Chinese Fashion
The history of
Chinese fashion industry covers arrangement of the most set colours
with assorted varieties. At the same time, Chinas fashion has
undergone a great change throughout different time periods over the
past few decades. Different social classes in different periods of
time display varied fashion trends. A majority of Chinese fashion
culture involved fashionable clothing, with more emphasis on
footbinding, which is an old custom practised in China on young
females. Footbinding had been a tradition for not less than thousand
years in China, founding in between 10th and 12th
century. Symbols such as Phoenix were mostly embossed in decorative
items and for economic usage.
In Chinese fashion, a
wide number of clothes have Chinese artefacts, arts and photos
symbolising their traditional culture, imprinted on them. Every era
or historic period had a special style added to the existing ones.
The Chinese fashion did not adopt new design fashion styles for many
decades. Each social class had its own fashion style attached to it
on the basis of ones status in the society.
Three main dynastic
periods were that of Regular citizens, Scholars and Civil or
military officials. The regular citizens consisted of Hanfus and
Qipaos. Scholars mainly referred to the Chinese academic class.
While the Chinese civil or military officials had various stylish
codes in order to mark a difference between their ranks and
positions, the most renowned one being the Mandarin Square. Use of
colourful hat knobs on the top of the hats of the Chinese officials
represented their ranking positions. In total, there were nine
different types of hat knobs, denoting different ranks of the
officials, while there are several other codes for Ming-styled and
Qing-styled headwear.
During the era of
Republic of China (ROC) between 1911 and 1949, the recent abolition
of imperial China resulted into the introduction of new style for
mens wear by Sun Yat-sen. This included introducing jackets and
trousers in place of existing robes, and was later named as
Zhongshan suit.
During the Peoples
Republic of China period of 1950-1980, there appeared an extension
to the existing Zhongshan suit by Mao Zedong, named as Mao suit. For
females, Madame Sun introduced the Qipao as their standard dress.
Practices like footbinding were banned during that period.
Attractive wealthy- and bourgeois-considered items such as jeans,
high heels, westernised coats, ties, jewellery and long hair were
avoided and severely punished if worn.
In the era of
Peoples Republic of China between 1990 till the present day, you
may find tremendous development in Chinese fashion with contemporary
urban clothing of different popular brands. Cities like Shanghai
have extensive westernised look with more of formal wear over casual
wear for people on the streets. Teenagers are too found to be
obsessed with brand clothing, while small children enjoy wearing
clothes with cartoon characters imprinted on them.
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