Fashion, History and Culture in Eileen Chang’s “A Chronicle of Changing Clothes”

Introduction

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Lou Taylor’s work demonstrates that literary sources can be used as an analytical tool and an approach to the history of fashion and dress. She states that dress historians often draw inspiration from literary sources, including novels, poetry, plays, newspapers, journals, autobiographies and diaries, to “lend accuracy and historical ‘feel’ to their work” (Taylor 2002, 90). Taylor (2002) suggests that complex “unspoken assumptions” about class, ethnicity, and gender are embedded in the way people wear their clothes on their bodies. Citing Anna Buck’s research on the use of clothing by novelist, Taylor claims that literary sources can be used as a tool to understand period socio-cultural issues rather than just as aids to description, and that through its coded signaling of gender, culture, politics, and social stratum, an analysis of the using of clothing in literature can expand our cultural understanding of the past (Taylor 2002, 91). 

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To explore the potential of literature as sources in the study of fashion and dress history, this paper will conduct a textual analysis on Eileen Chang’s “A Chronicle of Changing Clothes”. Eileen Chang, also known as Zhang Ailing, was a Chinese-born American essayist and novelist who gained literary prominence in Japanese-occupied Shanghai between 1943 and 1945. As a fashion-conscious person who took pride in wearing the latest fashion and design clothes herself, Eileen Chang’s novels feature a large amount of fashion and apparel, which plays a significant part in portraying the characters and directing the plot. “A Chronicle of Changing Clothes” was originally published in January 1943 in English under the title “Chinese Life and Fashions” in an English magazine titled The XXth Century, supported by the German Foreign Office. Later in December 1943, Chang translated and revised it, and published the article under the title “Geng Yi Ji” in Chinese on the Gu Jin magazine (Yan and Bian, 29-30). “Geng Yi Ji” is in the form of modern essays, also known as informal essays. According to Esther M. K. Cheung (2012), writers use the informal essay as a tool of self-representation. Andrew F. Jones translated the revised version, “Geng Yi Ji”, into English, and named it “A Chronicle of Changing Clothes”. Based on the translated version by Andrew F. Jones, this paper asks how “A Chronicle of Changing Clothes” reflects China’s fashion history and fashion’s cultural connotations in terms of social transition, gender identity and cultural exchanges during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) and Republican China (1912-1949)? And how do the writer’s personal life experiences influence how fashion is presented?

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“A Chronicle of Changing Clothes” is a concentrated representation of Eileen Chang’s research on fashion and dress; and, as the translator Jones (2003, 427) puts it, is “an inevitable touchstone for scholars of modern Chinese fashion and a key text in modern Chinese cultural studies by one of the most celebrated of all modern Chinese writers”. As a creative writer, Chang draws inspiration from Shanghai’s immediate historical context and everyday experiences, and her work provides information on details such as the silhouette, color, cut and fabrics of dresses and how people were wearing them. As a result, the historical value of her words should not be overlooked (Cheung 2012, 78). Moreover, the West has long dominated the fashion and film industry, claiming control over the representation of the Other and viewing China with a Western gaze. It is important to see and perceive from a Chinese writer’s perspective. Also, the depiction of fashion in Chinese writers’ work can assist in countering the Eurocentric idea that fashion is exclusive to the West.

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Eileen Chang and Fashion

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Eileen Chang has always shown a passion for fashion and dress, as evidenced in her works and throughout her whole life. Chang was born in Shanghai, China, in 1920. Growing up in a cosmopolitan metropolis, Chang was exposed to a wide range of latest topics, from intellectual debates to fashion trends. Raised by a drug-induced father and uncaring stepmother, Chang could only wear hand-me-down clothes during Childhood, which motivated her to become “clothes-crazy” and self-fashionable (Ng 2018, 364). When she was studying in Hong Kong, she finally came into her own and took great delight in sporting the city’s latest fashions. Her ambition to stand out was evident in her wardrobe choices (Ng 2018, 364). Even after Chang emigrated to the U.S. in the 1950s, the author still frequently wrote to her friends Mae Fong Soong for the newest fashion information and clothing material as well as Hong Kong-made cheongsams. 

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Taylor (2002) argues that period witness is valuable precisely because it reflects individual flaws, vanity, and anxieties. Fulong Chen (2018) claims that dress in Eileen Chang’s writing is not only a beautiful prop to accentuate the silhouette of the human body, but also a symbol of the state of life and the pursuit of freedom. In real life, Chang often designed her own clothes, with special styles, and boldly wore special clothes to socialize and to satisfy herself; in her literary works, she wrote about her characters’ costumes with great care, paying attention to the cultural meanings accumulated in the costumes, and revealing the characters’ feelings by depicting the changes in their costumes, and in this way, her inner emotions could be cathartically released (Chen 2018, 46).

