Chinese Fashion

Has China become a neo-colonizer, exporting its cultural and economic power to the world based on its agenda of building soft power? Existing scholarship on neocolonialism and data colonialism largely focuses on how China's infrastructural expansion and increasingly platformised cultural sectors can achieve its ambitious platformised cultural sectors overseas. Yet, how China's cultural power is manifested, negotiated, or resisted in people's daily lives in a South-South setting remains under-researched and under-theorised. This article uses everyday fashion in Kenya as a case study to investigate China's cultural and economic power expansion in the Global South.

The connotations of Su embroidery have been enriched chronically. Su embroidery was recognized as a speciality of a specific geographical site when it was first taken as an art of style. Later both the place it was produced and the style of the products affected the evaluation of the embroidery. The technique of the Su embroidery was earlier recognized than its fame known as “Su Xiu” in Chinese. The recognition of its technique resulted from man’s esthetic need and the production of the needed instruments like thread, needle, fabric and dye. Thus the system of the techniques was formed between the middle and late period of Liangzhu Culture (28-20th century BC) and the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period (557-532 BC). The development of technology, the need of the market, and the influence of culture altogether brought out the name “Su Xiu” in the Zhengde period of the Ming Dynasty (1506-1521).

On the rise of China-chic, diverse trends have surfaced in the Hanfu development because of revivification and innovation. Understanding the perception and acceptance of potential users is vital for Hanfu development as it develops genuine confidence in their national identity and traditional culture. This study investigated and discussed the Kansei aspect of perception and acceptance of users in the appearance and structure of Hanfu. The study aims to grasp of characteristics of Kansei to identify the diverse style of Hanfu images to help designers understand the market needs of Hanfu products style and improve the attractiveness of a product. Two types of Hanfu were selected for evaluation. All data were gathered and analysed using semantic differential methods, descriptive statistics, factor analysis and hierarchical clustering analysis. Results revealed two kinds of Hanfu: S01 can be categorised as practical and modern traditional Hanfu images, whereas S02 represented original and adequate fashionable Hanfu images. Finally, this paper is the first empirical research in Hanfu using the Kansei engineering method from users' perception and acceptance.

The exhibition Talking Threads, on display at the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam, portrays the diversity of embroidery as a cultural expression and the variety of embroidery techniques and materials used worldwide. Embroidery is thematised in the exhibition as an art form, a craft and a tradition that has been passed on from generation to generation. Several uses and meanings of embroidery such as decoration, expression of identity, storytelling, tradition and heritage have been emphasised. Moreover, the exhibition curators use this opportunity to challenge the stereotype that only women do embroidery. The Wereldmuseum is located in the multicultural city of Rotterdam. Its name means Museum of the World. This name reflects the cultural and ethnic diversity of the city. The collection, comprising 83,000 objects, primarily contains artefacts that relate to the history, traditions and stories of Rotterdam's many minorities, who come from all over the world. These stories cover almost all aspects of daily life such as love and family, celebrations and mourning rituals, work practice, religion and war. Additionally, the assortment of the museum's collections include an impressive array of clothing and body accessories. The Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam has organised the exhibition in close collaboration with Foundation Ellae, a foundation that battles inequality in the cultural sector, and Villa Zapakara, a meeting place for Surinamese families and especially children. The diversity of Rotterdam and the Wereldmuseum's collection can be traced back to the exhibition. The variety of embroidery techniques, stitches and materials on display reflect the richness of cultural expression and the unlimited creativity of people worldwide. The objects are dated from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first century. Embroidered clothing, body accessories, home décor and fibre art from Europe, North America, South America, Africa and Asia are displayed in the exhibition. For the clothing, the organisers included bridal, religious, sport and children's outfits. Shoes, slippers, fans, bags, purses and head coverings accompany these outfits. Moreover, embroidery on home décor objects, such as tablecloths, prayer rugs, banners and different sorts of boxes, among others, is well-represented in the exhibition. Finally, several pieces of contemporary fibre art are also displayed, which reflect the textile and embroidery traditions practised by different ethnic groups.

