Antonia Finnane has written a textured, colorful account of the transformation of Chinese dress from the Ming period through the present that fills what had been a conspicuous lacuna in the Western-language scholarship on the cultural history of China. Finnane recounts the history of fashion and sartorial practice since the Ming (1368–1644), demonstrating how commercialization, industrialization, and political transitions have all shaped the clothes worn by Chinese men and women. At the same time, the book contributes substantively to historical debates regarding advertising and consumerism, material production, and the social body in modern China.
The book begins, appropriately, by sketching the fluid indigenous fashion culture generated by late imperial consumerism and Manchu rule. Finnane argues convincingly that late imperial China had fashion, if not a fashion industry (chapter 3). By focusing on European views of Chinese fashion in chapter 2, Finnane also places indigenous Chinese fashion culture in global perspective,...