.”

Kolkata, the sometimes-blighted City of Joy so long known to the West as Calcutta, is blessed in its own ways.

There are pockets of vibrancy offering cheap and varied street food, and tailors – especially along bustling Rashbehari Avenue – who quickly produce custom salwar kameez and saris.

There are bookstores, galleries and cafes hiding down obscure lanes shaded by towering trees, witness to the rich artistic and literary traditions of Bengal, which has produced more than its fair share of India’s greatest artists – and revolutionaries.

These humble cradles of wisdom and insurrection often sit in the shadows of monstrously imperial edifices left over from the days of the Raj, with their sprawling verandas, soaring columns and other neoclassical dramatics.

Remains-of-the-day European charm invigorates the still-posh Park Street, lined with carryover restaurants with names like Moulin Rouge and ancient watering holes where Kingfishers are poured by neatly attired waiters.

Just across the footpath, street vendors offer classic dishes, like Tibetan momo dumplings, samosas and the local variant on Chinese chow mein. You can have the juice of freshly ground sugarcane or a five-rupee cup of chai served in disposable vessels of clay.

The former centre of socialising for the British, Park Street exudes the energy of one of Tagore’s powerful maxims also displayed at the family residence: “When the streams of ideals that flow from the East and from the West mingle their murmur in some profound harmony of meaning, it delights my soul.”

While Tagore’s greatest muse in early life was the girl who would become his sister-in-law – whose suicide devastated him and turned him irrevocably to spirituality – his final muse was Victoria Ocampo, a much younger Argentinean who loved “Gitanjali” and all that came after it. “He is as near to me as my life,” she said of Tagore, who matched her sentiment in “Last Writings”:

“How I wish I could once find my way to that foreign land where waits for me the message of love … Her language I know not, but what her eyes said will forever remain eloquent in its anguish.”

A tribute to a very different Victoria was erected in the metropolis while Calcutta was still India’s capital and the British Empire’s “second city”.

In the years when Victoria was queen and empress, much of the subcontinent’s riches flowed from the warehouses along the wide Hooghly River, a tributary of the Ganges.

On the spacious Maidan, an esplanade of greenery alongside the Mother Ganga, in the waning decades of their rule here, the British left behind a statement in stone, attempting to mirror the Taj Mahal, the iconic “monument to love” of the colonialist empire they usurped – that of the Mughals.

As Kushanava Choudhury writes in “The Epic City”, “The lawns in the front of the memorial are for families and kids … The grounds behind it are unofficially reserved for couples. On the southern lawn nestled behind shrubs, they get busy, Victorian-style.

“In Calcutta, love is sitting two by two at Victoria Memorial whispering moodily to one another.”

While a large likeness of the aged Empress of India sits outside the white structure, a standing version of her, looking slender and eternally young, commands attention inside the main chamber.

The marble statue is surrounded by murals that illustrate Queen Victoria’s life and the fantasy of an empire that lasted just a little longer than the quarter century which elapsed between the memorial’s completion and 1947, when the sun finally set on the Raj.

“Here for all to see,” reads a statement on display, a quote from the pre-eminent scholar of Orientalism Edward Said, “is the arrogance and opulence of Empire”.

The Victoria Monument remains stunning in its appearance and its sheer presence, but it is not, as some might versify, a Taj-like teardrop on the cheek of time. The architecture, termed “Indo-Gothic” or “neo-Mughal”, is more eccentric by far than anything else found in classical India. The minaret-like corners towers are stocky, not soaring.

If the memory of the foreign empress falters now, an indigenous, feminine energy still pervades Kolkata, especially during the Durga Puja, when the city’s favourite goddess is celebrated in the nocturnal explosions of firecrackers and bottle rockets. Lanterns rise and sparklers are twirled with enthusiasm.

It’s amusing and ironic that Durga has been honoured in recent festivals by gargantuan shrines funded by loyal patrons, who commission miniatures (but enormous ones) of Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the London Eye and Tower Bridge.

The annual sequel is darker. While the Durga Puja reflects the noble intentions of “the goddess next door”, whose name denotes the concepts of “fortress” and “invincible”, there is no London landmarks theme to the Kali Puja.

The Kali Puja channels the energy of a goddess in touch with her inner nuclear option. Her name suggests “black” and “death” and was woven into Kolkata’s original name, Kalikshetra.

Kali is typically depicted as a long-tongued avenger saturated in bloodlust, thrusting her spear into Raktaveeja, the demon of desire.