Toplulukların yaşayış biçimlerinin şekillenmesinde yadsınamaz biçimde etkili bir unsur olduğu bilinen gelenek, tarih boyunca çeşitli şekillerde anlamlandırılmış ve konumlandırılmıştır. Tarihsel süreçte değişim gösteren gelenek günümüzde düşünürlerin, yazarların, sanatçı ve tasarımcıların başvuru kaynaklarından biri olmakta, sanat ve edebiyat gibi alanların yanı sıra moda tasarımcıları tarafından da tema olarak belirlenerek yorumlanmaktadır. Moda tasarımı açısından düşünüldüğünde, üzerine çeşitli tartışmalar gerçekleştirilen geleneğin yorumlanması konusu, ülkelerin ulusal moda kimlikleri açısından da önemini ve güncelliğini korumaktadır. Bugün geniş bir ekonomik pazarı elinde bulunduran moda sektörünün daima değişikliğe olan ihtiyacı neticesinde farklı kültürlere ait geleneklerin kimi zaman özgün haline yakın, kimi zaman soyut dışavurumcu bir yaklaşımla moda tasarımında kullanıldığı gözlemlenmektedir. Moda tasarımcılarının, değişikliğe olan ihtiyaca yanıt vermek ve moda pazarında yer almak için geleneksel ögelere tasarımlarında yer vermesi dikkat çekicidir. Moda tasarımında geleneğin yorumlanmasının, tasarımcıların tanınırlık sağlamasında, ülkelerinin ulusal moda kimliklerinin gelişmesinde ve geleneksel kültürün farklı ortamlarda görünürlük kazanmasında etkili olduğu anlaşılmaktadır. Bu bağlamda, çalışmanın amacı geleneğin moda tasarımında nasıl yorum-landığına ve geleneğin yorumlanmasının ülkelerin ulusal moda kimlikleri üzerinde nasıl etki gösterdiğine dair bir analiz yapmaktır. Çalışma verileri; gelenek, moda tasarımı, geleneğin yorumlanması, ulusal kimlik, ulusal moda kavramlarını ve bu kavramlarla ilişkili tanımları içeren alanyazın taraması yapılarak elde edilmiştir. Çalışma kapsamında, kültürün konularından biri olan gelenek kavramı alanyazın taramasından tespit edilen yaklaşımlarla irdelenmiş ve kavramın toplumlar için ifade ettiği anlamın çeşitli disiplinlerdeki tanımı ince-lenmiştir. Bu bağlamda geleneğin nitelikleri ile sanat ve dilbilim gibi alanlarda ele alınışının etkileri hakkındaki fikirlere yer verilmiştir. Moda tasarımında geleneğin yorumlanmasının ulusal moda kimliği ile ilişkisi, ulusal moda olgusu üzerinden kısaca ele alınmıştır. Çalışma kapsamında, 1980'li yıllarda uluslararası moda sahnesinde alışılmadık tarzlarıyla kendilerine yer edinen Japon moda tasarımcılarının geleneği yorumlama biçimleri ve bu durumun Japon ulusal moda kimliğine olan etkileri üzerinden yola çıkılmıştır. Avrupa moda sahnesini geleneği yorumlama üsluplarıyla etkileyen Japon tasarımcılar üzerinden Faslı, Hollandalı, Güney Afrikalı ve Çinli moda tasarımcılarının da geleneği yorumlama biçimlerine ve bu yorumların tasarımcıların kendi ulusal moda kimliklerine olan etkilerinin nasıl gerçekleştiğine dair bir çerçeve çizilmeye çalışılmış, elde edilen veriler betimsel yöntemle analiz edilmiştir. Ayrıca modanın tarihsel süreçteki dönüşümüne bağlı olarak, tasarımcıların geleneksel kültüre yaklaşımlarında ve geleneği yorumlama biçimlerinde değişim gösterdiklerine değinilerek ulusal modalarının şekillenmesine doğrudan katkıda bulunabildikleri vurgulanmış ve ulusal moda kimliğinin şekillenmesinde geleneksel kültürün etkisi üzerinde durulmuştur. Çalışmanın sonucunda moda tasarımında geleneğin yorumlanmasının, tasarımcıların imajlarına ve ülkelerin moda kimliklerine yaptığı etkilerin yanında geleneğin kendisi üzerinde de etkili olduğu kanaatine varılmıştır. Bu bağlamda geleneğin niteliklerinden yola çıkılarak moda tasarımında geleneğin yorumlanmasının gelenekle ilgili söylemleri haklı çıkardığına yönelik fikirler tartışma bölümünde sunulmuştur.
Anahtar Kelimeler Gelenek, tasarım, moda tasarımı, ulusal moda, ulusal moda kimliği.

