Thin, delicate fabrics and lace or embroidered trims gained in fashionability. The Javanese woman in Figure 6.6 wore a typical kebaya and sarong fashion of the early twentieth century. Three brooches pinned the front of her kebaya closed, as had been typical in the court. The front edge of the sheer jacket and the hem and sleeve cuffs were embellished with embroidered trim to provide a fashion statement. In the twenty-first century, designers of kebaya sarong elaborate on the themes of delicate textiles and needlework as they continue on the long path of kebaya fashions.
This chapter surveyed evidence across nearly three millennia indicating that the fashion impulse is part of human nature. Changing tastes took place in jewelry, cosmetics, and grooming. Innovations occurred in textile production and garment styles. Initially adopted by elites, new fashions diffused throughout the social strata. It was through trade and cross-cultural exchange that new ideas about dress and appearance spread across the Eastern Hemisphere.
7
FASHION SYSTEMS IN EAST, SOUTH, AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
In China with these women, the hair is done once or twice a week. With a view to avoid injuring the elaborate coiffure during sleep, the lady supports the nape of her neck upon a pillar of earthenware or wood, high enough to protect the design from being damaged. In our land this device would imply a sacrifice of comfort, and here and there a case of strangulation would ensue; but no very grave objections could be raised to the novel chignon and its midnight scaffolding, when the interests of fashion are at stake.
JOHN THOMSON
John Thomson (1837–1921), a Scottish photojournalist, wrote these words after observing three middle-class women in Swatow Province, China (John Thomson quoted in Warner 1977: 72). Thomson traveled in China from 1868 to 1872, photographing the sites and the people, the first Westerner to do so. His publication, Illustrations of China and Its People (1873–74), provides an invaluable record of Chinese dress as embodied practice among all classes and across ethnic groups. His commentary shows attention to details of both male and female dress in the late Qing dynasty (1644–1911). He photographed and observed elaborate coiffures of middle-class women, distinctions in dress between the two dominant ethnic groups (Han and Manchu), and the rapid adoption of new materials. The complexity and variety of women’s coiffures interested him greatly, and he noted in the above quote the lengths to which women went to preserve their hairdos for up to a week by sleeping with their necks supported on rigid headrests made from ceramic or other hard materials. Is this not fashion?
Two oft-quoted authors in the field of fashion studies, Fernand Braudel and Gilles Lipovetsky, would say no. Braudel, whose position on fashion as a phenomenon exclusive to the West was discussed earlier, quoted Sir George Staunton to support his claim that Chinese dress reflected a changeless society:
“Dress is seldom altered in China from fancy of fashion,” wrote a traveler in 1793. “Whatever is thought suitable to the condition of the wearer, or to the season of the year continues generally, under similar circumstances, to be the same. Even among the ladies, there is little variety in their dresses, except, perhaps, in the disposition of the flowers or other ornaments of the head.” (Braudel 1981: 312)
For Braudel, fashion was about changing silhouettes and tailoring (e.g., cutting cloth and fitting it to the body). Thus, he viewed Chinese clothes as changeless. He also named Japan, India, Turkey, and Algeria as examples of countries where costume “scarcely changed over the centuries” (Braudel 1981: 312). Braudel’s viewpoint has received critique for being Eurocentric (Finnane 2008: 7–9; Goody 2006: 180–211, 263–66; Lemire 2010: 11).
Lipovetsky (1994) also would say no to Chinese dress involving a fashion system for an additional reason beyond the fact that China is in the East, for he placed the origin of fashion squarely in the West’s Industrial Revolution. He associated fashion with the increased pace of change in dress that occurred due to higher incomes and growth in product options. Asia and the rest of the world did not experience the same consumer-driven changes as the West and thus did not have fashion, according to Lipovetsky.
