Have you seen my Unesco kebaya?” asks Lim Yu Lin, owner of Ang Eng boutique, a kebaya retailer and artisan in Kuala Lumpur. She proudly presents a cream-coloured, Swiss-voile kebaya adorned with an intricate embroidery of colourful flowers including orchid, hibiscus, rafflesia, simpor, and cassia fitsula, along with other iconographies representing five countries: Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Lim explains how her Unesco kebaya came about, saying, “We were invited by the Jabatan Warisan Negara (Department of National Heritage) to demonstrate our embroidery skills at their Unesco exhibition at KLIA.”
In April, Malaysia joined other Southeast Asian countries in submitting a nomination for the kebaya to be inscribed on Unesco’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity for 2023. This nomination
