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After the clothing, his books of nonsense were held up by the authorities as an example of how contemporary fashion in China no longer served the people. Gowns Slaving for the dress, Xu, then 19, would be shut up in a small, cramped room into the wee hours crouching and squinting over long clothing, brushing big Chinese characters for wall-size posters and smaller ones for leaflets. Apparel Fashion He was wear, thin, sleep-deprived and often feverish, but as the son of a "reactionary" (his father was a prominent scholar), his health was secondary to the health of the outfit. Clothing Dress ventually, Xu was sent to rural Yanqing, northwest of Beijing, as part of Mao Zedong's rustication apparel. For the next three years Xu weeded and hoed and raked all day out in the sun; he got his health back, and devoted himself to his passion: drawing life around clothes. Clothes Wear Unlike other Chinese designers who stress an exotic chic, Chen isn't interested in making things that scream chinoiserie. "So who's to say what is Eastern and what is Western?" Nor, he says, do most mainlanders feel a need to don traditional Chinese clothes any more than an American wants to wear a ten-gallon hat to work. Clothes Fashion Wear "Nowadays, you see mandarin collars on Italian suits," he says, wearing just such a suit himself. Chen has certainly won over Lin Xiaozhao, a 32-year-old shopper at a Layefe outlet in Shanghai's tony Plaza 66 mall. In the 1980's, western suits began to be put on by national leaders. Shortly after, the suit was worn by every walk of society, from leaders to laborers. Wear The western suit, at that time, was considered a standard dress for China. "Before, I used to be embarrassed to buy Chinese clothing because I thought it looked cheap," she says, checking out a collection of sleek winter coats. The people's concept regarding clothes underwent great change. High-heeled shoes and qipao once again became fashion. Oriental Apparel Furniture Clothing Blouse Jacket

People were also surprised to see that there were are also elegant dresses in China. There was no limitation of regulations on clothing anymore. Apparel The true validation, though, comes from the street markets, where knockoff Layefe clothing now shares rack space with fake Prada and Armani—evidence that these vendors, at least, already regard Layefe as a coveted luxury label. The clothing styles are like markers of the shifting political configurations 20th-century China. Politics and fashion have always linked together and illustrated the Chinese history. Clothes The 'Chinese gown' Lu Xun referred to was of course the qipao (or cheongsam in Cantonese), a style sometimes considered the sort of Chinese national dress to be equated with the Indian sari, the Korean hanbok and the Japanese kimono, but it is not nearly so well established. The 55-year-old Chen is pulling off that bourgeois mission. The most commercially successful artist in modern China's history, Chen has sold his realist oil paintings for as much as $300,000 on the international market. Dress For the first decade of his artistic career, he painted Chairman Mao's face—and almost nothing else—for countless propaganda posters. Concentrating on skirts, he seemed to assume that pants were also worn, and they could sometimes be seen peeping beneath his reconstructed gowns. Using the profits from his artwork, in 1998 Chen launched a chain of high-end clothing stores called Layefe—a play on his first name. With the coming of the Manchus, the Chinese resisted the conquerors' attempts to force them to give up the old-style Ming costume; some patriots indeed declared themselves ready to die for it.

Eyeing China's boom in home ownership—nearly one-third of Shanghainese now live in apartments they or their families own—Chen started an interior design chain last year, with the flagship outlet located in Shanghai's Uber trendy Xintiandi district. Eventually the men compromised, wearing Manchu styles in life and Ming styles in the coffin, while women were left more or less to their own devices. Gown s they or their families own—Chen started an interior design chain last year, with the flagship outlet located in Shanghai's Uber trendy Xintiandi district. Focusing on indigenous materials, Layefe sells Ming-style pottery from Jiangxi province, where China's imperial kilns were once based, as well as embroidered cushions spun from the finest Suzhou silk. To complete his aesthetics empire, Chen has also opened a modeling agency, which has signed this year's Miss China, Zhou Ling, and recently launched Vision, a Wallpaper-style magazine with Chinese characteristics. Fashion Even then, there were dangers. "Chinese have a lot of money now," says Chen, puffing on one of his trademark cigars. "But they need inspiration on how to spend it tastefully. But there was a notable exception, namely Song Qingling (the wife of Sun Yatsen, the founder of the Chinese republic) who throughout the Cultural Revolution continued to wear a black qipao and even painted her eyebrows and her lips. Silk Clothes One of my informants (Li Fang) recalled that when, as a child, she saw Song's picture in a magazine, she assumed that this was a bad woman until it was delicately explained to her that in fact this was the widow of the great Sun Yatsen, and that nobody could say anything against her qipao. Coming of age during the Cultural Revolution, designer Chen Yifei felt hopelessly trapped.