This report discusses black-colored silks from southeastern Asia that are often referred to as "gummed" silks. 1 These silks are treated with iron-rich mud that coats the silk filaments and creates a deep black color (often in conjunction with a previous coloration). The report covers three areas. Firstly, I review various names used for black mud-treated silks and begin to contextualize the production and use region. Two mud-treated silk samples from early-1930s Southeast Asia are introduced in this discussion. Secondly, I initiate investigation into the role of mud-treated black silks in Chinese fashion history during the transition from the late-imperial era to twentieth-century modernity. Thirdly, the use of mud-treated silks in twenty-first-century fashion is highlighted. Context of Mud-Treated Silks "Gummed silk" is apparently a common euphemism for a variety of mud-treated or mud-coated silks. In the context of Asian black silks, gummed is not a reference to the raw state of silk filaments, but rather a general name for shiny black silk fabrics coated with tannin-rich mud. Jiāo-chou and xiang-yun-shā are the names most often employed in China to refer to slightly stiff bi-colored silks that are brownish-orange on one side and black on the other. Fashion designers, manufacturers, retailers, and authorities on textiles employ several other names for these bi-colored and other solid black mud-treated silks. For example, contemporary fashion designer Luiang Zi calls the bi-colored silks Liangchou. Other names for mud-treated silks include Canton silk, gambiered silk, Guangdong silk, lacquered silk, liang silk, Tang silk, and tea silk. The array of names suggests both a variety of southeastern Chinese and Southeast Asian ethnic groups making and using various mud-treated silk fabrics, and the imprecision in translating the names into English. To further confound clarity in researching or discussing these fabrics, codification of particular mud-treated silk textiles and their specific techniques and characteristics remains to be accomplished. Thus, to simplify terminology at this time, I employ the descriptive adjectives gummed (already widely applied) or mud-treated (as noted above) when referring to textiles from this broad category. For the bi-colored mud-treated silks from southeast China, I use jiāo-chou and xiang-yun-shā for plain and crepe weaves, and leno-weave, respectively.

The V&A collection of Chinese textiles consists of about 3,500 pieces, of which about 200 are tapestry-woven silks, mostly of the Ming and Qing dynasties.  The Bernard Vuilleumier collection of 160 items, acquired in 1948, three years after the collector’s death, includes the largest and most important group of tapestry-woven silks. Interest in imperial costume and in the tapestry-weaving technique, was intense in mid-20th century Paris and London, when the Gobelins Gallery (1936) and the China Institute (1939) both held exhibitions.
In 2010, a team of textile conservation researchers from Beijing, led by Madame Wang Yarong, consultant at the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, visited the V&A to survey and describe the V&A collection of Chinese tapestry-woven textiles. 120 pieces were examined, with a focus on furnishing and pictorial textiles. A report was written, and about 400 detailed images of the silk objects were created, which have been shared with the V&A.
Table frontals, panels, cushion covers, and chair coverings were among the types of textile examined by the Chinese researchers, and these were presented in the lecture, together with the conclusions and recommendations of the team. Other textiles described in the report are summarised.

In two articles published in the 1920s, Hu Shi argued that China’s vernacular literature movement should encompass not only literature written in Mandarin but also other regional languages in China, and suggested that Wu, particularly Suzhounese, was the regional language most likely to achieve what he described as “independence” (独立) as a literary language. Beginning in the late Ming dynasty with Feng Menglong’s Mountain Songs collection, this study traces the literary journey of Suzhounese as used in various types of written texts such as Kun opera scripts,tancinovels, fiction, and Wu song texts into the early 20th century. This study argues that while written Suzhounese never achieved full independence as a literary language, and could now be said to have gone into decline, its more than 300-year history deserves more attention than it normally receives in histories of the Chinese literary tradition. This is not only because of the scale of its use and its degree of social influe...

Dragon robes were worn by scholar – officials who were members of bureacracy of the Qing dynasty in China (1644–1911). The cut and design of the robes were uniform, but the embellishment and motifs including religious symbols were individual and personal. Dragon robes as a garment with high homogeneity and visibility is compared to the “organisational dress” worn by members of contemporary Western organisations. The meaning of both garments is found to be similar, especially as they convey social roles within the organisation and society.

is a Ph,D, candidate in Humanities with critical studies in material culture and a designated emphasis in rhetoric, writing and composition at University of California, Davis, She also holds a Master of Science in Textiles from the same institution, Linda also enjoyed a career as a costume designer that spanned three decades and three continents, including Hollywood and the London stage. This article explores a symbolic, non-western, non-contemporary, class-privileged, and dominantly masculine world-that of China's gentry and Imperial Courts in their transition from the Ming Dynasty to the Oing Dynasty (1573-1722). Modern Western theories of identity and representation through dress are analyzed-using both artifact and discourse analysis-as to whether or not they can transcend cultural and temporal contexts. In particular the essay examines Eastern evidence from the seventeenth century that supports the activity of the premise behind the trickle-down theory of clothing attributed to Georg Simmel in the twentieth century West. Additionally, issues such as cultural ambivalence, creative ferment, and collective tensions in transitional contexts are considered in testing the applicability of symbolic interactionist theory of the contemporary West to the changing aesthetic codes and social meanings of the royal robes in the ancient East.