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Finding that Chang derives inspiration from “the immanent realm of possible experience and secular knowledge”, Cheung (2012) claims that Chang has a fascination for non-monumental things and events. Her passion for fashion and clothes is a metaphor for her general penchant for secular, earthbound, ordinary objects and activities (Cheung 2012, 74). With a focus on the colors, patterns, and textures of clothing as well as the cultural implications they reflect, Chang’s work, and “A Chronicle of Changing Clothes” in particular, suggests the shift from tradition to modernity, the gender divide in the Chinese context, and the intertwined cultures of China and the West, and how these factors influenced fashion at that time. 

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Time and Space: A Society in Transition

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Arguing that the study of fashion is “a both/and, rather than either/or, activity”, Susan B. Kaiser (2012) uses the metaphor of Möbius strip to remind us that fashion is about the convergence of time and space. As clothing and how people wear them convey information about society, ethnicity, gender, class, etc., it is worth noticing that these garments are rooted in certain times and spaces. In the case of “A Chronicle of Changing Clothes” by Eileen Chang, fashion and clothing were rooted in China during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) and the Republican era (1912-1949). Chang understands that fashion has been closely tied with time, space, and context.

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During the Qing dynasty, the country had been ruled by Manchus for more than two and a half centuries. Chang (2003, 429) refers to this period as “so dilatory, so quiet, and so orderly”, where women lacked anything that could be called fashion, which reflected in “generation after generation of women wore the same sorts of clothes without feeling in the least perturbed”. Her work reveals that people’s dress in the Manchu period was characterized by “an air of statuesque repose”, regularity and hierarchy (Chang 2003, 429-431). The color of women’s dresses was closely linked to the occasion and their status: black was worn during normal times, but on festive occasions, red could be worn by wives while concubines could only wear peach pink, and widows could only wear lake blue or lilac in addition to black when their in-laws were present. Clothing also reflected people’s class, and only those who had official titles could wear purple sable. Thorstein Veblen (2004) deploys the term “conspicuous waste” to describe the dress and consumption of leisure class in the West. Chang resonates with Veblen’s notion. Noting the excessive attention to detail in the clothing of the period, with the soles of the shoes inscribed with patterns and the elaborate decorations of the quilted coats, Chang (2003,432) argues that this comes from the leisure class in China and “only the most leisured people in the most leisurely country in the world could appreciate the wonder of these details”. 

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The Republic of China formed as a constitutional republic in 2012, ending 2,000 years of imperial rule. The changes in fashion and dress indicate the transition of society. Chang (2003, 432) states that Chinese fashion history is about the steady elimination of details. Using the example of the Renaissance of Europe, Chang (433) claims that “in times of political turmoil and social unrest… there will always be a preference for tight-fitting clothes, light and supple, allowing for quickness of movement”. She writes that during the years of commotion and changes of political power, Chinese dress became more tight-fitting, and there came the emergence of the Sycee collar, “a tall, stiff affair that reached nearly as far as the nose” (433-434). Chang is very insightful in pointing out the role fashion played in society as well as in the construction of individuals:

Quick alterations in style do not necessarily indicate mental fluidity or a readiness to adopt new ideas. On the contrary. They may reveal instead a generalized apathy, for frustration in other fields may lead to the forced flow of intellectual and artistic energy into the domain of fashion. In a time of political chaos, people were powerless to improve the external conditions governing their lives. But they could create the environment immediately surrounding them, that is, their clothes. Each of us lives inside our own clothes.

(Chang 2003, 435)

In the twenties, women wore long gowns in response to equal rights for men and women. Politically unfortunate events led to a tightening of clothing and a return to higher collars in the thirties. The sleeves, which took twenty years to be completely abolished, returned with a revival of formalism.

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Gender Identity, Femininity and Modernity

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Eileen Chang’s works contain a strong sense of female subjectivity, and “A Chronicle of Changing Clothes” demonstrates a critical feminist stance (Jiang 2017). “A Chronicle of Changing Clothes” shows the gender division in China and the early feminism in the Republican era. Women had a poor standing in ancient China and were viewed as subservient to men. Women are objectified under the male gaze, as reflected in Chang’s (2003, 429) words, that “she herself would cease to exist, save as a frame upon which clothing could be hung”. Women’s desire to gain distinction by wearing clothes that deviated from sartorial norms was considered as violence of modes and costumes (Chang 2003, 429). During the Qing Dynasty, women’s clothing became a reflection of their grace and comportment: the pleated skirt could only have a slight quaver when walking, and the bells on the bride's red dress could only have a faint sound when in action. As Taylor (2002, 107) puts it, “‘clothes in action’ through period text can usually identify unspoken yet absolutely indicative social rifts and stresses” These requirements for women’s clothing and movement reflect the oppression of women in ancient times.

