How Chinese Style Affects the History of Western Clothing Development

From the silk costumes worn by the priestess of Bacchus in the Naples Museum in ancient Rome, to the modern costumes in the international fashion trend of the 21st century, the “Chinese style” can be seen. Today, after years of development in China’s fashion industry, the Chinese style formed by Hanfu, national fashion and national fashion has broken the fashion barriers in the Western context, and gradually built the subject content and local content of Chinese local style. fashion ecosystem.

Silk has won permanent world reputation for Chinese civilization
Speaking of “Chinese style”, it must be inseparable from the western transmission of Chinese silk civilization. Planting mulberry, raising silkworms, spinning and weaving silk are great inventions of the Chinese nation. As a unique fabric in China, silk enjoys a high reputation in the world. The export and dissemination of silk has won a permanent world reputation for Chinese civilization. As early as the Western Han Dynasty, Chinese silk spread to the Roman Empire along the Silk Road. Since then, the gorgeous silk produced in China has been continuously transported to the West through the “Silk Road”, which has greatly enriched the Western clothing culture.

The 18th century European aristocracy so admired the imagined “Chinese style”
In the 18th century, continental Europe set off a Chinese craze, and with it, the Rococo style (French Rococo transliteration, an Art Deco style) was born. Westerners combined Chinese style with local Rococo style, forming a “Chinese style” that reflects Europeans’ understanding of Chinese art and their imagination of Chinese customs.

The fashion prelude opens again for “Orientalism”
How does “Chinese style” affect the historical development process of modern western clothing and contemporary western high fashion? This is from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At that time, European and American tourists and businessmen traveled in China, traded and looted by the Eight-Power Allied Forces, which made Chinese art and clothing flow into the West in large quantities. In 1935, the first international exhibition of Chinese art was held in London, marking a new stage in European understanding and research on Chinese art. This allows European designers to have a direct dialogue with Chinese art.

Coupled with the powerful and special aesthetic paradigm, aesthetic system and thinking of objects contained in traditional Chinese culture, as well as the unique cognition of all things in nature, its own expression and concept of creation, “Chinese style” has become an absolute main character in the field of international fashion today. 


Post time: 05-19-2022