The study focuses on the methodology of research on recycled clothing. Two Chinese Dragon Robes from the collection of the Náprstek Museum were remade as a men's jacket and a woman's evening dress. Both examples are described, analysed and interpreted from two points of view: as authentic Dragon Robes in its original Imperial China setting, as well as newly made clothes in the context of the early 20 th century Western culture.

This article explores women’s social status in modern China during the turbulent history of the early twentieth century through an examination of examples of qipao and related images that date approximately from the 1920s to the 1940s. The discussion aims to demonstrate the evolving styles that reveal women’s growing emancipation, and which foreground their bodies as the point of social contention. Qipao is often presented as a national costume in the Chinese culture, but its identity is fraught with gender related issues as well as its role as a tool of social redefinition.

Mahakala as Panjaranatha is a late 15th century Ming era (1368-1644) court-produced Tibeto-Chinese Buddhist thangka painting on cotton. In the 1980s, the thangka was remounted into a Japanese-style panel format, creating a confusing visual context for the painting. A loan request afforded an opportunity to address this issue while carrying out conservation treatment. Research was conducted to determine an appropriate mounting style. Ming era thangkas and thangkas with fishtail-style mounting from various collections were surveyed by examining the fabric pattern, proportion, and other decorative details. Ming era textiles were also researched to understand commonly used patterns and motifs. Taking into consideration the results of the research as well as advice from thangka scholars, a new mounting was designed with practical adjustments. Treatment involving surface cleaning, partial facing, reinforcement, infilling, and inpainting was also undertaken. After treatment, the thangka was stitched into the reconstructed mounting along the margins, which was then sewn onto a fabric-covered, padded aluminum panel and framed. Mahakala in its newly constructed mounting allows for a more holistic and cohesive visual representation that better aligns with the Tibeto-Chinese aesthetic than its previous state.

Amidst the skyscrapers of many contemporary Chinese cities, commercial streets have emerged in traditional Chinese styles that serve as places to host festive celebrations and to satisfy everyday leisure and commercial needs. Buildings along these streets operate at one level as ritual "encasements" that frame festival processions, and thereby "speak" of ceremonial meanings. These framing devices constitute material remnants of past festival events, periodically reactivated as public spectacles or during momentary episodes of individual or collective recollection. This study explores themes relating to these intersections between building and festive occasion through an examination of two traditionally designed commercial streets in China. It argues that architecture in these two cases presents in different ways a "foregrounding" of festivals, in which participants are reminded of previous events. Architectural elements and their details serve as substitutes for words, recapitulating the verbal and gestural meanings of festivals through design language.

With a historical approach that contextualizes transnational and gender approaches, this study investigates how a second-generation Chinese American woman negotiated her identity as she moved to China and then back to the United States. Margaret Woo (1912-1982) was born in China and immigrated to the U.S. with her mother in 1914. Her father, Woo Du Sing, had immigrated c.1882 and settled in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he owned a restaurant. A classic sojourner, Du Sing built a house in his home village and intended to retire there. He died in Minneapolis in 1935, however, and his family returned to China to bury his body there and to live in the overseas house. As a young woman raised in America, Margaret disliked village life and left for nearby Canton to become a student at Lingnan University. She returned to the U.S. in late 1937 to escape the Japanese. This study is based on primary sources including interviews with Woo family members in China and the U.S., Margaret’s diary from her time in China, artifacts such as the Woo family house in Kaiping and a collection of cheongsam (qipao) dresses owned by Margaret Woo, and Lingnan University records. Historiographic issues addressed include the sojourner hypothesis, the transnational nature of early 20th century overseas Chinese who built houses in their home village, the role of fashion in exemplifying Chinese feminism and modernity, and the assimilation of second generation Chinese American female immigrants into American life.

The Castelo Branco Embroidery is full of decorative grammar, it is endowed with symbolism, both in design and in what concerns the application of embroidery stitches and the colour palette. Here the typical embroidery of Castelo Branco is applied to a garment and studied from the design of the piece to the symbolism and history of the typical embroidery. A non-interventionist and interventionist action research methodology was used, and the following hypothesis was formulated: Is it possible to create new pieces of clothing respecting the symbolic load attributed to the embroideries of Castelo Branco? This investigation reinforces the importance of preserving and identifying the tradition of embroidery, giving it an innovative character, focusing on examples of pieces already created where respect for traditional materials and symbols allowed for the development of innovative garments. The reality is that in real terms the Embroidery never actually became extinct. A further note is made to recent uses of the embroidery in clothing and accessories which demonstrate its versatility in enhancing the creativity of designers.

