Between the 1920s and the ‘30s, Shanghai was one of the most prosperous and cosmopolitan cities of East Asia, a centre of business and pleasure offering a vibrant lifestyle thanks to its restaurants, cafes, cinemas, cabarets and dance halls.
The Nanjing Road became a mecca for the fashionable people of Shanghai. The busiest part of China's most cosmopolitan city, the road soon turned into the home of a new commercial culture with major department stores offering high standards of quality and merchandise and an innovative shopping experience that allowed people to buy all valuable brands imported from Western Europe, North America and Japan.
Tradition and modernity, two contrasting yet vital forces, gave life to a renovated society and soon Shanghai - the "Paris of the East" - boasted some of the most fashionable women, among them actresses, divas and wives of ministers. Women living in Shanghai in the early decades of the 1900s are the protagonists of a recently opened exhibition at the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) in New York.
Organised by MOCA and by the China National Silk Museum in Hangzhou and guest-curated by scholar Mei Mei Rado, "Shanghai Glamour: New Women 1910s-40s" explores the allure of 20th century Shanghai through beautiful outfits that perfectly represent the cosmopolitan lifestyle of the city in those decades.
Among the highlights of the event there are twelve outfits from 1910s to 1940s on loan from the China National Silk Museum and on view for the first time in the United States, and three dresses from prominent New York private collections.
In the context of the exhibition, each of these designs symbolises a transition, a stage in the process of change that the city, society and women in particular were going through in those decades.
The most interesting point highlighted in "Shanghai Glamour" remains the strong link between fashion, women and the city's vibrant cultural hybridity.
The daring transformation in style from looser to more fitted garments that revealed a woman's figure becomes therefore extremely important, since it also helps shaping new feminine archetypes.
The exhibition explores indeed three different types of women: the Femme Fatale, that is a seductress, from courtesans to dancing hostesses and movie stars, all clad in glamorous dresses; the Femme Savante, embodied by writers, artists and students whose new role was hinted at in the sartorial inventiveness of their clothes, and the Femme du Monde, donning sophisticated garments and representing the city's cosmopolitanism.
Yet this is just one side of the exhibition: while Art Deco travelled from Europe to Shanghai via students, tourists, designers and patrons, becoming the style of choice of many buildings including dance halls, theatres and hotels, the ever changing cityscape was also transformed by posters, billboards, advertisements in newspapers and magazines, promoting goods that enabled the consumption of glamour and modernity.
"Shanghai Glamour" tackles this aspect via a series of rare and beautiful accessories, posters, lifestyle magazines, and period images.
Is this the first time that this theme is tackled through a dedicated exhibition at the MOCA?
Mei Mei Rado: Yes, it is. The museum approached me last June to be the guest curator of an exhibition of qipaos. They expressed the idea that they wanted to borrow some dresses from the China National Silk Museum but weren't sure about which ones. So I went to visit the National Silk Museum and looked at their collection, picking in the end the 12 designs we are exhibiting in New York. We initially wanted to show the style revolution, but then, as the research progressed, I thought that most dresses come from Shanghai and they were connected to new women, so I decided to move onto modern women's identity and new fashion styles.
What criteria did you follow to select the 12 outfits?
Mei Mei Rado: I wanted to choose different styles and that became my main criteria. You see, certain styles like the cropped pants and jacket are very rare since not so many of them have survived. They had two at the National Silk Museum and they loaned us one ensemble that is in a good condition. Yet I didn't want to focus just on the characteristic style known as qipao since Western fashion or "hybrid styles" were widely worn in Shanghai in those times. This is why I picked one dancing dress as well - the green one with sequins - one hybrid style that combined a Chinese top and a Western evening skirt.
The styles exhibited are all unique and pretty, but what fascinated you the most about them, their construction, the materials they were employed to make them or the embroidered motifs?
Mei Mei Rado: I think I was more fascinated by the actual idea of body that was behind the garments. Before then women used to wear ample dresses in accordance with the standard idea of feminine beauty, and such dresses hid their bodies. But in the late '20s and '30s, shapes changed in favour of body hudding designs. This meant that beautiful feminine curves emerged. I found this aspect very fascinating, especially in the case of dresses characterised by more fluid lines that were mainly popular in the '30s and weren't so much tight fitting.
Were you aware of this body shaping connection when you first started working on this exhibition?