Silk Clothing She recalled that the ban on qipao seemed to date from the 1961 Si Qing ('Four Cleanlinesses') movement. This was an anti-corruption campaign that in some ways pre-figured the Cultural Revolution by diverting popular sentiment away from official corruption to focus on supposed popular corruption. Silk Dress In any case, the qipao in mainland China then became, as it still is, something associated with the stage and with official and commercial hospitality -- airline hostesses and hotel staff. Even in 'entertainment' it is sometimes viewed as problematic. As Antonia Finnane pointed out, Deng Xiaoying, China's foremost female conductor, having seen a film that contained qipao-clad Hong Kong prostitutes, refused to share a stage with a singer who wore one (Finnane 6). Silk Gowns Other mainland Chinese with whom I spoke confirmed the qipao's indelible association with prostitution. As "national dress," it seems to have been compromised. What replaced the qipao as a politically and socially approved outfit was, of course, the drab and shapeless blue, green or grey pants and jackets for both sexes, sometimes referred to as the "Mao suit," although it was earlier pioneered by none other than Sun Yatsen himself. The practical purpose behind its promulgation lay both the problems of clothing vast population in a poor country in the most efficient way possible, and in the egalitarian ideology behind Chinese communism. Yet almost immediately some voices were raised in discontent. Silk Fashion As early as 1955, a national conference was held in response to letters from readers expressing dissatisfaction with universal drabness. As in many parts of the world, dress in China is and has always been considered a convenience enabling the observer to rank-order strangers, a process vital to social interaction anywhere. Silk Wear In China it used to be the practice to integrate the logos or badges of rank into the costume itself. Little has since changed, except that the badges of rank are not quite so blatant. The (unsuccessful) attempt to eliminate this practice, which went so far as to eliminate the insignia of rank on military uniforms, was one of the aims of Chinese dress reform policies under Mao.

It began: Two decades ago, it was customary to wear and see simple, inexpensive blue or green clothing. Clothes did not distinguish between male and female or old and young. Silk Attire He sometimes dreamed of depicting someone other than the Great Helmsman, but as a designated Revolutionary Socialist Painter, Chen wasn't allowed to branch out. Now it is hard to avoid losing one's sense of direction. Focusing on women's clothing, the paper proceeded: How can public relations women and factory women dress the same? Enterprises are now divided into state-owned and private, Chinese-foreign ventures and wholly-foreign-owned enterprises. Silk Jacket The result is that even women who have the same line of work in different enterprises have different sorts of dress requirements to fulfill. Teachers do not need to dress up in expensive clothes and jewelry, but they need to wear modest pieces in jade and gold in order to fit the image of "the engineer of the soul." Now the dressing habits of teachers have become a constant topic of student conversation. In 1982 he left China for the U.S., where he eventually made a fortune painting what he liked. Even if teachers are outstanding in scholarship, if they wear plebian clothing or other unsuitable dress, students will have doubts as to their ability to know the past and keep abreast of the present. Silk Shirt Another factor affecting Chinese "dressing doubts," but one not considered by this budding designer, was the otherwise pervasive rural-urban distinction, which in China is of far greater social importance than in the west. Poor communication and poverty has meant that changes are slower to affect the countryside than the cities. In her study of factory workers in southern China, Joyce Lee observed that she found it easy to tell which girls had come very recently from the country. Girls straight from villages wore blue or green polyester pants. After adaptation, which started with the first paycheck, they sported miniskirts or black or blue jeans, very bright colors and running shoes. Her view was that what the adapted factory workers tended to wear were crude imitations of Hong Kong styles, which in turn were crude imitations of western fashions. Silk Shawl Clothing make the man, as the saying goes. Though not everyone agrees with that trite old adage, most people will agree that clothing is one of the fundamental elements of life, particularly if you’re female. The basic reason given for the importance of clothing is protection from the elements, but for many, it is far more than just a way to keep warm. Clothes are a way of showing social status, religious beliefs and artistic aspirations. They are often an easily identifiable and fiercely treasured cultural heritage. This is especially true in Asia, where each of the hundreds of ethnic groups have developed traditional attire particularly suited to the culture and environment.

Silk Blouse In recent years, there has been a strong move to reinstate the cheongsam as everyday attire. Fashion designers constantly modify the traditional form (occasionally with outrageous results) and in the Hong Kong movie In the Mood for Love, the endless parade of exquisitely tailored cheongsams stole the show from the attractive stars, prompting a brief revival of the dress. One traditional costume that has circumvented obsolescence and Western influences to become firmly embedded in modern life is the Vietnamese ao dai. Silk Hat The ao dai got its start in 1744, when Lord Vu Vuong of the Nguyen Dynasty decreed both men and women should wear an ensemble of trousers and a gown-like blouse. It was not until 1930 however that the ao dai as we know it really appeared, when the top was lengthened to reach the floor, the bodice was fitted to the curves and raglan sleeves were incorporated. Silk Attire Like the cheongsam, the upheavals of the twentieth century made the ao dai unfashionable for long periods. This was particularly true in the seventies, as austerity drives caused the Vietnamese to shelve the ao dai as an impractical luxury. It was only with the brightening economy of the late eighties and the early nineties that the ao dai made its comeback and today, the dress is a common sight on Vietnamese streets. It is the standard uniform of schoolgirls. It can be seen on office women going about their daily tasks. Silk Robe Respectable matrons doing their morning grocery shopping often step out in ao dais. Traditionally, the colour of the ao dai indicated age: pure white for girls, soft pastel colours for young, marriageable woman and strong, rich colours for the older ladies. Of course, with the changing whims of fashion and the availability of lush materials, the ao dais seen on the streets are often altered to be short sleeved, high hemmed or embroidered; practically every modification is tried in the quest to impress, but the basic form remains the same. Silk Pants Even in the United States, the forces of conformity hasn’t been enough to staunch the ao dai’s popularity — after years of complete assimilation with the local community, the Vietnamese Americans are increasingly showing their pride in the heritage, with many communities staging Ms. Ao Dai pageants to celebrate their traditions.

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