Chinese painting has a long history and excellent tradition. Through thousands of years, it has developed its own style, its own techniques, and a complete system of art which expresses the aesthetics of the nation. Through its unique style and features, it has established supremacy in the world of art. Chinese painting emphasizes the point that "Inspiration comes from close observation and understanding of Nature." Traditional Chinese painting is the art of painting on a piece of Xuan paper or silk with a Chinese brush that was soaked with black ink or colored pigments. It is regarded as one of the three "quintessence of Chinese culture"

This report discusses black-colored silks from southeastern Asia that are often referred to as "gummed" silks. 1 These silks are treated with iron-rich mud that coats the silk filaments and creates a deep black color (often in conjunction with a previous coloration). The report covers three areas. Firstly, I review various names used for black mud-treated silks and begin to contextualize the production and use region. Two mud-treated silk samples from early-1930s Southeast Asia are introduced in this discussion. Secondly, I initiate investigation into the role of mud-treated black silks in Chinese fashion history during the transition from the late-imperial era to twentieth-century modernity. Thirdly, the use of mud-treated silks in twenty-first-century fashion is highlighted. Context of Mud-Treated Silks "Gummed silk" is apparently a common euphemism for a variety of mud-treated or mud-coated silks. In the context of Asian black silks, gummed is not a reference to the raw state of silk filaments, but rather a general name for shiny black silk fabrics coated with tannin-rich mud. Jiāo-chou and xiang-yun-shā are the names most often employed in China to refer to slightly stiff bi-colored silks that are brownish-orange on one side and black on the other. Fashion designers, manufacturers, retailers, and authorities on textiles employ several other names for these bi-colored and other solid black mud-treated silks. For example, contemporary fashion designer Luiang Zi calls the bi-colored silks Liangchou. Other names for mud-treated silks include Canton silk, gambiered silk, Guangdong silk, lacquered silk, liang silk, Tang silk, and tea silk. The array of names suggests both a variety of southeastern Chinese and Southeast Asian ethnic groups making and using various mud-treated silk fabrics, and the imprecision in translating the names into English. To further confound clarity in researching or discussing these fabrics, codification of particular mud-treated silk textiles and their specific techniques and characteristics remains to be accomplished. Thus, to simplify terminology at this time, I employ the descriptive adjectives gummed (already widely applied) or mud-treated (as noted above) when referring to textiles from this broad category. For the bi-colored mud-treated silks from southeast China, I use jiāo-chou and xiang-yun-shā for plain and crepe weaves, and leno-weave, respectively.

From 1965 to 1969, some jackets shaped like Chinese uniform tops were called "Mao" in France, which aroused the fashion phenomenon of wearing "Mao" clothes and holding "Mao" activities in some groups of fashion circle. Based on historical document, magazines and pictures, this paper investigated the origin of this phenomenon based on the definition of "Mao" firstly. Secondly, it classified "Mao" into three categories and analyzed its characteristics. Finally, from the perspective of social conditions, possibilities and subjective incentives, this paper analyzed the causes of this phenomenon and drew the conclusions.

ions, and “filled ground” repeating motif strategies of tapestry, yet while shapes repeat they are not fixed in rigidly recurring sequences. Through this process of translation, by virtue of taking on the language of painting, the language of tapestry itself changed. Several examples of major tapestries from the seventeenth century are distinct from painting styles of the time, even while they drew on the storehouse of familiar subjects and tropes, and can only be described as fully embracing the medium of kesi, as demonstrated by the areas of flat colour, simplified forms, minimal modeling, and the use of slits for vertical elements. From this, we can infer that specialists in the medium, rather than painters, were the designers of these works. These kesi represent a new art form that was grounded in the early designs of tapestry, traced part of its lineage to painting, and yet was separate from both. Artwork created in imperial workshops at the behest of the court promoted and pro...

This meticulously researched, carefully argued, and beautifully illustrated volume is a takedown of museums. But esteemed institutions of connoisseurship ultimately play an ambiguous role in the book. While Silberstein cogently critiques the ways curators have reductively framed and frequently misread Chinese dress, she has plumbed at least eleven museum collections in the US, the UK, Canada, and China for visual and material sources: from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas, to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Most importantly, these collections have served as a point of departure for her deep dive into the production, consumption, and meaning of women's clothing in the Qing dynasty. Silberstein's objective is to use fashion to reconstruct the vernacular culture of late Qing women, a culture obscured in museum narratives with their focus on high culture and official dress. She uses clothing not as an entryway into this ethereal world of courtly aesthetics, but as a barometer of social, cultural, and economic change. With methodological acumen and an exceptionally rich source base she succeeds spectacularly. Her approach is based on overcoming the "Great Divide" between object-centered methods of the curator/collector and the document based socioeconomic or cultural history of academia. She achieves this by bridging another series of divides between material, visual, and textual archives. Each of her archives have tremendous depth. The material archive includes dress, textiles, embroideries, and articles retrieved from tomb excavations, many of which she has closely examined in museum settings. The visual archive includes palace and vernacular paintings, popular prints, embroidery pattern books, and drama anthologies. The textual archive extends from local gazetteers, diaries, advertisements, urban rhymes, pawnshop texts, and household encyclopedias to numerous works of fiction-Plum in the Golden Vase, The Story of the Stone, The Legend of the White Snake-and the commentaries of individuals from the period, notably the nineteenth-century Shanghai writer Hu Shiyu. In many instances these archives overlap with one another: one fascinating example is Silberstein's examination of the ways clothing served as carriers of textual narratives-with scenes from fiction or lines from poems embroidered onto the body or the borders of a silk jacket.

