THE EVERGREEN CLASSIC
Transformation of the Qipao
Unearthed during a recent family gathering is a wonderful black and white photograph of my mother wearing a knee-length qipao, carefully tailored in silk with a high collar, short sleeves and form-fitted waist. She is perfectly poised. It’s an ideal image of what you would expect to see of a young Hong Kong woman in 1967.
It's not the expression on her face that intrigues me, but the dress. The enigmatic qipao is the center of attentionat the Hong Kong Museum of History’s new exhibition called The Evergreen Classic — Transformation of the Qipao. I visited the museum recently for the first time on a weekday, and paid a paltry sum of HK$10 to see over 500 qipaos spanning ten decades on display. Alongside a group of mostly students from the nearby Polytechnic University, and parents with young children, I walked through the exhibition in an hour and came away thinking differently about the qipao, which I had always associated with the odd Stanley market gift and restaurant hostesses.
The exhibit begins with the Qing dynasty. The long sweeping gowns worn by women of the Eight Banners of the Manchu women provided the origin of the term qipao. Meticulous about their appearance, Manchurian women protected their gowns from wear and tear with elaborate, colorful embroidered trimmings,which then became its own veritable art form. During the Qing dynasty, the loose-fitting qipaos completely hid women’s figures, but under those layers they remained “pleasantly unobtrusive, one of the most desirable qualities in a woman”. The preferred floor-length slender cut of the 1900’sslowly gave way tonarrower sleeves and shorter robes that revealed shoes.
As China underwent changes in its regime, people enjoyed more freedom in fashion and the emergence of a “new civilized outfit” became de riguer.Educated women chose blouses and skirts, a two-piece garment worn by the Han people, and curves were no longer suppressed beneath heavy layers. Acceptance and open-mindedness signaled a new femininity, and high collars (yuan bao) and bell sleeves materialised with the trend of using lighter fabrics and softer textiles.
Just a decade later, the 1930’s heralded a new era in fashion through China, with Shanghai leading the charge, famously fusing Western influences with Eastern sensibilities in music, style and art. Qipaos became longer and tight-fitted, and higher slits appeared for ease of movement and worn together with Western-style coats, furs, stockings and high heels. Showing her love for fashion, my grandmother Cheng Wan Jong, pictured below with her friends, wore her qipao with an embroidered vest and box-shaped purse. In the exhibition, which now opens into a larger room, a wall of archetypal calendar-girl posters displays the variety and popularity of this dress during this period. Further along, dozens of beautiful handmade qipaos in a vibrant array of silk and transparent rayon, with small flower buttons and delicate piping are displayed. Women in this era were expressing themselves with new fabrics and patterns, but with the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the qipao was regarded as a “bourgeois sentiment” and nearly vanished from Mainland women’s wardrobes.
Meanwhile in Hong Kong, women embraced the qipao as daily attire, and the next two decades saw this fashion flourish. Short skirts, narrow hems with darts at the bust gave women a much more slender, daring silhouette. The cheong-sam as we know it today came from this era, favoured by middle and upper class women and made fashionable by its appearance in Shaw Brothers motion picture classics and other commercial products. The centerpiece of the exhibit is a circular rainbow of qipaos, arranged by hues and patterns, showing how versatile and accessible this style of dress became. By the 1960’s, the popularity of mini-skirts and preference for Western tastes saw the eventual decline of the qipao as daily dress by 1970’s.
The qipao only appears on occasion nowadays, relegated to the status of cultural symbol or traditional dress. It’s existence now merely clings onto weddings and celebrations, political events, school uniforms and beauty pageants. Footage of Maggie Cheung in Miss Hong Kong 1983 is on view next to Michelle Yeoh’s 2002 Blanc de Chine qipao she wore to the 55th Cannes International Film Festival. The transformation and continuity of this distinct style of dress has withstood over a century, but will need a new generation of designers and individuals to keep it from fading into history. Companies like Blanc de Chine from Hong Kong and Shiatzy Chen from Taiwan have built their brand ethos around a new China style— reworking and reinterpreting the sensuality and meaning of the qipao through imaginative use of fabrics and forms.
When I look now at these images of my mother and grandmother, I notice the details and understand the significance — they were not just Chinese women of a certain time and place, keeping up with the times of a rapidly shifting fashion landscape. Their qipao is more than a dress. It is a vivid history of women in China — an expression of their acceptance, liberation and sensuality told through hemlines, trimmings and textures; fashion at its most momentous and moving.
The Evergreen Classic, Transformation of the Qipao
on view at The Hong Kong Museum of History,
100 Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong
From June 23rd to September 13th, 2010
http://hk.history.museum/en/aboutus.php
By Danielle Huthart
