Chinese Modernity, Identity and Nationalism: The Qipao in Republican China (original) (raw)
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Scholars have paid little attention to Maoist forces and legacies, and especially to the influences of Maoism on people's everyday dress habits during the Cultural Revolution. This article proposes that people's everyday clothing during that time – a period that has often been regarded as the climax of homogenization and asceticism – became a means of resistance and expression. This article shows how during the Cultural Revolution people dressed to express resistance, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and to reflect their motivations, social class, gender and region. Drawing on oral histories collected from 65 people who experienced the Cultural Revolution and a large number of photographs taken during that period, the author aims to trace the historical source of fashion from the end of the 1970s to the 1980s in Guangdong province. In so doing, the author responds to theories of socialist state discipline, everyday cultural resistance, individualism and the nature of resistance under Mao's regime.
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Fashion Theory The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture , 2019
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Clothing is a tool of body ornamentation and a symbol of a national people's culture. With each successive change of dynasties, the design of apparel must be altered in order to renew one's feeling of connection and establish etiquette. -Neizhengbu, Domestic Affairs Yearly (1936) On 6 January 1912, the shape and principles of Republican administration and politics, not to mention the social and cultural ramifications of the newly completed revolution, remained unformed and seemingly open to all possibilities. Citizens of the nascent Chinese Republic were still reveling in the audacious success of the 10 October Wuchang Uprising and the founding of their six-day-old nation. Nonetheless, as that day's commentary of the "fashion (shimao) clique" in the lively "Free Talk" section of Shenbao [Shanghai news] made clear, the recent political uprising was already provoking dramatic cultural and social transformations, some of which were being imprinted onto the very bodies of newborn Republicans. positions 11:2
Chinese Fashion: From Mao to Now by Juanjuan Wu
Fashion Practice, 2011
In past decades, along with its growing power in politics and economy, China has gradually captured the attention of Western scholars interested in its social, cultural, and dress studies. Until recently, academic studies about Chinese dress have been limited to the historical imperial costumes and Cheongsam or Qipao. The Western world knew very little about China’s fashion industry from the post-Mao era to now, nor how the development of the industry mirrored and shaped the social and cultural facets of the nation, and vice versa. Reviewed by Christine Tsui