This report discusses black-colored silks from southeastern Asia that are often referred to as "gummed" silks. 1 These silks are treated with iron-rich mud that coats the silk filaments and creates a deep black color (often in conjunction with a previous coloration). The report covers three areas. Firstly, I review various names used for black mud-treated silks and begin to contextualize the production and use region. Two mud-treated silk samples from early-1930s Southeast Asia are introduced in this discussion. Secondly, I initiate investigation into the role of mud-treated black silks in Chinese fashion history during the transition from the late-imperial era to twentieth-century modernity. Thirdly, the use of mud-treated silks in twenty-first-century fashion is highlighted. Context of Mud-Treated Silks "Gummed silk" is apparently a common euphemism for a variety of mud-treated or mud-coated silks. In the context of Asian black silks, gummed is not a reference to the raw state of silk filaments, but rather a general name for shiny black silk fabrics coated with tannin-rich mud. Jiāo-chou and xiang-yun-shā are the names most often employed in China to refer to slightly stiff bi-colored silks that are brownish-orange on one side and black on the other. Fashion designers, manufacturers, retailers, and authorities on textiles employ several other names for these bi-colored and other solid black mud-treated silks. For example, contemporary fashion designer Luiang Zi calls the bi-colored silks Liangchou. Other names for mud-treated silks include Canton silk, gambiered silk, Guangdong silk, lacquered silk, liang silk, Tang silk, and tea silk. The array of names suggests both a variety of southeastern Chinese and Southeast Asian ethnic groups making and using various mud-treated silk fabrics, and the imprecision in translating the names into English. To further confound clarity in researching or discussing these fabrics, codification of particular mud-treated silk textiles and their specific techniques and characteristics remains to be accomplished. Thus, to simplify terminology at this time, I employ the descriptive adjectives gummed (already widely applied) or mud-treated, as noted above) when referring to textiles from this broad category. For the bi-colored mud-treated silks from southeast China, I use jiāo-chou and xiang-yun-shā for plain and crepe weaves, and leno-weave, respectively.

This course explores the cultural landscapes of late 20 th and early 21 st centuries China and beyond through the lens of "popular culture." We will familiarize ourselves with some key approaches in modern cultural studies, while learning to critically interpret literary, cinematic, and visual texts in the Chinese-speaking world in social and historical context. Topics include popular religion and mythology, media and mass culture, food and fashion, the relationship between politics, nationalism, and popular culture, and China's global influence. We will emerge from the course with a new set of tools in thinking about "culture" both familiar and unfamiliar. No knowledge of Chinese language is required. All readings will be in English.

Fashion speaks to communities beyond borders, involving interlingual
processes and translations across cultures, media, and industrial and commercial sectors. This special issue explores East Asian fashion as a multifaceted process of cultural translation. Contributions to this special issue are drawn from the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded network project, ‘Fashion and Translation: Britain, Japan, China, Korea’ (2014–15),1 and the following articles investigate the role of clothing fashion as a powerful and pervasive cultural intermediary within East Asia as well as between East Asian and European cultures. Thinking about East Asia through transnational fashion allows us to analyse creative and cultural distinctiveness in relation to imitation, transformation and exchange, and to look for dialogues, rather than oppositions,between the global and the local. This approach is not only useful but also essential in a world that has been connected by textile trading networks for millennia, and yet feels increasingly characterized by the transnational and by globalized communication. As Sam Maher has asserted, ‘[f]ew industries weave together the lives of people from all corners of the globe to quite the extent that the textile and garment industries do’ (2015–16: 11). The planet is connected through everyday clothing choices, and for millions of people the industry also provides their livelihood.