In the pujas celebrating Durga, Kali and other deities, their images festoon kerbside shrines that pop up all over town and aboard pickup trucks parading the streets, sometimes to the accompaniment of bagpipers.

This profound sense of converging energies seems to flow through India. You notice it in conversation with shopkeepers, in good-natured banter with strangers.

Rabindranath Tagore was committed throughout his life to the ideals of the Brahmo Samaj, the Divine Society, and its universal quest for unity, balance and benevolence. Tagore best channelled the spirit of the City of Joy when he wrote this: “We are finite on our negative side. We must come to an end in our evil doing, in our career of discord. For evil is not infinite.

“Our will has freedom in order that it may find out that its true course is towards goodness and love. Love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us. It is not a mere sentiment. It is truth; it is the joy that is at the root of all creation.”

The run aims to raise much-need funds for UNHCR’s work to support the global refugee crisis.

Praya Lundberg, UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador and YouTube creators, are encouraging the public to participate and to stand with refugees at this difficult time.

“Caring for one another as human beings is our responsibility,” says Lundberg. “I am grateful to YouTube for organising this event which makes it easy for the public to join the international community to support refugees.”

Today, the needs of refugees and other displaced people continues to grow, especially in light of new crises and worsening displacement.

UNHCR’s work globally is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions from governments, intergovernmental institutions and, increasingly, from individuals and corporations.

In collaboration with UNHCR, Google.org has helped shed light on the plight of refugees and raised funds to make a difference in their lives.

“We’re pleased to be supporting UNHCR on this fun event to raise funds for an important cause. Global displacement is at an all-time high, and we feel strongly about helping where we can. Google has been a long time supporter of UNHCR, working to provide emergency support and access to vital information and education to refugees,” said Ben King, Google Thailand country director.

All proceeds will go to UNHCR to provide life-saving assistance and protection to refugees where the need is the greatest. These include operations in some of the biggest emergencies around the world such as those in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

Tickets are available at http://www.FabMotion.co.th/youtuberunforunhcr.

With the new TrueID TV app, subscribers to TrueVisions can enjoy many of their favourite live TV channels and a huge selection of movies on the go.

The TrueID TV application replaces the free TrueVisions Anywhere app. Make the switch and you get a better user-interface and more functions. Anyone can use it, but only TrueVisions customers get the top benefits, including the right to watch five premium movies per month and unlimited choices from the buffet for a year.

The new app also has a Premier League section from which you can monitor results of all English Premier League football matches. It has highlight video clips, results, fixtures and a score table and will remind you when your favourite team is playing next.

TrueVisions customers can also use the app to check programme schedules via an online guide.

There are more than 3,000 movies, TV shows and football matches available to watch on the go.

The app is like a TrueTV set-top box, but instead of bringing the content into your living room, it comes to your smartphone or tablet computer (either Android or iOS), as long as you have 4G or a Wi-Fi connection.

You can download and use the app as a standalone or access it from the “Movies” or “TV” section of the main TrueID app.

To log on to the TrueID TV app or TrueID app, you use your TrueMove H mobile number or an email address and ID card to register for a True ID account.

Once logged on for the first time, you have the option of linking in your TrueVisions account so you can enjoy watching the same Live TV channels to which you’re already subscribed.

Not all channels can be accessed via the streaming app, apparently because the copyright owners forbid live streaming. You can’t, for example, watch Fox Movies Premium.

Regardless, I found during a trial run of the service that the available channels more than sufficed as entertainment on the go.

I could get 123 Live TV channels via the app, including 26 TrueVisions channels, such as Warner TV, Sony, Sundance HD, Lifetime, iConcerts HD, Disney’s stuff, Cartoon Network HD, National Geographic HD, True Sport 1, CNN and BBC World News.

Sports fans will be happy that all six beIN Sports channels are on offer, as well as four True Sport HD channels.

Fans of Asian and Thai movies can use the app to watch the True Asian Series and True Thai-Film channels, as well as classic Chinese kungfu films on Celestrial Classic Movies.

You can use the app to monitors news and entertainment programmes on 25 digital TV channels.

And you can search for available movies and series, using one of five sections on the app, the others being Discover, Premier League, Live TV, and Me.

Discover is the home screen with access to most services, including the five premium movies you can watch every month for free. TrueVisions customers who switch over from the Anywhere app get this privilege for a full year.