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As women joined the ranks of wage earners and Western thoughts, modern Chinese women wanted to catch up with the gender equality of a Western social model (Ng 2018, 362). Since the Manchu dynasty, men’s clothes had been one piece while women’s clothes had been two pieces. In the twenties, women began to wear long robes, or qipao, because they wanted to look like men, and, they sought to discard “everything that smacked of femininity”, for there was a huge gap between the ideal and the reality (Chang 2003, 435). Chang explains that it was why the early qipao was “angular and puritanical”. According to Chang, clothes before the revolution emphasized the clothes themselves, and people were of secondary concern, and women would disappear under the weight of layers of clothes, which was a conventionalization of the female form; while the post-revolutionary clothes focused on the curvilinear contours of the body and the individual became important. In this context, the change in clothing signaled the modernization of China and became a form of emancipation for women. However, Sandy Ng (2018) argues that female identity was reframed in terms of a masculine understanding of modernity, imposing a new set of social standards on women in this era.

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Eileen Chang also devotes three paragraphs to describing the modern history of Chinese men's clothing. During the period from 1915 to 1919 or 1920, men’s clothing was also about fancy, but at that time, it became one of the strange status quo of the period (Chang 2003, 440). As women adopted the qipao, men turned to the Western suit to signify modernity. In the 1940s, when the article was first published, men’s clothing adhered to Western forms, limited to mainly gray, coffee brown and dark blue. Eileen Chang points out that the restriction of men’s clothing colors is a signal feature of modern civilization and one of the necessary privations in a modern civilized society.

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Cultural Interactions

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Written during a period of cultural collision between Chinese and Western cultures, “A Chronicle of Changing Clothes” demonstrates the cultural interactions and exchanges between China and the West. The impact of Western thoughts not only reflected in women’s pursuit for equal status as men but also in the overall social thinking and fashion style of the period. As the shortcomings of the political and family system were exposed, the young intellectuals tended to extremes, condemning tradition and even everything about China (Chang 2003, 433). Chang (434) claims that the introduction of Rousseau’s idealistic notions about human rights led to the rally for universal suffrage, opposing filial piety, and advocating free love among students, which had an impact on the innocence, lightness, and delight of fashion. She (434) states that “much of the inspiration for fashions in the early years of the Republic derived from the West”, including the various forms of collars and necklines as well as spectacles that were viewed as a sign for modernity. The double-breasted and belted military-style greatcoat popular in the West was also welcomed by the Chinese, as it was well suited to China’s sorrowful, strident attitude (438). China’s traditional garments also had an impact on Western fashion trends. Chang mentions that the hood Zhaojun in historical illustrations was popular among the Hollywood starlets.

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During a period when Chinese and foreign cultures and dresses were influencing each other, Chang also noticed the difference between the Chinese and Western fashion industries. She claims that Western fashion was a planned and organized industry that monopolized the market and influenced the whole world of white people. Chinese tailors, however, “took no initiative and can only follow the vast, unaccountable waves of communal fancy that become apparent from time to time”, and, therefore, the fashion in China could serve as a representative of the will of the people.

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Conclusion

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Citing Nicole Huang’s words that Chang’s “conceptualization of fashion as an everyday invention is another illustration of the distinctly material quality of her aesthetics”, Cheung (2012, 73) argues that literary writing can be regarded as the beginning of “a cultural history of things”. By examining a changing society by demonstrating “the persistence of the past in the present” (Cheung 2012, 76), Chang’s works can assist in the understanding of history, culture and fashion of China in the Qing dynasty and Republican era. Illustrating clothing and fashion, “A Chronicle of Changing Clothes” reveals the gender, culture, class, social transition and modernization reflected in the fashion changes of the period. Moreover, Chang’s writing strategy of a “politics of details” (Cheung 2012, 73), depicting colors, patterns, and textures of clothing from everyday experiences, proves the potential of her works to become an analytical tool in the study of dress.  

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As a creative writer, Chang draws on her personal experiences and immerses herself in everyday life of the empirical space (Cheung 2012). Her personal upbringing, life experiences and preference for clothing played a role in her writing and influenced her interpretation of fashion and dress. This corroborates Taylor’s claim that literature reflects the author’s flaws, vanities, and anxieties. An analysis of fashion and attire in Eileen Chang’s works also aids in our understanding of Chinese history, culture, and fashion from a Chinese perspective and contributes to the rebuttal of Eurocentrism and stereotyped perceptions of China. Although the interpretation of Chinese fashion history from a writer’s rather than a scholar’s perspective may contain subjective concerns, Eileen Chang’s work also fills a major gap in the history of dress, namely the absence of research on emotional responses to clothing and appearance (Taylor 2002, 99). ▪︎

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References