Changing Clothes in China

Changing Clothes in China PDF Author: Antonia Finnane
Publisher: Hurst Publishers
ISBN: 1787387828
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
Historians have long regarded fashion as something peculiarly Western. In this surprising, sumptuously illustrated book, Antonia Finnane challenges this view, which she argues is based on nineteenth- and twentieth-century representations of Chinese dress as traditional and unchanging. Fashions, she shows, were part of Chinese life in the late imperial era, even if a fashion industry was not then apparent. In the early twentieth century the key features of modern fashion became evident, particularly in Shanghai, and rapidly changing dress styles showed the effects. The volatility of Chinese dress throughout the twentieth century matched vicissitudes in national politics. Finnane describes in detail how the close-fitting jacket and high collar of the 1911 Revolutionary period, the skirt and jacket-blouse of the May Fourth era, and the military style popular in the Cultural Revolution gave way finally to the variegated, globalized wardrobe of today. She brilliantly connects China’s modernization and global visibility with changes in dress, offering a vivid portrait of the complex, subtle, and sometimes contradictory ways the people of China have worn their nation on their backs.

Changing Clothes in China

Changing Clothes in China PDF Author: Antonia Finnane
Publisher: Hurst Publishers
ISBN: 1787387828
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Get Book Here

Book Description
Historians have long regarded fashion as something peculiarly Western. In this surprising, sumptuously illustrated book, Antonia Finnane challenges this view, which she argues is based on nineteenth- and twentieth-century representations of Chinese dress as traditional and unchanging. Fashions, she shows, were part of Chinese life in the late imperial era, even if a fashion industry was not then apparent. In the early twentieth century the key features of modern fashion became evident, particularly in Shanghai, and rapidly changing dress styles showed the effects. The volatility of Chinese dress throughout the twentieth century matched vicissitudes in national politics. Finnane describes in detail how the close-fitting jacket and high collar of the 1911 Revolutionary period, the skirt and jacket-blouse of the May Fourth era, and the military style popular in the Cultural Revolution gave way finally to the variegated, globalized wardrobe of today. She brilliantly connects China’s modernization and global visibility with changes in dress, offering a vivid portrait of the complex, subtle, and sometimes contradictory ways the people of China have worn their nation on their backs.

Empire of Style

Empire of Style PDF Author: BuYun Chen
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295745312
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Tang dynasty (618–907) China hummed with cosmopolitan trends. Its capital at Chang’an was the most populous city in the world and was connected via the Silk Road with the critical markets and thriving cultures of Central Asia and the Middle East. In Empire of Style, BuYun Chen reveals a vibrant fashion system that emerged through the efforts of Tang artisans, wearers, and critics of clothing. Across the empire, elite men and women subverted regulations on dress to acquire majestic silks and au courant designs, as shifts in economic and social structures gave rise to what we now recognize as precursors of a modern fashion system: a new consciousness of time, a game of imitation and emulation, and a shift in modes of production. This first book on fashion in premodern China is informed by archaeological sources—paintings, figurines, and silk artifacts—and textual records such as dynastic annals, poetry, tax documents, economic treatises, and sumptuary laws. Tang fashion is shown to have flourished in response to a confluence of social, economic, and political changes that brought innovative weavers and chic court elites to the forefront of history. Art History Publication Initiative. For more information, visit http://arthistorypi.org/books/empire-of-style

China Fashion

China Fashion PDF Author: Christine Tsui
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781847888600
Category : Clothing and dress
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Through the stories of three generations of designers this book charts the rise of fashion design in China. It takes us from the pre-communist country, through the austere and isolated China of the 1950s and '60s and on to the attempts at global integration of China's modern generation.

The Chinese Fashion Industry

The Chinese Fashion Industry PDF Author: Jianhua Zhao
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0857853023
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Less than three decades ago, when the Chinese bought cloth or clothes, they would have had to use a government-issued coupon. Today the Chinese fashion industry is one of the most dynamic in the world - it not only supplies fashions to the increasingly discerning domestic market, but also provides one-third of the clothing sold in the global market. How did this phenomenal transition come about? What can the growth of the Chinese fashion industry tell us about the post-Mao China? What roles do the local and the global play in the dramatic changes? This book offers a historically informed, ethnographically grounded and interpretive analysis of contemporary Chinese fashion and the fashion industry. It examines the interplay of state politics, market forces, local social and cultural factors, and the global political economy, both in the rise of the Chinese fashion industry and in the life and work of Chinese fashion professionals. As the first ethnographic account of the Chinese fashion industry in the post-Mao era, The Chinese Fashion Industry combines first-hand accounts with sophisticated cultural analysis to offer new insights, and will be of interest to students and scholars of fashion, anthropology and China.