Also accessible from Discover are popular Live TV channels, TrueVisions Exclusive, movies grouped according to current events (like the Golden Globe winners), Exclusive movies and series, Collections of the month, and Free unlimited movies.

You’ll find the online TrueVisions Guide in the TrueVision Exclusive subsection.

In the Live TV section are 123 channels available for subscribers to the TrueVisions Platinum HD package. You can also search for channels by name and number here.

Use the programme schedule accessible in Live TV to set alerts about upcoming shows.

A useful function Live TV is Catchup, with access to channels and shows aired in the past seven days. You can select two, four, six, 12, 17 and 23 hours ago, yesterday, or two days ago.

The catchup function only works for UEFA Champions League, Inside News Tonight, True Music and Autopsy USA.

The “Me” section is where you stash movies or series you haven’t finished watching yet.

When watching a movie or live stream, you can do so in a small window at the top of your phone display or in full-screen mode, for which the display turns horizontal.

You can change the resolution the app sets according to your Internet connection speed. A Live TV programme can be viewed in Auto, Low, Medium or High resolution, but movies have the options Auto, 360p, 480p, 540p, 720p and 1080p.

I tested the app on TrueMove H’s 4G network and my home Wi-Fi router using True Online’s FTTX service at 30/5Mbps. The app streamed 1080p movies and Live TV shows smoothly. The picture and sound quality was good.

Best of all, the app supports Google Chromecast, so you can send the content to your TV. This is very handy because you can use Chromecast to enjoy TrueID movies and TV shows on any TV – as long as you have an Internet connection.

The app and service are free, but TrueVisions has yet to announce a rate for the movies you watch once you’ve seen the five films allowed as per subscription.

KEY FACTS

– Platform: iOS or Android

– Required: TrueID account, Internet connection

– Highest movie resolution: 1080p

– Maximum number of channels: 123

– Launch date: December 15, 2017

– Service provider: TrueVisions

The affordable Wiko Sunny2 Plus phone from France has a five-inch display, 5MP rear camera and 2MP front shooter. Inside is a MediaTek MT6580M Quadcore 1.3, CortexA7 Android 7.0, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of ROM expandable to 64GB. You’re good for 3G+ connections and two SIM cards. The Sunny2 is sold in metallic black, gold, bleen and lime for Bt1,990.

Audio sensations

RHA MA650 Wireless Bluetooth inear headphones offer good sound quality and 12 hours of battery life and are sweat and splashproof. The “aerophonic” design isolate noises. With a sturdy aluminium body, a universal remote for full tracking, calls and digital assistance, it retails for Bt3,990.

Dazzling game experience

From Samsung comes the 49-inch QLED Gaming Monitor with a 32:9 display ratio and metal quantum technology, plus a blinding response time of 1 millionth of a second. HDR technology ensures very sharp display at 3,840×1,080pixel resolution and high contrast of 3000:1.

Buy it, bend it, use it

Acer’s Spin SP51352N81P7 laptop folds 360 degrees into a tablet. An eighth-generation Intel Core i78550U processor running at 1.8Ghz is back up with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and a 512GB SSD drive. With as 13.3-inch IPS HD touchscreen display and running on Windows 10, it’s in shops for Bt36,990.

For your mum, the Mama

The Mama 811 is a security-minded mobile phone from Thailand’s PTE Intergroup with large dial buttons. It’s designed for elderly women. Each button speaks its number when pressed, and another button will send an SOS message and keep calling up to five SOS numbers until help is reached. You get a 2.3-inch display, flashlight mode and a usable camera. Expect to pay Bt1,290.

The forecast isn’t been lost on real-estate developer Sansiri, which will bring one of the most dynamic New York hospitality brands to Bangkok – the Standard – in a major foray into hospitality.

Sansiri chief executive Apichart Chutrakul gave the opening address at the forum, on “Megacity Bangkok – A Tourism and Hotel Futurescape”.

Bill Barnett, managing director of C9 Hotelworks and a forum coorganiser, said the metro line across Greater Bangkok would be 464 kilometres long in five years.

“This will surpass London, which stands at 402km with their underground, and New York City’s 380km subway system. The great promise of the East has now become the new West. Important will be the access to three international, interconnected airports – Suvarnabhumi, Don Mueang and Utapao.”

Jesper Palmqvist, director of global research firm STR, said Bangkok was on “a strong growth trajectory” in terms of hotels and infrastructure.

