07.01.09

Making a Fashion Statement in China

Posted in Fujian, Pop Culture at 5:38 pm by Benjamin Ross

It’s been several months since I’ve stepped foot in the Middle Kingdom. However, my old cohort Rebecca McQuillen, is still in Fuzhou and recently logged these colorful snapshots (and captions) about fashion in China on her Facebook. I have reproduced them here with her permission.

Real LV which is not seen very often. She went to Hong Kong to buy this beauty.

Retired look; This was at the the torch relay coming to Fuzhou.

Seeing a lot of price tags still hanging off clothing. It used to be the brand on the sleeve of business suits. Price tags are fairly new in the past 2 years.

College girl look

Love the colors and patterns. so cute

She is getting geared up for the 4th of July, I guess. I always wonder where they buy this stuff. Do with have sequenced flag purses at home?

Normal look for weekday afternoon. Gogo dress and high heels riding motor scooter.

Owner of local coffee shop; Her backpack is an over-sized teddy bear. Many adults wear and use things we in the West would consider for children only.

Menswear displayed in a window; This looks like a women’s outfit in the West, but they only sell men’s clothing in this store so was not an issue of only having a male mannequin.

“Less is more in the West. In China, too much is not enough,” quote by Douglas Bonner, and this is another example.

Arm protectors; seeing less and less of these, but many young women who work in offices still wear them at work. Offices get cleaned maybe once a year, so they are quite dirty.

school boys and me

Face masks are now fashion statements.

Dogs dyed all different colors and made to wear doggy clothes is a normal site. Now more and more large dogs are being seen.

Airport porters with Chinglish, note this is in Shenzhen AFTER the Olympics.

Normal walk in high heels…looks like a homecoming queen, which is suitable cause she was at airport picking up a passenger.

Hanging out at nail salon

These hats are a huge hit on Gulangyu Island in Xiamen.

countryside look

Colored hair is everywhere. Yet they dye bottle color, not much mixing or toning down. It is still in experimental stage.

(I know this from first hand experience.)

What I like about Rebecca’s work is that it provides a pretty accurate cross section of a society which is only 30 years into a complete upheaval of common social practices; how individuals clothe themselves being a major component of this. Most of Rebecca’s shots were taken in Fuzhou, where only a generation ago, such photography would have yielded nothing more than monotonous blue and gray suits, straight black hair, and nothing more than a “Quotations of Mao Zedong” book as an accessory. As China continues to change and develop at a rapid pace, so too will the fashion tastes of the populace. Many of the fashions shown here (sans the “countryside look” of course) will probably be by the wayside in just a couple years. It’s already looking vastly different from when I left Fuzhou, and that was only August of 2007.

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