Styling Shanghai

by Christopher Breward (Editor), Juliette MacDonald (Editor)

Overview

Styling Shanghai is the first book dedicated to exploring the city's fashion cultures, examining its growing status as one of the world's foremost fashion cities. From its origins as an international treaty port in the 19th century, Shanghai has emerged as a global leader in the production, mediation and consumption of fashion. This book reveals how the material and imaginative context of this thriving urban centre has produced vivid interpretations of fashion as object, image and idea.

Bringing together contributions by a range of leading international fashion historians and theorists, and drawing on extensive original research, Styling Shanghai offers an interdisciplinary analysis of the mega-city's shifting position as a fashion capital. Rooted in collaboration between leading UK, Australian and Shanghai-based institutions, it considers the impact of local and global textile manufacturing, the representation and marketing of 'Shanghai Style', bodies and gender in the 'Paris of the East', and the challenges of globalization, commercialization and digital communication in contemporary Shanghai.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350051133
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/23/2020
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.16(w) x 9.32(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Chris Breward is the Director of National Museums Scotland. He was trained at the Courtauld Institute and the Royal College of Art, London and has previously worked as Director of Collection and Research at the National Galleries of Scotland, Head of Research at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and as Principal of Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. His published interests include the relationship between art and fashion, visual and cultural histories of masculinity, and histories of city life. He is the author of Fashioning London (Bloomsbury, 2004) and co-editor of Material Memories (Bloomsbury, 1999), The Englishness of English Dress (Bloomsbury, 2002), Fashion and Modernity (Bloomsbury, 2005), Fashion's World Cities (Bloomsbury, 2006), and Styling Shanghai (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Juliette MacDonald is Professor of Craft History and Theory at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, UK and International Dean at Shanghai International College of Fashion and Innovation, Donghua University, China.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vi

Notes on Contributors x

Acknowledgements xii

1 Introduction Christopher Breward 1

2 A Century of Chinese Printed Textiles in Shanghai Zhong Hong 21

3 Wenming Xinzhuang (Civilized Costume) Liu Yu 45

4 Shanghai Qipao, 1925-49 Bian Xiangyang Yan Lanlan 67

5 'Through the Maloo to the City': Fashion, Decadence and Dance Culture in Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century Juliette MacDonald 87

6 Soong Ching-ling, Soong May-ling: Negotiating Dresses and Politics in Modern Shanghai, 1913-49 Djurdja Bartlett 109

7 Image Makers of Fashionable Shanghai, 1910-30 Chia-Ling Yang 147

8 Lost in Socialist Transformation? Shanghai Style under Mao Antonia Finnane 181

9 '$$$ ': 'New for three years, old for three years, fix for another three years' Anthony Bednall 211

10 The Shanghai Dandy: Men in the City Christopher Breward 243

11 The Luxury Mailing of Shanghai: Successes and Dissonances in the Chinese City Agnès Rocamora 259

12 'There will never be a Chinese fashion': Staking a Claim for Shanghai as a Fashion City Anja Aronowsky Cronberg 287

Glossary 309

Index 319

Editorial Reviews

A much needed and valuable contribution to a deeper understanding of Chinese fashion in the global arena.” —Simona Segre Reinach, University of Bologna, Italy

“An absolutely vital look at the past, present and future of Shanghai as a style city. Essential reading for anyone interested in the culture and history of Chinese dress.” —Amber Butchart, fashion historian, author and broadcaster

“Styling Shanghai is one of the best books I've read on fashion in China.” —Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator at the Museum at FIT, New York, USA

“Erudite and accessible, this is the first detailed account of China's foremost fashion city. Shanghai's distinct and hybrid fashion is explored here in new and exciting ways.” —Peter McNeil (FAHA), University of Technology Sydney, Australia

From the Publisher