Av Pak

Av Pak (Khmer: អាវប៉ាក់ also pronounced Aao Pak ) is a traditional blouse dress worn by females of all ages in Cambodia; the name literally translates as embroidery shirt. They are mostly made of silk embroidered with plain stamped cotton. With the highly share common from Indonesia's Kebaya, the blouse always embroidered with several elaborate gold-thread all around the part of the blouse. It always worn with Sampot Hol, showing the more formal and elegant of its gold thread for Khmer tradition. However, Sarong still frequently used by Muslim ethnic like Cham and Java in the country.

In general, Av Pak was recognize to Khmer people as modern classical suit today due to the embroidery had introduced to Cambodia long times ago but the blouse is reach its peak to Khmer people during the early 21st century, when the blouse had represent to Cambodian as the national costume, high class dress and comfortable suit than previously ancient upper garment such as Av Bopock, a tube shirt but like more as the long dress which most of Khmer lady stopped wearing it cause of their embarrassing and made them look like a Cham people and Sabai, a shawl like shoulder cloth kept its fashionable, traced back the Khmer Empire era but lost its popularity today according to the thoughts of this cloth showed too skin, naked one shoulder which impacted the graceful of women.

Av Pak was totally influenced from Kebaya of Indonesia in the way its decoration, material using and style, followed the original craft from its origin. No trace had been found if this blouse was invented during Angkor period due to most Angkorian always had top exposed.

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Wikipedia