Malaysia was still Malaya when 'the Coat' started its journey in a village in the foothills of the Gunung Jerai mountains. Stretching the bulk of the wide bright pink cotton fabric on a rickety frame table made from wood harvested from the surrounding forest, the two youngest members of the family neatly prepared the textile for the coming week's work.
Over the next seven days the whole family, using a crude Batik waxing process, joined together to perfect an exciting green, red, yellow and blue floral design.
After two days of drying in the hot tropical climate, the brightly printed cloth, in bales, was taken, with the outputs of many other forest families, by lorry to the Penang port of Georgetown where it made up but a very small part of the daily shipment required to feed the ever hungry clothing factories of the Orient.
Our material now spent a restful three weeks at sea on its journey to the pollution-soaked Shanghai where, amid the hustle and bustle of the busy international port, an army of hiTec cranes efficiently removed the many containers from the ship's hold enabling it to return across the East and South China Seas to repeat the process as fast as possible; the appetite of the Chinese clothing industry was insatiable.
Up-country, in the depths of a hot steamy factory employing hundreds of underpaid operatives of all ages, the colourful cloth was rapidly cut, by nimble fingers, into smaller segments and shared amongst the machinists, all working on a similar design for the American markets. Within a morning each bale of material was reduced to two hundred and fifty attractive floral topcoats, each pressed and folded into boxes of ten to fulfil orders for the many department stores in the US San Francisco Bay area.
Being now articles of value, the coats were transported by road and air to the cavernous distribution warehouses of the western seaboard of the United States of America.
It was early summer in 1967's San Francisco where thousands of young people gathered, mainly in Golden Gate Park, 'wearing flowers in their hair'. The 'Summer of Love' is in full swing. Not all hippies, as they became known, are penniless, and Macy's department store was quick to cash in on the rapidly growing fashion trend of 'Flower Power'. Our pink floral coats, billed as the bargain of the century, soon sold out and supply worldwide was under pressure keeping up with the demand. The 'flower people' could be seen all over the city wearing brightly coloured clothing, ostentatiously smoking hallucinogenic cigarettes and practising free love; one of the activities for which that period became famous.
Like most of the then beautiful people, the owner of our particular Coat eventually travelled home where, after a few more years, she became 'normal' again. Her year in the counter-culture faded to become mostly just a happy memory; or at least, the bits she remembered did. She eventually married, as normal people do, and had a family; The Coat became nothing but an inhabitant of a child's dressing-up box. Even then, as her children became older, they considered the Coat as a laughably ridiculous item and sadly it found its way to the village charity shop where, after several months of no interest, it once again became a bargain as the centre-piece of the shop window display where passing grandmothers would often proudly comment to their smirking daughters and incredulous grandchildren that, "I wore a coat like that".
The Coat eventually found a home in the musty wardrobe of the local amateur dramatic society, where it was worn in a 1960's themed stage production. The media and critics, such as they were, commented on the authenticity of the costumes and word soon got around that the drama society was the place to go-to for real-life costumes.
Much sought after, the Coat travelled on loan around the county and the country, including to the London West End stage, until one day it came to the attention of the curator of a city lifestyle museum. Hailed as an excellent specimen of the late 1960s, especially that period known as the "Summer of Love", the Coat, carefully cleaned and preserved, became a major museum exhibit and still stands in a place of honour in the foyer where passing silver-haired grandmothers can still proudly announce to their smirking daughters and incredulous grandchildren that: "I wore a coat like that".
[THE END]
© scrapyardsummer 2018