Fashion Tribes China

Fashion Tribes China PDF Author: Kevin Tallon
Publisher: Anova Books
ISBN: 9781906388393
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
A window into the fashion tribes of the young Chinese, who make up one in ten of the world's population.The pace at which China has caught up with western lifestyle is breathtaking. Chinese youth have embraced, assimilated and adapted western cultural values and aesthetics in no time. They are confident and proud on the streets of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Most recently Chinese youth are beginning to rediscover their own heritage and mix it with western creative language, delivering a fresh and unique style, which is set to grow and influence the west in the near future. Fashion Tribes China presents the freshest and most cutting-edge youth street culture coming out of China. The book mixes straight-up head-to-toe street photography with detailed shots, including accessories, fashion detailing and fashion graphics, reflecting what is being worn and designed. Added to this are essays on style leaders in China, lifestyle, aspirations, motivations and creative thinking. Fashion Tribes China gives invaluable insight into today’s youth street culture and is aimed at creative professionals and marketers eager to understand and be inspired by what is set to become the 21st century's most influential youth group.

China Chic

China Chic PDF Author: Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology Valerie Steele
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300079302
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Explores the historical significance of Chinese clothing, and offers examples and commentary on fashions ranging from the dragon robes of the Imperial era to the cheongsams shown on the runways in Paris

The Art of Useless

The Art of Useless PDF Author: Calvin Hui
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231549830
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
Since embarking on economic reforms in 1978, the People’s Republic of China has also undergone a sweeping cultural reorganization, from proletarian culture under Mao to middle-class consumer culture today. Under these circumstances, how has a Chinese middle class come into being, and how has consumerism become the dominant ideology of an avowedly socialist country? The Art of Useless offers an innovative way to understand China’s unprecedented political-economic, social, and cultural transformations, showing how consumer culture helps anticipate, produce, and shape a new middle-class subjectivity. Examining changing representations of the production and consumption of fashion in documentaries and films, Calvin Hui traces how culture contributes to China’s changing social relations through the cultivation of new identities and sensibilities. He explores the commodity chain of fashion on a transnational scale, from production to consumption to disposal, as well as media portrayals of the intersections of clothing with class, gender, and ethnicity. Hui illuminates key cinematic narratives, such as a factory worker’s desire for a high-quality suit in the 1960s, an intellectual’s longing for fashionable clothes in the 1980s, and a white-collar woman’s craving for brand-name commodities in the 2000s. He considers how documentary films depict the undersides of consumption—exploited laborers who fantasize about the products they manufacture as well as the accumulation of waste and its disposal—revealing how global capitalism renders migrant factory workers, scavengers, and garbage invisible. A highly interdisciplinary work that combines theoretical nuance with masterful close analyses, The Art of Useless is an innovative rethinking of the emergence of China’s middle-class consumer culture.

New Media for a New China

New Media for a New China PDF Author: James F. Scotton
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444319124
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
New Media for a New China is a timely introduction to thecurrent state of the mass media in China and it’s growingrole in the 21st Century global communication system Brings together an international cast of scholars to analyse thediverse roles of China’s media, covering all the majorindustries (advertising, newspapers, broadcasting, magazines, film,TV, PR) Considers the position of China’s media in the middle ofthe country’s tremendous social, economic and politicalchanges Explores the concept of the 21st century as “China’sCentury” because of the nation’s unprecedentedgrowth

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung PDF Author: Zedong Mao
Publisher: China Books
ISBN: 9780835123884
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description


Fashion in Altermodern China

Fashion in Altermodern China PDF Author: Feng Jie
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350200093
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Fashion in Altermodern China examines key features of women's fashion within the cultural and political context of contemporary China. While global brands and styles heavily influence Chinese consumer trends, the Chinese fashion 'system' is formed of its own internal logics and emergent trends, too. Adopting the theoretical term 'altermodern', Feng Jie encourages us to view China in terms of its rapid modernization which presents its own rhythms and meanings, and argues persuasively that Chinese fashion can't be wholly understood in terms of a Western discourse of modernity, postmodernity and the global. Expanding our understanding of the fashion 'system', Fashion in Altermodern China takes on board new trends in global trade, new technologies, and the hybridity of designs and consumption of fashion. Through critical readings of Barthes, on the 'neutral', and Jullien, on 'blandness', both directly influenced by Asian philosophies, the author offers a new perspective on Chinese fashion, arguing that, while global-local contexts lead to identifiably postmodern and hybrid aesthetics, for women in contemporary China the flux and mix of available fashions is experienced in a more open neutral manner than scholars have previously described. Crucially, then, rather than position trends in China only in terms of 'hybridity' (which betrays a Western bias and a binary logic of host-recipient), there are more fluid ways in which we need to understand how women engage in fashion in China today.