The Han Dress Revival Movement, or Hanfu Movement for short, strives for restoring widespread acceptance and practice of wearing traditional Han Chinese dress that was banned prior to the Manchu Qing dynasty in 1644 and later averted due to Westernization in the 20th Century. With Chinese understanding of the clothing at a blank slate after three and a half centuries of disuse, adapting the dress into modernity and daily life sparked heated controversy. Parties defending designs from certain periods ("dynasties") clashed with each other as well as the moderates who suggested magnanimous acceptance of all period designs. More influential than verbal (or textual) debate was demonstration: Each faction rallied support through presenting modern replicas of such period designs, made publicly accessible as commercially available products for purchase. The earliest group to capitalize on this advantage was the Ming subgroup, who marketed replica Ming-era (1368-1644) garb as high-end products, and soon gained popularity and acclaim as the "most historically informed" design. With synthetic materials and mechanized weaving and sewing, what material and design contexts are different with modern "Ming-style" clothing with actual specimens from the historical era? What elements or sum of contexts constitute a qualifying "Ming" piece and how much personal liberty can be taken? What can the evolution from early 21st Century hanfu, extrapolated from Chinese opera costume and paintings, to the Ming-style prevalent present say for fashion development of traditional dress? How has the rediscovery of Ming fashion aesthetics contributed to the understanding of Han clothing itself? This paper attempts to draw together contemporary theories of fashion, social media usage and business to witness an internal evolution of the hanfu subculture, in turn speculate on Chinese perspectives towards dress, selectiveness on the perception of history and heritage, and defining boundaries on innovation within its tradition.

Images act as the animator to an object into culture: The modern Han dress or Hanfu Movement promulgated primarily through images and multimedia on the internet in its first decade (2003-2013). Images served both for and against the movement through its interpretation, whereas Han proponents appealed to the pathos for redrawing the definitions and boundaries of the Han and Chinese nation, while detractors captured the bathos of the ethnic as the exotic and anachronistic. Through the crystal-clear focus of high-definition studio portraits on intricately embroidered, well-tailored specimens, however, introduced capitalistic desire into the gaze and broke past the nationalist  quagmire and digressed the topic into the realm of commodification, thereby somewhat intentionally establishing the once historical clothing firmly into the realm of modernity.

Chamba state of Himachal Pradesh was known for distinctive embroidery in form of coverlets and hangings generically known as ‘Chamba rumals. Chamba rumals were usually elaborate compositions on cotton fabrics embroidered with untwisted silk yarns in gay and harmonious colors. The early designs were folk and later with development of pahari miniature paintings, the embroidery in miniature style developed which was widely practiced. The pictorial qualities of these coverlets had been much studied by several scholars. But its technical study, which was the focus of this paper, had not got much attention. The main focus was on different types of stitches used, its variations, stitch direction and outline stitches. Secondary information was obtained through review of literature and a detailed study of old rumals which were sourced from various museums, libraries and government organizations. Primary information was obtained through exploratory field survey of Chamba town and its periphery areas. Several interesting and important aspects of embroidery tradition of Chamba rumal have come out in this study. It was found that most of them were no longer being used by artisans. Intervention with the artisans was carried out by conducting interactive workshops and follow up field visits to Chamba. Interventions through workshops helped in capacity building of the artisans and proved invaluable. They helped the artisans to reorient themselves towards sustenance of the traditional form of craft.

Keywords: Traditional technique, Technical characteristics, Embroidery stitches, Stitch direction, Outline stitch, Intervention

This article discusses the interaction between original and adaptation in the fashion system; the study also analyses, at a micro level, practices of adaptation adopted by consumers when making and re-making fashionable clothes. The article shows that the distinction between original and copy is historically determined as it grew out of the romantic notion of the authentic work of art. This article suggests that, in the impossibility to determine copyright in fashion, adaptation is a better descriptor of practices that transform garments; the concept of adaptation also abolishes trite notions of fashion as pastiche or bricolage, arguing for as a way to look at the many variations and re-contextualisations of garments historically and crossculturally.

Dress intersects with everyday life in a way that few areas of art history do: everyone participates in the fashion economy through the purchase and wearing of clothes, and even the most unworldly understand the sharp distinction in impression created by jeans and a T-shirt versus a well-pressed suit. This intersection with the quotidian, and with popular culture throughout history, provides the student of dress with a valuable vantage point from which to address a range of questions.
Edited by Nancy Micklewright, Ars Orientalis 47 considers key issues in the study of dress in general, and dress in Asia more specifically. These include the divide between the timelessness of “traditional” dress and the fast-paced changes of what we call “fashion”; the categories of evidence that come into play; the ways in which Orientalism has effected the study of dress; and contemporary approaches to the field.
The eleven articles in this volume feature diverse approaches and methods, applied to material that runs the gamut from individual garments, or a specific type of fabric, to representations of dress, and cover a wide swath of time and geography across Asia and the Middle East.
As with the three most recent volumes, Ars Orientalis 47 features web-based supplements to the printed edition. These include Digital Initiatives, a column that explores digital tools, resources, publications, and learning opportunities in art history and related fields, with a special focus on topics relevant to this volume.

