The traditional Nyonya wardrobe may as well be
synonymous with “elegance.” Back in the day, Nyonyas wore beaded slippers and a
long tunic called baju panjang, with
their long hair twisted up into a sanggol,
or chignon. Holding the hair in place were chochok
sanggol,
literally “hair inserts.” In Malacca, Nyonyas
favored the sanggol tiga-batang, a chignon
that requires three hairpins of increasing size, with the larger two called korek kuping, or “ear-picks,” and the
smallest called anak chochok sanggol, or “child of the hairpins.” A
woman would typically own a few sets of hairpins of varying sizes, which she
would wear at different periods of her life, starting with the smaller ones
when she was a child and her hair was thinner, moving on to larger ones as she
grew and her hair become fuller, and finally returning to the smaller ones as she
entered old age.
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