Millions from the Mulberry Bush

One of the best advertisements for Thailand's soft, nubby silk cloth is the country's delicately beautiful Queen Sirikit, who has her gowns designed by Balmain. Thai silk is also used lavishly by other high-fashion designers such as Pauline Trigere, Anne Fogarty, Tina Leser and Adele Simpson. Lately the Thais have taken to producing their own dresses and sportswear, and have not only made Bangkok into a much-copied fashion center but also created a flourishing business.

Bangkok now has 156 silk shops, which export their goods to 60 countries, ring up a yearly volume of $4,000,000--a considerable amount for Thailand. Silk has been a golden enterprise ever since a onetime U.S. intelligence officer, Jim Thompson, revived the dying art of weaving in 1948 and made himself a bundle of bahts by selling bright bolts of cloth to tourists (TIME, April 21, 1958). Thompson is still the largest producer, but he has attracted plenty of competition from entrepreneurs who sell finished dresses as well as the cloth. Gaining fast are two firms that combine Thai craftsmanship with U.S. design and market their goods to stores from the U.S.'s Bergdorf Goodman and I. Magnin to London's Liberty and Paris' Lanvin.

Help from Rockefellers. One of the firms is headed by San Francisco-born Lewis Cykman, 52, who came to Bangkok to make ice cream, instead went into the silk trade, expanded with financial help from the wife of the late Prime Minister Sarit. Though she has dropped out, Cykman's Star of Siam is now worth about $500,000. His plant works two shifts daily, weaving silks for his four Bangkok stores, three foreign branches and his busy export trade. Next Cykman intends to sell public shares to help finance a 100-loom weaving plant in northeast Thailand.

Down the street from Cykman's main salon is a larger competitor: Design Thai, which is financed by the Rockefeller brothers' International Basic Economy Corp. and masterminded by chic Jacqueline Ayer, 33, a Negro from New York, who came to Bangkok by way of Paris' Ecole des Beaux-Arts and Vogue magazine (for which she was a fashion illustrator). She worked out methods for printing intricate designs on Thai silk, imported tailors and pattern makers from Hong Kong, and put 60 local girls to work sewing. Says she: "I designed on the run--in planes, taxis and airports." What she produced was a loose-fitting line of at-home gowns (retail: $70 to $100) and rajah pajama sets in gold and hot pink ($110), as well as simply cut dresses ($70 to $90) based on an Indian village design.

Competition from Communists. Demand is so brisk that garment makers have trouble getting enough silk for their needs. Because many Thai farmers prefer raising livestock to tending mulberry bushes, and some Buddhists have qualms about killing silkworms, production has held at about 500,000 Ibs. a year (v. 300,000 lbs. in 1939). Manufacturers are trying to persuade farmers to boost output, and have inadvertently sold some other people on the profitable prospects of Thai silk. In the sincerest form of flattery, Communist China has introduced an imitation Thai silk for sale in Hong Kong.

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