Abstract
The chapter explores some of the broader contextual influences of the first decade of the new Peoples Republic of China, 1949-1959 and their direct contribution to the cultural and sartorial landscape of the country in general terms and Shanghai specifically. It takes into account how clothing loses its aesthetic significance to be replaced predominantly by functionality, gender neutrality and asexuality and considers the stylistic influence of the Soviet Union and the development of publications which support a diversity of styles and consideration of a sustainable approach to existing garments and resources in general. The chapter also reflects upon, through individual narratives, how ordinary Shanghainese residents, during the period 1960 to 1976, pragmatically responded to the conditions newly defined within this new cultural landscape by navigating situations and ideologies as best they could and resourcefully clothing themselves and their families through a variety of methods, opportunities and maturities.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Styling Shanghai |
| Editors | Christopher Breward, Juliette MacDonald |
| Place of Publication | London, U.K. |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Visual Arts |
| Pages | 211-241 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781350051133 |
| Publication status | Published - 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Impact: Shanghai has emerged as a compelling site for the production, mediation and consumption of fashion. From its status as an international treaty port in the nineteenth century, a beacon of modernity in early twentieth-century China and a megacity promoting contemporary glamour in the 2000‘s, the material and imaginative context of this thriving entrepot has consistently produced vivid interpretations of fashion as object, image and idea. Leading historians and theorists of fashion based in the UK, Australia and China offer a cross-disciplinary, comparative examination of Shanghai‘s shifting status as a world fashion city between the Republican and Contemporary periods. Drawing on extensive original research and a rich literature on Shanghai‘s material and visual cultures their essays consider fashion in Shanghai in relation to local and global manufacturing of textiles and clothes, histories of sartorial identity in China‘s most international city, the representation and marketing of 'Shanghai style‘, the spaces and places of fashionable discourse, bodies and gender in the 'Paris of the East‘ and the challenges of globalisation, commercialisation and digital communication in contemporary Shanghai.This is the first book dedicated to an analysis of Shanghai‘s fashion cultures from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Its content is informed by support from the Chinese Ministry of Education and is the result of a developed collaboration between leading UK and Shanghai based institutions. It offers new models for thinking through the concept of the fashion city outside of the usual 'western‘ hegemony and draws on previously untapped archival and field resources.Keywords
- Art and design
- Shanghai
- clothing
- community
- context
- cultural
- individuality
- narratives