Local Personalities

Adchara McGrail – Designer

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.