Western designers have always created collections inspired by China. Juanjuan Wu explains that until recently, however, it has been a question of fascination and reciprocal exoticism. Chinese fashion—fashion that has been truly designed, produced, and worn in China since Deng Xiaoping's open-door policy made it possible—has, in fact, received very little attention from Western fashion theorists. This is the first book to deal with Chinese fashion, written from a Chinese perspective and in English. The conceptual and historical slant that marks it achieves the twofold purpose of acquainting the Western reading public with the evolution of Chinese fashion from 1978 to today and offering the Chinese reader an interpretation of fashion as a cultural product and not merely a material object, as it is usually treated in Chinese academic studies.
The first chapter deals with perhaps the most complex subject, on which what follows all depends: the influence of the...