Jane Schneider described the operation of fashion in courtly societies (in contrast to capitalistic societies) in the Handbook of Material Culture (2006). She stated that “no cloth or clothing tradition was ever static,” despite the propensity of museums and connoisseurs to collect and display exquisite textiles and dress as exemplars of a culture (Schneider 2006: 205). In courtly societies, artisan workshops attached to courts produced cloth from precious raw materials in techniques that required knowledge and skill. Artisans continually adapted to the world around them by incorporating new materials and techniques, as well as competing with other artisans. Thus, they kept up with changing tastes. Clothing constructed from artisan-made fabric was accorded high status and restricted to use by elites, culminating in regulations, which societies in Asia and South America enacted just as those in Europe and colonial America did. Schneider states that “the elitism of courtly societies generated the fundamental elements of fashion,” citing the theories of Veblen, Simmel, and Bourdieu (207). Their theories, as described in chapters 3 and 4, attempt to explain the differentiation and emulation of social class evident in fashion systems. Schneider’s implication is that this emulation of the elite occurs in courtly societies as well as capitalistic societies.
By the time John Thomson photographed China and its people, styles and behaviors that had originated in the courts among the elite, as well as those initiated by entertainers or officials, had trickled down to commoners. For example, the practice of foot binding, introduced by dancers at court during the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), had spread to all Han Chinese women by the nineteenth century (Major 2005: 263).
In this chapter, we seek to illustrate fashion systems at work in various Asian societies. We lay out examples of behavior in dress and adornment that can be considered characteristic of a fashion system in Asian cultures where new styles emanated from rulers’ courts and from outside influences. Examples are drawn from the dress histories of China, Korea, Japan, India, and Indonesia. We especially focus on China, where scholars have begun interpreting that country’s dress history in light of fashion. In all these cultures, change occurred in fabrics, embellishments and trims, accessories, cosmetics, and hairdressing. Additionally, new garment styles first worn at court by royals and by stylish entertainers demonstrated fashion leadership.
Fashion in China’s Tang and Qing dynasties
The Tang, one of the great dynasties in China’s history, produced paintings and poetry that continue to receive acclaim today. Importantly, advances in woodblock printing allowed writing, notably religious texts and poetry, to reach wider audiences than previously had access. During its long stable periods, the empire benefited from the transcontinental commerce along the Silk Road. Some travelers from outside Asia, as noted by Braudel in the quote above, perceived Chinese dress as unchanging and therefore not engaged in a fashion process; however, Christine Tsui (2016) argued to the contrary. In her etymological study of fashion in Chinese culture, Tsui demonstrated that fashion is autochthonous to Chinese culture and that it was present in the first millennium in the Tang.
Tsui explained that the concept of fashion appeared in a work by Tang poet Bai Juyi that included the word “Shishizhuang” (2016: 52). Among other meanings, the character “zhuang” refers to “clothing” and “makeup” (53). Key to the argument is that the meanings of the ancient character “shi” include “fit for the time” (53). Use of the descriptive phrase “fit for the time” in regard to appearance shows cultural awareness in ancient China of fashionability; that is to say, that as time passes a style may move from “fit” to “unfit” for a particular time. Kyo Cho also discussed the poem, translating “Shishi zhuang” as “Contemporary Makeup” (2012: 127). Although written in the ninth century, the poem includes a description of a woman’s eighth-century makeup:
Out from the city it spread in all four directions.
&nb
sp; Contemporary fashion has no sense of far or near:
No rouge on the lips, no powder on the face,
Black oil on the lips so lips resemble dirt,
The two eyebrows slant to make the character for “eight”.
Fair or ugly, black or white, all lose original form,
Once makeup is done, everyone looks as if with sad sobs.
(Juyi in Cho 2012: 127)
Juyi describes the makeup of dark lips and painted eyebrows slanting upward from the outer forehead to the top center, like the Chinese character for eight: 八. He artfully
portrays a makeup style named “weeping makeup” or “tears makeup” (Mei 2004: 37). The poet conveys the diffusion of the fashion from the city outward revealing awareness of fashion adoption moving from urban locales to more rural ones. Juyi’s description of the occurrence of a diffusion process further confirms Tsui’s argument that shishizhuang reveals that the Chinese have long recognized the concept of fashion in their culture.
