Dress

Blue silk dress from 1912-14 with embroidery in bright colours. The cut of the dress is 'Western' but parts of Chinese clothing were used. The skirt seems to be made from a type called the 'hundred-pleats skirt', fashionable in China from the 1860s. This skirt with its many sewn-down pleats would originally have been worn as part of an ensemble that included a long jacket-type robe.

China declared itself a Republic in 1911and, in the national modernisation programme which ensued, the fashion and dress of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was rapidly replaced by 'modern Chinese dress'. This was usually the long, and often tight-fitting qipao or cheongsam, which was updated through Western tailoring, and the use of details like contemporary dress materials. Therefore stock parts or ready-to-wear clothing, from which this dress may have originated, were now useless to Chinese tailors and customers, but widely available to be collected (and often adapted) by Europeans.