“With almost three years of stable growth in terms of hotel performance, Bangkok has firmly put the 2014 decline far behind. By November 2017, RevPAR had grown 3.4 per cent year-over-year, and this against a backdrop of some reasonable strong supply increase at 4.1 per cent.

“The impressive numbers are held up by an ever-stable demand growth of around 5 per cent for 18 months after the comeback in 2015, but hotels have also been able to increase rates by more than 2 per cent, even with new competing product coming to market. But it’s not just shortterm – no less than seven of the months in 2017 saw 10-year records in absolute RevPAR performance.”

Other speakers and panellists included Dillip Rajakarier of Minor Hotel Group, Supoj Chaiwatsirikul of IconSiam, Nikhom Jensiriratanakorn of Horwath HTL, Thomas Schmelter of IHG Group and Mike Batchelor of JLL.

Museum Siam and Bangkok Design Week 2018 are the joint organisers of the workshop, “Heraldry 101: What’s in the Coat of Arms?” being held on Sunday starting at 10 as part of the “Muse Playground”. The workshop will cover coats of arms from Europe as well as history and beliefs and help participants design their own coat of arms. Find out more at Facebook.com/museumsiamfan.

Dancing queen gets “Luxurious”

Christina Aguilar – Thailand’s Queen of Dance – takes the stage of the Napalai Ballroom at Dusit Thani Bangkok tomorrow night for “Luxurious” the second in the “Memories Are Forever” concert series, marking the hotel’s 48th anniversary. Tickets costs from Bt3,000 to Bt5,000 at Thai Ticket Major counters and http://www.ThaiTicketMajor.com. Find out more at Facebook: RetrocityOfficial.

Simply no sleeping

The Street Festival is back for its second year from today through Sunday at The Street on Ratchadaphisek Road. Running from 10am until midnight and on the theme “Sleepless Together” concept, the festival features the “Sleepless Installation” exhibition, “Sleepless Activity” – about gardening and home deco, “Sleepless Market”, “Sleepless Play”, “Sleepless Place” and “Sleepless Music” from Yes’sir Day today, Bell Supol tomorrow and Atom on Sunday.

Join the conversation at Facebook: The Street Ratchada and Instagram: The_street_ratchada

Getting creative in Chinanatown

Part of the Thailand Creative Design Centre’s Bangkok Design Week 2018, the Chinanatown Fair in the Soi Nana neighbourhood on Sunday showcases the unique environment of this area. Considered one of the original creative areas, Soi Nana started becoming home to artists and designers more than a decade ago and it is now famous for the many well-recognised bars and restaurants smuggled in between artist and design studios.

Bangkok goes digital

The biggest digital expo in the region, the Asia Digital Expo 2018 continues today and tomorrow at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre and features all kind of digital technologies to transform your business into a digital world. People wanting to attend the seminar on “Job Fest: Jobs in the Digital Industry” should preregister at http://www.AsiaDigitalExpo.com. The fair is open to members of the public from 10 to 7.

The Snow Festival was started in 1950, when high-school students built a few snow statues in Odori Park. It has since developed into a large, commercialised event, featuring spectacular snow and ice sculptures and attracting more than two million visitors from Japan and across the world.

The festival is staged on three sites. The first and main site is Odori Park with its famous large snow sculptures, more than 25 metres wide and 15 metres high. They are lit up daily until 10pm.

The park is also the venue for more than 100 smaller snow statues and hosts several concerts and events. A good view over the park is from the Sapporo TV Tower at the eastern end of the park. Opening hours are extended from 8.30 to 10.30pm during the festival. Admission to the top observatory deck costs 720 yen per adult. A 1,100 yen ticket allows a day visit and a night visit.

The second site is at Susukino, named after Sapporo’s largest entertainment district, which exhibits about 100 ice sculptures. Susukino is located only one subway stop south of Odori Park. The ice sculptures are lit up daily until 11pm.

The last is at Tsu Dome, a familyoriented site with three types of snow slides, snow rafting and more snow sculptures. Inside the dome, there are many food stalls and a stage for events. The dome is open daily from 9am to 5pm.

For more information, visit http://www.JapanGuide.com/e/e5311.html.

WIDELY ACKNOWLEDGED for her beauty and style, Her Majesty Queen Sirikit was first voted onto the International Best Dressed List in 1960, an honour that was to be renewed several times over the coming years. In 1965, she was elevated to the International Best-Dressed Hall of Fame, a recognition that brought both joy and pride to the people of Thailand.

