Chinese Style Clothing for Women

If you are considering buying clothes from China, particularly Chinese traditional clothing then this article is for you. It is alway difficult finding a trustworthy supplier and one that consistently provides a quality product. There are many horror stories and unless you have confidence in your supplier it may all be too overwhelming. Fortunately, I can help you and point you in the right direction.

Chinese Traditional Clothing

Ming Chongzhen

China’s traditional clothing was characterized, as magnificent.

A Characteristic of traditional Chinese clothing was that not only was the clothing an external expression of elegance, but each and every piece communicated a sense of external form and contained an internal symbolism of meaning. Certain colours and images carried specific meaning and status.

Today’s clothing 

Chinese people like the color red. The red color, indicates happiness, success and unity. Today’s China’s fashion designers use a mixture of traditional and modern ideas to create new fashions.

These new fashions also incorporate, age-old motifs such as guardian deities, lions, and masks of Chinese opera characters. Another source of printed, woven and embroidered design for clothes. Some of the distinctive designs include dragons, phoenixes, clouds, flowers and lighting. These often dominate Chinese clothing style for women.

Men’s Clothing

In modern day society, Chinese men can be seen at social occasions wearing ceremonial clothes in two varieties on formal occasions, The dignified and refined traditional Chinese long gown and the SunYat-sen’s uniform, which is a blending of fashion elements from the East and West and was once hailed as the “State Suit”.

Sun Yat-sen introduced the style shortly after the founding of the Republic of China as a form of national dress although with a distinctly political and later governmental implication. 

After the end of the Chinese Civil War and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, such suits came to be worn widely by males and government leaders as a symbol of proletarian unity and an Eastern counterpart to the Western business suit.

This “State Suit” or Chinese tunic is a style of male attire traditionally known as the Zhongshan suit and later as the Mao suit (after Mao Zedong).

The name “Mao suit” comes from Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s fondness for wearing them in public, so that the garment became closely associated with him and with Chinese communism in general in the Western imagination.

In the 1960s and 1970’s, the Mao suit became fashionable among Western European socialists and intellectuals. It was sometimes worn over a turtleneck. 

Although they fell into disuse among the general public in the 1990s due to increasing Western influences, they are still commonly worn by Chinese leaders during important state ceremonies and functions.

Changes in Clothing Fashion

After the 1911 Revolution, the government specified the system of formal dress of both men and women in the first year of the Republic of China. Men wore western-style clothes and Chinese tunic suits. These two style of clothes were foreign styles, and most officials and intellectuals more usually wore them. White garments were worn in summer, but black or dark ones in other seasons.

Men had dress suits and routine suits, which were all made of black cloth, trousers, and cravats.These included Western-style and Chinese style (e.g. long gown and mandarin jacket).

The common dressing style was a mandarin jacket over a long gown. Erect collars, three pockets, and seven buttons were mainly the uniform of students of universities and colleges. The typical clothes of rural men and women included a jacket and trousers or covered with a ramie skirt.

Women

The formal dress of women had collars and was long to the knees with buttons down the front. Skirts were decorated with cartouches in the front and back, both sides were sewn with pleats, and both ends had patterns of knots.

The main changes of garments in that time were the modifications of the collar, sleeve, and length, etc. The garments with high collar were popular first, and the higher the collar, the more popular. Gradually, garments with low collars began to be popular, and the lower the collar, the more modern the style. 

One of the main types of traditional Chinese clothing was the Ch’ang-p’ao (cheongsam) which is a one–piece garment extending from the shoulders all the way to the heels. While women often wear these the variations of height, length, width and ornamentation of the collar, sleeves, skirt, and basic cut of this Oriental fashion are limitless. 

But Then…

By the 1940s, cheongsam came in a wide variety of fabrics with an equal variety of accessories. However, the 1949 Communist Revolution curtailed the popularity of the cheongsam and other fashions in Shanghai. But the Shanghainese emigrants and refugees brought the fashion to Hong Kong where it has remained popular and has made a comeback in mainland China in recent times.

Traditionally, a Cheongsam was made of silk and embroidered with pearls and other decorations. 

The modernized version is noted for accentuating the figures of women, and as such was popular as a dress for high society.

As Western fashions changed, the basic cheongsam design changed too, introducing high-necked sleeveless dresses, bell-like sleeves, and the black lace frothing at the hem of a ball gown.

Along with the emergence of cinema, film stars became eminent figures and gradually, Shanghai City fashions became the base camp of women’s wear in China as well as the garments of Guangdong Province and Hong Kong. 

Revival

The revival of the Shanghainese cheongsam in Shanghai and elsewhere in China has made this mostly now a stylish party dress. 

Darker colors were favored over lighter ones in traditional Chinese clothing, so the main color of ceremonial clothing tended to be dark while bright, elaborate tapestry designs was worn more frequently by the common people for everyday life and around the house use.

The Chinese associate certain colors with specific seasons: green represents spring, red symbolizes summer, white represents autumn, and black symbolizes winter.

Chinese Fashion Today

So, today we still see elements of traditional Chinese culture in the dress and fashion wear as a typical example these types of fashion clothing have wide and voluminous sleeves and a very loose fit.

Because of their relatively plain design and structure, they have embroidered edgings, decorated bands, or patterns on the shoulder, and sashes are often added as ornaments.

So the variety in design is now one of the unique features of traditional Chinese dress. The Chinese are said to have a fully developed system of matching, coordinating, and contrasting colors in apparel.

Buying Clothes From China

To explore buying clothes from China further, the website below The New Silk Road is a Chinese clothing online store and contains Chinese fashion clothing at wholesale prices, at actual Chinese prices. Not priced for foreigners to buy chinese clothing. 

To access The New Silk Road use this image below

Finally

“I am currently living in China, teaching English and Business to Chinese students, at a University in Shanghai and I know the owner of this Chinese Website and can help out if you have any questions such as bulk orders or shipping or any issues”

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