Chinese makeup fashions are traced using archaeological evidence, surviving art works, prose, poetry, and written records. For information on materials used in makeup, Cho (2012) refers to the first comprehensive text of Chinese medicine, the Compendium of Materia Medica (aka Bencao gangmu) written by Li Shizen in the Ming dynasty. The text reports historical and contemporary practices of the sixteenth century. Despite Juyi’s poem stating “no powder on the face,” the record showed that a smooth white face served as the base of many ancient Chinese makeup styles. To whiten the face, Tang women used powder made of pulverized ceruse, a lead oxide, and the effect was called “lead flower” (Benn 2005: 107). Worth noting is that Europeans also used ceruse in later centuries for whitening cosmetics, and like the Chinese they were unknowing of lead’s deleterious effects.
The practice of beauty held importance for Tang court women. Gods watched over cosmetics fashions. One watched over ointments and hair creams, another eyebrow paints, another facial powders, and one lip glosses (Benn 2005). Round mirrors of highly polished bronze and tools crafted from ivory, jade, or wood allowed perfect application of the various compounds, unguents, and paints. A wooden chest with drawers stored beauty supplies.
Tang women used facial masks to improve the complexion. The important ingredients might be as delightful sounding as peach tree blossoms or as pungent as raw chicken eggs mixed with ale and steeped for twenty-eight days, as one recipe specified. Benn (2005) reported a skin-smoothing salve recipe calling for ale scented with cloves and nutmeg, aged for one to three days and then boiled in a copper pot with sesame oil and lard.
In addition to often requiring a whitened face, a Tang woman’s maquillage included additional enhancements. Lips, eyebrows, cheeks, temples, and foreheads received cosmetic additions or changes depending on the makeup fashion “fit for the time.” Rouge of powdered vermillion, which the provinces of Hunan, Guizhou, and Sichuan provided, was brushed on cheeks adding red to the face. Beauty marks in red, black, or yellow were painted on, or adhered to, the forehead and cheeks. Stylized shapes of the beauty marks reflected nature, inspired by insects, flowers, leaves, and birds. Cho (2012) explained that although Chinese beauty marks originated in the second century, they became fashionable again in the early eighth century in the Tang court.
Natural eyebrows were plucked so that no hairs marred the fashion eyebrow. The fashion brows often were dramatically different from the natural brow in placement and angle, and were painted onto the forehead using a green-blue, indigo, or blue-black tincture. Mei lists eyebrow styles named “drooping pearl” and “dark fog” (2004: 35). A long and slender eyebrow style was described as a willow branch (Cho 2012: 134). Figure 7.1 illustrates an eighth-century lady of the palace wearing makeup with an eyebrow shape reminiscent of a leaf, set at about a forty-five-degree angle from the eyes, and that appears to be approximately one and a half centimeters at the widest point; her cosmetic brows are starkly different from natural brows. On her forehead between her eyebrows she wears a yellow dot beauty mark.
Women’s mouths created for current makeup fashions showed similar dramatic differences from the natural mouth. The white powder base of the makeup worn by the lady of the palace (Figure 7.1) has suppressed the outline of her natural lips, thus allowing a new painted mouth shape to dominate. Brilliant vermillion lip color with animal fat as the base was painted on the lips in designs inspired by flowers; a single petal or an entire flower shape could be represented in the lips’ new design. According to Benn, black lip gloss, noted by Juyi, achieved popularity among high-status women in the early ninth century (2005: 108). Lip fashions illustrated in the graphic in Figure 7.2 include three shapes popular in the Tang, and a range of styles from the third century BCE during the Han (206 BCE–220 CE) to the twentieth century at the end of the Qing (1844–1911 CE). The eighteenth-century Qing dynasty portrait of the First Imperial Concubine (Figure 7.3) shows a partially eclipsed upper lip and a full lower lip as illustrated at the bottom of Figure 7.2. Approximately 200 years later, the lips of the woman feeding silkworms (Figure 7.4) resemble the shape of a cypripedium orchid as illustrated in Figure 7.2 at the top of the three Qing lip designs (Lillethun et al. 2012). The woman was a laborer, not a figure at court, yet she followed fashion.