But what was it about her wardrobe that so caught the eye of the viewer? That and much more was explained last week in the talk “Fit For a Queen: Creating Her Majesty Queen Sirikit’s Western Wardrobe”, organised by the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles at the Grand Palace as part of the exhibition of the same name to which nine of the Queen’s evening dresses from the 1960s have recently been added.

The lecture was given by co-curators Melissa Leventon and Alisa Saisavetvaree and was followed by a tour of the exhibition.

In 1960, Their Majesties Queen Sirikit and the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej made a six-month-long state visit to the United States and 14 European nations that aimed to enhance Thailand’s cultural and political positions on the international map.

Her Majesty determined that she would need fashionable, seasonally appropriate Western clothing for the tour and commissioned leading French couturier Pierre Balmain to design a regal wardrobe using mainly Thai silk.

It proved a wise decision. Balmain’s creations for Her Majesty were met with great admiration and the West fell in love with Her Majesty’s beauty, elegance and stylish attire.

“Her Majesty’s Western wardrobe was not only fashionable but classic, rich but never vulgar. Each outfit looked, in fact, fit for a Queen,” Leventon said. “The renowned Paris couturier was the perfect choice.”

“Their Majesties had both lived in Europe; Switzerland and France. But neither of them had been formally introduced as Thailand’s monarchy. No one in the West knew what the King and the Queen looked like or the style of the modern Thai Queen. Her Majesty grew up wearing Western clothes so she felt comfortable in Western designs but she also wanted her clothes to represent Thai identity. Balmain was the logical choice. In 1959, he was a young and hot designer and I am sure the Queen would not have missed his name in the fashion magazines. In the late 1950s, Balmain visited Thailand where he met Jim Thompson, and the royal lady-in-waiting, Princess Vibhavadi Rangsit. He was then commissioned to design Her Majesty’s fashionable Western wardrobe, producing the entire collection.

“Her Majesty had a wide variety of events to attend from private dinners to formal dinners, the opera, symphony, theatre, cocktail parties and so on. It is quite challenging to be on display all the time as she was and she held up very well under the strain of being continuously under the microscope of the press. One of the compensations, perhaps, was having unbelievably beautiful ball gowns,” Leventon continued.

Balmain understood the intricacy of contemporary European royal dress codes. He was able to function as Her Majesty’s adviser as well as her designer. And even though the government had offered to pay for an experienced European designer and the wardrobe, Their Majesties insisted that they personally absorb all the costs.

The chic, classic daywear, cocktail dresses, evening dresses, outerwear, and hats Balmain designed for Her Majesty were based on his spring and autumn 1960 collections and utilised Thai silk to give them a hint of Siam. The designer in turn commissioned embroiderer Francois Lesage to finish the designs, while the custom footwear came from shoemaker Rene Mancini and the full suite of luggage from Louis Vuitton. Balmain had everything completed and brought to Bangkok six weeks before the start of the tour, for fitting and final adjustment.

“For the tour of the United States in 1960, she mostly wore Thai national dress. The Queen would disembark from the plane wearing a suit, change into a daytime dress for afternoon engagements such as the Red Cross

event in Washington DC then change again into Thai national dresses for the evening. In Europe she more often wore Western style outfits, donning evening dresses for formal occasions,” she says.

One of the designs on display in the exhibition is a silk satin evening dress with beads, braid, paillette and gold metal coil embroidery by the House of Lesage, which was worn by Her Majesty on July 21, 1960 to a state dinner at Lancaster House in London hosted by Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Selwyn Lloyd on behalf of the British Government. She wore the same dress on September 28, 1960 to a state dinner hosted by the Italian President at the Quirinal Palace in Rome, Italy.

“Since it was impossible for the Queen to visit Paris in order to be fitted for the clothes, the fabric would be cut and the pieces sent to Lesage to be embroidered,” Laventon explained.

“When they were finished, they would go back to Balmain, and then they would be seamed together and fitted on Her Majesty dress form, which is what most couturiers would use when the client wasn’t able to come for fittings. That’s how Balmain was able to get her full wardrobe to Bangkok so soon before her departure. Every item had been made to her precise measurements so all he needed to do is tweak. The embroidery, all of which was hand-crafted by Lesage, is one of the highlights of the Balmain collection for the Queen.”

The new installation also includes an evening gown of Thai silk, decorated with beads, metallic silver thread, and paillette embroidery by House of Lesage and trimmed with white mink, worn by Her Majesty to the 13th World Adoption International Fund (WAIF) Ball at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles on June 16, 1967.

