Siam Piwat celebrates “Siam Center” as fashion hub providing support to LGBTQ+ for more than 3 decades, taking Thai designers on the global stage, with great success in mega-events for Pride Month celebrations

Siam Piwat Group – a leading real estate and retail developer, the owner and operator of Thailand’s No. 1 global destinations such as Siam Paragon, Siam Center, Siam Discovery, ICONSIAM, and Siam Premium Outlets Bangkok – has always placed great importance on diversity and equality, particularly in its role as a champion of the Thai fashion industry. This is evident through Siam Center, the Ideaopolis, which values diversity and provides opportunities for all. For over 30 years, Siam Center has supported the LGBTQ+ community and served as a platform for talents in the fashion industry, from young designers to leading Thai brands and legendary brands that have put their mark on the global stage. At the same time, Siam Center has continuously sponsored Pride Month celebrations, including the Bangkok Pride Festival 2024, jointly organized by Bangkok Pride and Bangkok Metropolitan Administration – an immensely successful mega pride event that attracted hundreds of thousands of Thai and international visitors from across the world.

Siam Center: The Ultimate Fashion Hub for LGBTQ+ empowerment

As Thailand’s first shopping center of international caliber, Siam Center, the Ideaopolis, has captured the hearts of Thai and international visitors through the years. Siam Center has been the ultimate fashion hub at the vanguard of the industry, the venue of choice for renowned local and international brands seeking to launch their first branches, as well as a dream destination for aspiring designers. Siam Center has provided opportunities for students and young designers of all genders to showcase their creativity through young designer competitions, launched them into the fashion business, and helped them develop their brands and gain a foothold in the Thai and global fashion scenes. With members of the LGBTQ+ community being major contributors to the fashion industry in various roles, from designers, stylists, and makeup artists all the way to hair stylists, organizers, and many other professionals, it can thus be said that Siam Center has long been a close friend and a strong ally to LGBTQ+ community.

Numerous Thai designers have grown and shaped the Thai fashion scene alongside Siam Center, such as AB-Normal, Anatomie, Baking Soda, Curated by Ek Thongprasert, Flynow, Frank Garcon, Friday27Nov, Good Mixer, Greyhound, House of PB, ICONICS, Kanapot, Kloset, Leisure Project, Milin, P.Mith, Painkiller, Playhound by Greyhound, Q design and Play, Rotsaniyom, Senada, Shaka Leisure, Theatre, Tube Gallery, Wonder and many more, who opened their stores at the Absolute Siam Store and The Wonder Room. These Thai designers have made a significant contribution to the Thai fashion industry by showcasing their limitless creativity to all Thais and the world, thus boosting Thailand’s soft power and bolstering the Thai fashion industry into a lucrative and world-renowned one. As such, Siam Center shares a deep bond with and takes great pride in all the designers who launched their brands here, including those who have since expanded their businesses.

Today, Siam Center still reigns as the trendsetting fashion hub that caters to diverse styles and communities. The highlight is Absolute Siam, the ultimate hub for fashion, lifestyle products, and souvenirs that offers completely novel merchandise available exclusively at Siam Center, ingeniously crafted with novel designs through collaborations between renowned Thai brands.

Community of Pride and Diversity

With its steadfast commitment to diversity, equality, and inclusion, Siam Center is the first shopping mall in Thailand to collaborate with the United Nations Development Program in Thailand (UNDP Thailand), a global organization working to improve people’s lives through good governance principles. The two partners have collaborated extensively through the years. In addition, adopting the principles of Universal Design, all shopping centers under Siam Piwat Group have been developed with infrastructure and services accessible to people of all abilities.

This year, as Thailand is set to become the first country in Southeast Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, Siam Piwat Group has joined forces with public and private sector partners to celebrate Pride Month as well as lent various forms of support to the Bangkok Pride Festival 2024 under the campaign “The Celebration: Right to Love” throughout June.

Siam Center has captured the world’s attention by bringing on the world-famous characters “Teletubbies” as the Pride Ambassadors and launching the Siam Center x Teletubbies Experience Space and Wacoal X Teletubbies Café – Asia's first Teletubbies Café, which have been met with widespread excitement and overwhelming positive feedback.

Siam Paragon has provided a venue for Bangkok Pride and Bangkok Metropolitan Administration to organize the Bangkok Pride Forum 2024, an important platform where Thai and international representatives working on LGBTQ+ and women's rights shared insights across over 30 topics. Siam Paragon also opened its space for the Drag Bangkok Festival 2024, the first-ever world-class drag festival in Thailand and Asia organized in collaboration with Yellow Channel and Bangkok Pride, creating a new phenomenon that both educates and entertains. Meanwhile, ICONSIAM and ICS have launched the “ICONSIAM Pride Out Loud” campaign to honor and celebrate LGBTQ+ individuals across all professions, along with other activities all month long.

Siam Piwat has also garnered overwhelming attention with the launch of the Pride Edition ONESIAM drinking water. The limited-edition cans, which come in six vibrant colors corresponding to the colors of the rainbow flag, help to promote sustainable consumption as they are made with 100% recyclable aluminum, in line with Siam Piwat’s 360° Waste Journey to Zero Waste program and efforts to become a zero-waste organization.

These activities reflect Siam Piwat’s success as Thailand’s leading global destination developer and its commitment to organizing iconic events and creating a new chapter in the history of world-class events in order to attract tourists from around the globe and ultimately bolster Thailand’s chance of being selected to host World Pride in 2030.