Figure 7.1 Detail from “Ladies of the Palace.” Color woodcut on silk, ca. 1980. Copy of painting by Zhen Fang (ca. 720–800 CE). bpk, Berlin / Museum fuer Ostasiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Germany. Peter Garbe / Art Resource, NY. This first millennium image of a lady with flowers and jewels in her hair shows a finely composed maquillage including a small lip style emphasizing a four-petal shape in the central lip area and an eyebrow style evocative of insect wings.
Tang court women, who were allotted funds specifically for their cosmetic products, set makeup trends for the larger culture. The dynamic variations in makeup styles clearly attest that fashion has been a long-established component of Chinese culture. Schneider pointed out that cloth and clothing were never static. Extending that statement to incorporate Eicher’s definition of dress, which includes cosmetics, implies that makeup also was never static. Interesting to contemplate is the fact that makeup styles could be changed daily, while clothing styles would not be so fleeting. Thus, cosmetics are an especially ripe vehicle for fashion.
Figure 7.2 Chinese Lip Fashions. Illustration by Fafar Bayat. In China, makeup was used to mask the natural lip and emphasize a variety of fashionable shapes over time.
Figure 7.3 Detail from “Portrait of the First Imperial Concubine,” China, reign of Qianlong (r. 1736–96). Qing dynasty. Gouache, 55.2 x 41.2 cm. Inv. MG26588. Musée des Arts Asiatique-Guimet, Paris, France. Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY. The lip design in this portrait straightened and lowered the top of the upper lip from the natural lip line.
While some aspects of Chinese dress and appearance changed over time, other features remained constant. One characteristic that had been a mainstay in China was the preference for silk. Silk has a long history in China dating back to the third millennium BCE (Major 2005). Sericulture and production of silk fabrics became a major industry supplying not only Chinese emperors and court officials with cloth, but also merchants with a valuable commodity to trade with cultures as far away as the Roman Empire (as discussed in Chapter 6). A second characteristic is an obsession with hair and headgear. Both men and women utilized hairstyles and headcoverings to express conformity (gender, class, ethnicity) and individuality (fashion, creativity). A third enduring feature of Chinese dress is the long-term use of loose robes made up of lengths of woven cloth. The cloth strips were assembled straight from the loom, which produced relatively narrow fabrics. Each robe consisted of two long panels seamed at center back, brought over the shoulders, and left open in the front. Rectangular sleeves were added at the shoulder. Borders placed at the front edges, sleeves and hems offered opportunity for embellishment. Loose robes had been worn by the Chinese since the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). The el
ite donned silk robes while commoners wore shorter robes made of hemp. These robes with their loose sleeves signified sedentary “civilized” peoples who practised agriculture, not the nomadic horse riders of the Eurasian steppes who wore fitted garments evolved from skins that overlapped in the front (Vollmer 1977). China’s sartorial history reveals tensions between the clothing practices of the Han and the nomadic groups that sometimes ruled China.
Figure 7.4 Detail from “Women feeding silkworms on mulberry leaves.” Anonymous. Nineteenth century. Chinese tempura painting on rice paper. Ann Ronan Picture Library London, Great Britain. HIP / Art Resource, NY. The lower lip of this silk laborer is colored red only in the center.
As noted above, the Tang dynasty was highly cultured. The capital city of Xi-an “supported a true fashion system, comparable to that of the modern West” with new modes seen at court and adopted through emulation, such as the so-called fairy dresses which had extended sleeves and wing-like appendages at the shoulders (Major 2005: 262). The Tang were receptive to cross-cultural influences such as the roundel patterns produced by weavers in Graeco-Roman Egypt, Persia and other Western locales, an innovation that reached China via the Silk Road. In the ninth century, advances in silk weaving, patterning, and dyeing as well as fluctuating tastes in width and length of sleeves and skirts inspired rapid changes in women’s wardrobes (Chen 2016).
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