Another is Nuit a Londres, (“A night in London”), a sumptuous gown made of Thai silk and metallic gold brocade (pha yok), which she wore to a state dinner hosted for President Diosdado Pangan Macapagal and the First Lady at the American Philippines Insurance Building in the Philippines on July 13, 1960.

“Nuit a Londres was originally made from Western brocade but Her Majesty wanted something in Thai silk and gold brocade in a completely different colour. She also added the shoulder straps,” the curator notes.

“As far as I am aware, Her Majesty never wore a strapless dress partly, I think, because she often had to wear a corsage. In fact, Queen Elizabeth also never wears strapless. You will see that if you look at royal photographs. This dress works very well with shoulder straps and you wouldn’t know any different if I hadn’t told l you that originally it was strapless. The dress in this lovely shade of midnight blue was also embroidered and was part of the Balmain collection but made of white velvet and silk and sleeveless, But her Majesty didn’t want it sleeveless so he made a version for her in blue silk and blue velvet with long sleeves and I like this version better,” Laventon said.

“Back then, most couturiers would name their designs and Balmain was no exception, naming them after his close friends, his mother and, in a testament of how important she was to him as a client, Her Majesty. They developed a close personal relationship but as far as we know, the gorgeous pink evening gown from 1962-1963 was the only model Her Majesty bought that was named “Sirikit”.

Balmain remained the designer of Her Majesty’s Western wardrobe for 22 years until his death in 1982. Around 1963, he began to make Her Majesty’s Thai national costumes and in the early 1970s developed strategies to transform Thai village silks into the fashionable Western clothes worn by Her Majesty to support and promote her initiatives in crafts revival. The working partnership between the Queen and the couturier has had a lasting impact in the preservation of indigenous Thai silk weaving and the sartorial expression of Thai identity in both national dress and Western fashion.

REGAL DESIGNS

– The Fit For a Queen exhibition is open daily from 9am to 4:30pm in Galleries 1-2 of the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles, Grand Palace.

– The ticket booth closes at 3.30. Stay tuned for upcoming activities at Facebook.com/qsmtthailand and on Instagram at @queensirikitmuseumoftextiles.

Alice & Olivia by Stacey Bendet has just released a new jumper with the message “Big Love” and a sweater and cute red hear bag that promise “All you need is love”. Going somewhere smart? Then don a Beck gown with its rosy print, a sweeping low back, a-line cut and floor-grazing train to look great from every angle.

Furla in the bag

Furla spring and summer 2018 is all about Venice. At the crossroads of style and culture, shapes and colours, all of which characterize the soul of Italy’s Lagoon City, the collection highlights prints that conjure images of Venice’s mosaic floors and brocades of tapestries, re-imagining and digitally reworking them into flower and fruit motifs. The Serenissima prints define Furla’s iconic lines on on leather, nylon and fabric, adding class to the Furla Metropolis and the Furla Stacy bucket tote.

Camper is seeing double

Camper celebrates the 30th anniversary of iconic Twins with a spring-summer collection called “Don’t insist. We don’t sell them separately” that pays tribute to three decades of unique individuality. Since its beginning in 1988, Camper has challenged the idea that shoes must be identical, designing a pair where the right shoe was different from the left. Since then, Twins have been revisited each season with new styles, treatments, and materials. This season multidisciplinary artist Filip Custic provides the visuals with a series of surreal images that capture the dreamlike mood. The collection is now available in stores and online at Camper.com.

Luscious locks for the perfect

Never has there been a more “selfie” ready moment for your hair than now. British hairdresser, Mark Hill, introduces his new product range giving girls salon quality professional at an affordable price. Made with expertly formulated ingredients and up-to-the-minute technology, the new styling collection “Styling Heat Protection Spray” protects against heat damage and adds a natural hold. “Extreme Root Lift” is a non-sticky heat activated spray that instantly boost thickness and volume while “Freeze Hold Hairspray” helps to keep your hair in style all day long.

Powder me Shisedo

Shisedo introduces its new “Future Solution LX: Total Radiance Foundation E” and Total Radiance Loose Powder E”, silky-smooth powders infused with Japanese botanical ingredients to set makeup for a sheer luminous finish and lasting wear. Both comes with an ultra-soft powder puff made in Japan that uses long fibres to hold the powder for the perfect application to all skin types.