Why Is Chinese Fashion So Glamorous

Between the 1920s and the '30s, Shanghai was one of the most prosperous and cosmopolitan cities of Eastern asia, a centre of business and pleasance offer a vibrant lifestyle cheers to its restaurants, cafes, cinemas, cabarets and trip the light fantastic toe halls.

The Nanjing Road became a mecca for the fashionable people of Shanghai. The busiest role of China'south about cosmopolitan city, the road before long turned into the home of a new commercial culture with major department stores offering high standards of quality and merchandise and an innovative shopping experience that allowed people to buy all valuable brands imported from Western Europe, North America and Japan.

Tradition and modernity, two contrasting still vital forces, gave life to a renovated society and shortly Shanghai - the "Paris of the East" - boasted some of the nearly fashionable women, amongst them actresses, divas and wives of ministers. Women living in Shanghai in the early decades of the 1900s are the protagonists of a recently opened exhibition at the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) in New York.

Organised by MOCA and by the China National Silk Museum in Hangzhou and guest-curated by scholar Mei Mei Rado, "Shanghai Glamour: New Women 1910s-40s" explores the allure of 20th century Shanghai through beautiful outfits that perfectly represent the cosmopolitan lifestyle of the city in those decades.

Among the highlights of the event there are twelve outfits from 1910s to 1940s on loan from the China National Silk Museum and on view for the offset time in the United States, and three dresses from prominent New York private collections.

In the context of the exhibition, each of these designs symbolises a transition, a phase in the process of change that the city, society and women in particular were going through in those decades.

The most interesting betoken highlighted in "Shanghai Glamour" remains the strong link between fashion, women and the city's vibrant cultural hybridity.

The daring transformation in style from looser to more fitted garments that revealed a woman's figure becomes therefore extremely important, since it besides helps shaping new feminine archetypes.

The exhibition explores indeed 3 different types of women: the Femme Fatale, that is a seductress, from courtesans to dancing hostesses and picture stars, all clad in glamorous dresses; the Femme Savante, embodied by writers, artists and students whose new role was hinted at in the sartorial inventiveness of their clothes, and the Femme du Monde, donning sophisticated garments and representing the city's cosmopolitanism.

Yet this is just one side of the exhibition: while Art Deco travelled from Europe to Shanghai via students, tourists, designers and patrons, becoming the style of choice of many buildings including trip the light fantastic halls, theatres and hotels, the ever irresolute cityscape was also transformed by posters, billboards, advertisements in newspapers and magazines, promoting goods that enabled the consumption of glamour and modernity.

"Shanghai Glamour" tackles this aspect via a serial of rare and beautiful accessories, posters, lifestyle magazines, and period images.

Is this the outset time that this theme is tackled through a dedicated exhibition at the MOCA?
Mei Mei Rado: Aye, it is. The museum approached me last June to be the invitee curator of an exhibition of qipaos. They expressed the idea that they wanted to borrow some dresses from the China National Silk Museum but weren't sure well-nigh which ones. So I went to visit the National Silk Museum and looked at their collection, picking in the cease the 12 designs we are exhibiting in New York. Nosotros initially wanted to show the style revolution, simply then, as the research progressed, I thought that most dresses come from Shanghai and they were connected to new women, so I decided to motion onto modern women'south identity and new fashion styles.

What criteria did y'all follow to select the 12 outfits?
Mei Mei Rado: I wanted to choose different styles and that became my primary criteria. You see, certain styles like the cropped pants and jacket are very rare since non then many of them have survived. They had two at the National Silk Museum and they loaned us one ensemble that is in a skilful condition. Withal I didn't want to focus merely on the characteristic style known every bit qipao since Western fashion or "hybrid styles" were widely worn in Shanghai in those times. This is why I picked one dancing dress equally well - the green one with sequins - one hybrid way that combined a Chinese top and a Western evening skirt.

The styles exhibited are all unique and pretty, but what fascinated you the most about them, their structure, the materials they were employed to make them or the embroidered motifs?
Mei Mei Rado: I recollect I was more fascinated by the actual thought of body that was behind the garments. Before then women used to wear ample dresses in accord with the standard idea of feminine beauty, and such dresses hid their bodies. But in the tardily '20s and '30s, shapes changed in favour of body hudding designs. This meant that cute feminine curves emerged. I establish this attribute very fascinating, especially in the case of dresses characterised past more than fluid lines that were mainly popular in the '30s and weren't so much tight fitting.

Were y'all enlightened of this trunk shaping connection when yous beginning started working on this exhibition?
Mei Mei Rado: I started this research on modernistic Chinese manner a long time ago when I was doing my Master and at the time this thought already struck me a lot. In this exhibition we decided to await at women's changing roles, just in many ways the focus on body was always there since the office changing idea is very much connected to the idea of body changing, and, as a upshot, to women's liberation or to women becoming more nowadays in the public space. So, in the finish, the final story line of the brandish concluded upwards connecting women, the female person body and style.