Mei Mei Rado: I started this research on modern Chinese fashion a long time ago when I was doing my Master and at the time this idea already struck me a lot. In this exhibition we decided to look at women's changing roles, but in many ways the focus on body was always there since the role changing idea is very much connected to the idea of body changing, and, as a consequence, to women's liberation or to women becoming more present in the public space. So, in the end, the final story line of the display ended up connecting women, the female body and fashion.
What do the accessories, posters, lifestyle magazines, and period images tell us about those women and their roles in society?
Mei Mei Rado: First they tell us how these dresses were worn and what kind of femininity was associated with such dresses; then they also tell us about women's changing roles and their identity in modern Chinese society. Readers contributed to two of the magazines on display, discussing fashions, but also problems concerning modern life, and from what they wrote, you can clearly understand they had a very active role in society.
You strike perfect correspondences between the shoes on display and some of the images in the various magazines: was it dificult to source out shoes in such good condition?
Mei Mei Rado: The shoes are not borrowed from China, actually there aren't too many that have survived in Chinese collections. They were borrowed from the FIT Museum and the style looks like the one that was popular at the time in Shanghai and that you could spot in magazines from the '30s. The shoes on display are therefore very similar to the ones you would have found in department stores at the time; one pair was actually never worn that's why they are in such good conditions.
Femme Fatale, Femme Savante, Femme du Monde: what kind of woman would you have liked to be if you had lived then?
Mei Mei Rado: I would have liked to be a Femme Savante, but in the show we highlight how the different archetypes weren't defined too rigidly. In fact different types of women were connected, and you could have been at the same time a Femme Savante and a little bit of a Femme Fatale as well!
Does the exhibition also look at Art Deco architecture?
Mei Mei Rado:
We didn't have the space to look also at architecture, but we look a
bit at the interiors that were very much influenced by Art Deco. The posters on display show some
of these new environments associated with modern women.
Will the exhibition go on tour after New York?
Mei mei Rado: It's unlikely it will go anywhere else since it features loaned items, so if we wanted to take it somewhere else we would have to ask the China Silk National Museum and that would be a long process.
Shanghai Glamour: New Women 1910s-40s, Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), New York, until 29th September 2013
Image Captions/Credits
All captions by MOCA
1. Cover of Ling Long magazine, no. 1, 1931.
Photo credit: Courtesy of the C. V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University.
2. 1928 advertisement for Yunshang Fashion Company. The dress displayed on the mannequin in the shop window highly resembles the "Dancing Dress" in silk georgette and sequins on display in the exhibit (image 13 in this post).
3, 4, and 5. Shanghai Glamour Installation. Photo credit: Joerg Lohse.
6. Cover of Liangyou Huabao (The Young Companion), January 1, 1934. Published by Liangyou Publishing Company, Shanghai, 1926-1945.
7. Cover of Liangyou Huabao (The Young Companion). Female stars exemplified the healthy natural woman, demostrating sportswear and posing in swimsuits with legs and arms exposed. Published by Liangyou Publishing Company, Shanghai, 1926-1945.
8. Naimei dress. By late 1920s to mid-1930s experimental Shanghai women wore see-through qipaos made out of diaphanous gaze fabric, including actresses, dance hostesses and socialites alike.
9. A large feather fan was a chic component of a Parisian ensemble during the 1920s and used to communicate subtle interpersonal messages in courtship and also social etiquette.
10. Purses with personal objects inside encapsulated the new notion of privacy that emerged in relation to the division between the public and private sphere in modern society.
11. Grey high-collar jacket, 1910s, China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou
Photo credit: China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou.
12. Blue short jacket, 1920s, with black skirt, 1920s, China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou
Photo credit: China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou.
13. Green qipao with printed fabric, 1930s, China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou
Photo credit: China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou.
14. Half sleeve purple qi-pao with lace trimmings, 1930s, China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou
Photo credit: China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou.
15. Ivory Western-style long dress, 1930s (detail), China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou
Photo credit: China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou.
16. Accessories. Shanghai Glamour Installation. Photo credit: Joerg Lohse.
17. Shoes constituted the most contested site of fashion in Republican China, as they were directly related to the issue of female foot-binding. Western high heels made their debut in the early 1910s and became ominpresent in the 1920s and 1930s.
18. Black qipao with embroidery, 1930s, Private Collection, New York
Photo credit: Museum of Chinese in America.
19. The Paramount in urban Shanghai. Opened in 1933, the building combined the styles of American Art Deco and modern skyscraper. The streamline façade of vertical lines, epitomised the glare, heat, speed and power of urban Shanghai.
20. Blue qipao, 1940s, Private Collection, New York
Photo credit: Museum of Chinese in America.
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