ART historian Peter Lee's love affair with the sarong kebaya goes beyond its appeal as the traditional costume of his Peranakan community's womenfolk.

The 44-year-old has several hundred pieces collected painstakingly over 20 years.

KEBAYA ORIGINS

'Europeans were wearing the lace kebayas 50 to 100 years before the Babas took it on. The Babas were the last to take it on and the last to give it up because they were conservative.' MR PETER LEE

MATTER OF HERITAGE

'Right now the challenge is to document and create as much information as possible...Without building this body of work, you can't move forward.' MR PETER LEE, on keeping his Peranakan roots alive

BEADED SHOES

The kasot manek (Malay kasut manik) or beaded shoe is typically worn by Peranakan women. Facetted glass beads from Bohemia (presently the Czech Republic) were favoured in the past. Today, Japanese imports are easily available. The beads are sewn onto canvas and often have European floral subjects. The older version of the shoe was flat, without heels, and resembled a flat mule or bedroom slipper. But from the 1930s, modern shapes became popular and heels were added. The colour palette is often influenced by the hues of Peranakan porcelain and batik sarongs, with which they were often matched. Many Nonyas beaded their own shoes, and it is one of the pastimes still practised today.

The interest is personal as well as professional. It stems from his curiosity about his Peranakan roots and his pursuit of South-east Asian cultural history.

He is writing a book that will record the 500-year history of the sarong kebaya, a fusion of European, Chinese, Indian and Arab influences.

'Call it early global,' he says.

The two-piece ensemble of a cotton-laced blouse (kebaya) and a hip-hugging batik-printed wraparound skirt (sarong) has long been regarded as the concoction of the community's women.

That is untrue, says Mr Lee.

'Europeans were wearing the lace kebayas 50 to 100 years before the Babas took it on,' he says.

'The Babas were the last to take it on and the last to give it up because they were conservative,' he explains.

To Mr Lee, the sarong kebaya is part of the history of his community as well as of the region.

It tells the story of intermarriage between migrants from China, India and the Middle East and the local-born women of the Malay peninsula, as well as the birth of creolised communities that peaked between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Peranakan community arose out of intermarriage between migrants and local-born women, many of whom were slave girls.

'The slaves were the mothers,' he says, explaining that slavery had thrived then unaffected by the moral compass of today, which condemns it.

'There just needed to be a few intermarriages to produce many children with Chinese names,' he adds.

'They produced children who married with the next lot of Chinese migrants and that's how the community grew.'

Mr Lee comes from a well-known Peranakan family that traces its roots almost 400 years back to its ancestral village in China's Xiamen province.

His father, Mr Lee Kip Lee, 86, is the president of the Peranakan Association, while eldest brother Dick Lee is a well-known entertainer.

Aside from his book, Mr Peter Lee is also planning a play.

The book is the outcome of scholarly sleuthing that has led him to Xiamen, London, Javanese coastal towns that were once renowned for batik making and, finally, to Holland, where he met members of the Dutch Peranakan community

The play will offer a dramatic twist to the staple Peranakan theme of marriage and the light-hearted search for domestic bliss.

It will tackle the themes of birth, sex, love and death, and its setting will be the bedroom in which a young Peranakan woman, or Nonya, on the cusp of marriage ponders two versions of her future as outlined by her mother and step-mother.

In traditional Peranakan entertainment, sex and the bedroom are referred to through innuendo and hardly ever directly.

Mr Lee is working with two friends to stage the play in both English and the Peranakan patois.

He believes that Peranakan culture is at a high point now because of the new sensibility his generation is infusing in it.

He is the consultant to a National University of Singapore heritage project to restore a 100-year-old Peranakan home in Neil Road.

The house will recreate the dwelling of a wealthy Peranakan home in the 1930s, when the community was at its peak. It is slated to open some time in the middle of the year.

Mr Lee feels that each generation has a way of expressing itself and that there is a growing number of younger people like himself who are keen to do something about their heritage.

'Right now, the challenge is to document and create as much information as possible,' he said.

As the older generation thins, the main job of his generation is to document and publish, he added.

'Without building this body of work, you can't move forward.'