What do the accessories, posters, lifestyle magazines, and flow images tell us nigh those women and their roles in guild?
Mei Mei Rado: Kickoff they tell us how these dresses were worn and what kind of femininity was associated with such dresses; then they likewise tell united states of america most women's irresolute roles and their identity in modern Chinese social club. Readers contributed to two of the magazines on display, discussing fashions, but likewise problems concerning modern life, and from what they wrote, you can clearly empathise they had a very active role in society.

Y'all strike perfect correspondences between the shoes on display and some of the images in the various magazines: was it dificult to source out shoes in such good condition?
Mei Mei Rado: The shoes are not borrowed from China, actually in that location aren't besides many that have survived in Chinese collections. They were borrowed from the FIT Museum and the way looks like the one that was popular at the time in Shanghai and that you could spot in magazines from the '30s. The shoes on display are therefore very similar to the ones you would have constitute in department stores at the time; one pair was really never worn that's why they are in such good conditions.

Femme Fatale, Femme Savante, Femme du Monde: what kind of woman would you lot have liked to be if yous had lived and then?
Mei Mei Rado: I would have liked to be a Femme Savante, but in the show we highlight how the different archetypes weren't divers too rigidly. In fact different types of women were connected, and you could have been at the same fourth dimension a Femme Savante and a little flake of a Femme Fatale as well!

Does the exhibition too wait at Art Deco architecture?
Mei Mei Rado: We didn't have the space to await also at architecture, just we wait a bit at the interiors that were very much influenced by Art Deco. The posters on display prove some of these new environments associated with modern women.

Will the exhibition keep tour afterward New York?
Mei mei Rado: It's unlikely information technology will get anywhere else since it features loaned items, and so if we wanted to take it somewhere else nosotros would take to enquire the China Silk National Museum and that would be a long process.

Shanghai Glamour: New Women 1910s-40s, Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), New York, until 29th September 2013

Paradigm Captions/Credits

All captions by MOCA

ane. Cover of Ling Long magazine, no. 1, 1931.
Photo credit: Courtesy of the C. V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University.

2. 1928 advertisement for Yunshang Fashion Company. The dress displayed on the mannequin in the store window highly resembles the "Dancing Apparel" in silk georgette and sequins on display in the exhibit (paradigm 13 in this postal service).

three, 4, and 5. Shanghai Glamour Installation. Photo credit: Joerg Lohse.

6. Embrace of Liangyou Huabao (The Immature Companion), January 1, 1934. Published by Liangyou Publishing Company, Shanghai, 1926-1945.

7. Cover of Liangyou Huabao (The Young Companion). Female stars exemplified the healthy natural woman, demostrating sportswear and posing in swimsuits with legs and arms exposed. Published by Liangyou Publishing Visitor, Shanghai, 1926-1945.

viii. Naimei dress. By late 1920s to mid-1930s experimental Shanghai women wore run into-through qipaos made out of diaphanous gaze cloth, including actresses, dance hostesses and socialites alike.

9. A large feather fan was a chic component of a Parisian ensemble during the 1920s and used to communicate subtle interpersonal messages in courtship and too social etiquette.

10. Purses with personal objects inside encapsulated the new notion of privacy that emerged in relation to the division between the public and private sphere in modernistic society.

11. Grey loftier-collar jacket, 1910s, China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou
Photograph credit: China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou.

12. Blue short jacket, 1920s, with black skirt, 1920s, China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou
Photograph credit: Cathay National Silk Museum, Hangzhou.

13. Green qipao with printed textile, 1930s, Communist china National Silk Museum, Hangzhou
Photo credit: Red china National Silk Museum, Hangzhou.

14. Half sleeve majestic qi-pao with lace trimmings, 1930s, China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou
Photo credit: China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou.

fifteen. Ivory Western-way long clothes, 1930s (detail), Prc National Silk Museum, Hangzhou
Photograph credit: Mainland china National Silk Museum, Hangzhou.

16. Accessories. Shanghai Glamour Installation. Photo credit: Joerg Lohse.

17. Shoes constituted the about contested site of fashion in Republican China, every bit they were directly related to the issue of female foot-binding. Western loftier heels made their debut in the early 1910s and became ominpresent in the 1920s and 1930s.

xviii. Blackness qipao with embroidery, 1930s, Private Collection, New York
Photo credit: Museum of Chinese in America.

19. The Paramount in urban Shanghai. Opened in 1933, the building combined the styles of American Fine art Deco and modernistic skyscraper. The streamline façade of vertical lines, epitomised the glare, heat, speed and power of urban Shanghai.

xx. Blue qipao, 1940s, Private Collection, New York
Photo credit: Museum of Chinese in America.

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