China Books

Fusionable Cheongsam

WESSIELING [Other titles by this author]

Stock ID: 28017

ISBN: 9789627630685

Hong Kong Arts Centre 2007 1st Edition

270 x 210mm. 84pp

So you thought the cheongsam was just a kind of Chinese dress? Think again. It's also a perfect symbol of the changes which, in the last hundred years, China itself has undergone. In Fusionable Cheongsam Wessie Ling explores the fascinating connections between the forces of modernity and tradition that have given birth to the cheongsam as we know it today. The emergence of the cheongsam coincided with the political and social movements of Republican China, as well as with the beginnings of large-scale manufacturing processes in the Chinese clothing industry, and it represents the meeting point of many roads: between traditional Chinese style and Western consumerism, between the old and the new, between women's struggle for emancipation and men's attempts to eroticise them. In this remarkable book, the author examines the paradoxes inherent in women's fashions, whereby a single dress can be seen as variously stylish, exotic, practical or decadent, depending on the social conditions in which the wearer puts it on. Fusionable Cheongsam is a book arising from a series of installations exhibited by Wessie Ling in the Hong Kong Centre in June 2007. This book is released in conjunction with the exhibition and it documents the research and artwork for the project. Through colourful photos and a polemical essay the author testifies to the beautiful and endlessly evolving form of this iconic garment. (For this item please quote stock ID 28017)

Related Subject Areas:

Clothing/Costume