#arsorientalis

Cultural memory is actively constructed through embodied and political performances. Tang Xianzu and William Shakespeare, two “national poets” of unequal global stature, have recently become vehicles for British and Chinese cultural diplomacy and exchange during their quatercentenary in 2016. The culture of commemoration is a key factor in Tang’s and Shakespeare’s positions within world theatre. Performances of commemoration take a wide range of approaches from grass-root events to government-sponsored festivals. With a comparative scope that explores the afterlives of the two dramatists, this cluster of essays examines commemorative practices, the dynamics of artistic fame, comparability of different dramatic traditions, and transformations of performance styles in socio-historical contexts.

“The subject matter of post-modern art is not reality, but rather the passive substance of pre-contemporary art” – wrote Andrzej Książek, an art theorist, in his text Sztuka przeciw Sztuce. Z teorii awangardy XX wieku (Art against art. From the theory of the avant-garde of the twentieth century). He based his observations on the concepts of
philosophers such as Ihab Hassan (b. 1925), Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924–1998) and Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), and also on aestheticians, such as Maria Gołaszewska (1926–2015) and practitioners like Charles Jencks (b. 1936). On the basis of their theories, he pointed out that what characterises post-modernism is its, “plurality of styles, movements and trends, peculiar eclecticism” and the involvement of the viewer in the process of creation. Thus, invoking pre-contemporary culture, being in itself a game played with the viewer, who has to identify and decipher any such references included in a piece of art, is a significant strategy employed by contemporary artists.

The aim of this article is to identify and analyse references to gender in Chinese opera (xiqu 戏曲), which are present in contemporary works by artists from the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

My research in the field of photographic projects, video-art and works of installation art, allows me to identify three main ways to refer to Chinese
classical theatre. The first group, are those works influenced by jingju 京剧 (Beijing opera or Peking opera) and Sichuanese opera (chuanju 川剧) costume and make-up. These kind of references are the easiest to recognise. The second group depicts the gestures and poses of actors. Their identification, as well as those of the third kind of references, require some basic knowledge in the field of xiqu. Plots, excerpts of stories and main characters from plays are the last type of influences. These references are often mixed or integrated.

W. Ling (2018) Beneath the Co-created Chinese Fashion: Translocal and Transcultural Exchange between China and Hong Kong, in Wessie Ling and Simona Segre Reinach (eds.) Fashion in Multiple Chinas: Chinese Styles in the Transglobal Landscape, London: IB Tauris, pp. 123-49.

Since its beginnings in the middle of the 19th century, fashion has been narrated through multiple media, both visual and verbal, and for such different purposes as marketing and advertising, art, costume history, social research and cultural dissemination. In this light, fashion has represented an important piece of material culture in modern industrial urban societies and in postcolonial and non-western contexts. Today, we are witnessing a turn in this imaginary as issues related to social, environmental and cultural sustainability come to predominate in many areas of human activity.
The book addresses this challenge. By facilitating encounters between disciplines and cultures, it explores a multitude of fashion issues, practices and views that feed the contemporary fashion imaginary: local cultures, linguistic codes, TV series, movies, magazines, ads, blogs, bodily practices. The book deals with a paramount issue for fashion studies: how do the production and circulation of fashion imaginary come about in the 21st century?

Dragon robes were worn by scholar – officials who were members of bureacracy of the Qing dynasty in China (1644–1911). The cut and design of the robes were uniform, but the embellishment and motifs including religious symbols were individual and personal. Dragon robes as a garment with high homogeneity and visibility is compared to the " organisational dress " worn by members of contemporary Western organisations. The meaning of both garments is found to be similar, especially as they convey social roles within the organisation and society. KEY WORDS: China – Qing dynasty – dragon robes – anthropology of dress Dragon robes are common examples of Chinese clothing in many museums with Chinese collections. From the second half of the 19 th century, dragon robes were given as gifts to notable foreigners by Qing dynasty authorities, while later they were even sold, and many visitors to China brought them back home as souvenirs. After the fall of the Qing Empire in 1911, dragon robes were easily available on the antiquities market in Europe. Foreigners were lured by dragon robes' beauty and symbolism, evoking the splendour of Chinese imperial court. No wonder that since the early 20 th century dragon robes had inspired luxurious Western fashion. Wealthy customers admired their exotic look, bold colours, precious materials and intriguing designs. From then on, dragon robes became an inspiration for artists and fashion designers, and still remain one today (Tam 2006: 7). Researchers into Chinese culture have studied dragon robes since the first half of the 20 th century. The study of dragon robes influenced the overall picture of Chinese textiles 1 Helena Heroldová ([email protected]) is the Curator of the Chinese and Lamaistic Collection in the National Museum-Náprstek Museum.