by Dr. Iain
Corness
There
is a new fashion and accessories boutique in Pattaya called Fan-T-Asia (in
the Royal Cliff Grand), run by a Thai designer, Adchara McGrail. All her
life, Adchara has had a very independent streak, which if it had not been
so strong, would have seen her working in the family bus company! It is a
long way from Nakhon Pathom bus depot to the Royal Cliff Beach Resort, and
even longer with a ten year detour via London, but the tall, elegant
Adchara has slipped seamlessly between the two international cultures and
yet has retained her own individuality.
She was born in Nakhon Pathom, where her Chinese-Thai
father had a bus line. There were five children in the family, three girls
and two boys, and Adchara is in the middle. Schooling was done through the
local government school, and although Adchara was already leaning heavily
towards fashion and design, her parents were leaning heavily on her to get
a degree!
With that in mind, she was bundled off to Bangkok
University to do a four year degree course in Business Administration,
which Adchara admitted took her five years. “I didn’t like
mathematics!”
After successfully completing her Business
Administration course, her father waited expectantly at the bus depot for
his degreed daughter to return. His wait was in vain. The independent
Adchara took a job as a secretary in Bangkok, in a medical company. After
seven months she realized that her English was not good enough for
international clients, so told her father that she wanted to study in the
UK. Fortunately father’s bus line was going well, and Angela was able to
book her flights, and tuition at Pitman College, and father picked up the
tab!
During the two years at Pitmans, Angela also found that
London was a center of fashion. “I liked it there. People were more
independent (a word Adchara likes to use frequently) and wore what they
liked.” Her father also had come to accept the fact that his middle
daughter was different from the others in the family. “I had ambition
and I wanted to see more.” She had also made friends with a woman who
taught fashion and design, and ended up working for her part-time as a
model. Adchara was climbing on to the bottom rung of the fashion world.
In turn this led to design projects, with one being a
total restaurant make-over, including the uniforms for the staff. This was
to be a watershed in her young life. The owner of the restaurant had a
friend called Peter McGrail, whom she met, and the attraction was mutual.
She stayed in the UK and they were married.
I asked what was the parental reaction to all this, and
as you might imagine, in a traditional family, they were not enthralled by
the prospect. “In the beginning, they did not agree. My parents said
that I should come home and marry a nice young Thai man – but they
couldn’t stop me anyway.” This was not such a headstrong sentiment as
it sounds, as on further questioning it came out that both her mother and
father still had faith that their middle daughter could make ‘correct’
decisions in her personal life.
So she stayed in the UK for 10 years, still dabbling in
the fashion industry, but her main job was as the manager and liquor
licensee in a large Thai restaurant in London. But it was the fashion side
that interested her. She made trips to Thailand, picking up silk fashions
to import into the UK. This was another very successful side-line, with
her fashion choices being snapped up by Harrods and The House of Fraser.
However, after ten years in the UK, there was to be
another dynamic change in her lifestyle. Husband Peter, a leading light in
a high tech company, was asked to go to Singapore to open an office there
in 1997, to cover Asia, so they moved to the small island of Singapore.
Angela did not mind, as it was close to Thailand, and she would fly to
Bangkok every couple of weeks, and it was only a short bus ride home to
Nakhon Pathom!
Peter, in the meantime, had found that he enjoyed
Pattaya more on his weekends off, and Angela agreed with this choice.
“In Nakhon Pathom there’s nothing for farangs!” While still
officially resident in Singapore, Peter bought a house in Pattaya, for
which Angela did the interior decor.
They followed this up with a condominium, which they
set up as a fashion showroom, with Angela commuting between Bangkok and
London, to bring in exclusive fashions for discerning women in Thailand.
Whilst this was again successful, with the currency problems of the Thai
baht after the 1997 economic crash, it became less and less profitable. It
was time to export, rather than import.
Adchara, the designer, came to the fore again and she
began to haunt small fashion manufacturers to have them make up her
designs, which she then exported to the UK and Europe. Along with clothes,
she also began to design costume jewelry, finding she had an eager market
for these pieces in Germany and Ireland.
Like all successful ideas, it had to grow, and soon it
became evident that the condominium showroom was not good enough. “I
like to show Thai style designs to foreigners,” said Adchara, and it was
obvious that this would require a retail outlet. That materialized in the
new Fan-T-Asia shop in the Royal Cliff Grand, where a steady custom in
foreign guests in the hotel is keeping her busy; however, as the fashion
conscious expat women in Pattaya are finding out about Fan-T-Asia, the mix
of customers is changing!
Adchara is one of those people whose hobby is also her career, as when
I asked about hobbies, she waved her hands around her and said, “This is
it!” Pattaya is very lucky to have a rare talent such as Adchara McGrail
in our midst.
