Postcolonial Studies: Culture, Politics, Economy

ISSN: 1368-8790 (Print) 1466-1888 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cpcs20

Fashioning change: Nationalism, colonialism, and

modernity in Hong Kong

Annie Hau-nung Chan

To cite this article: Annie Hau-nung Chan (2000) Fashioning change: Nationalism, colonialism,
and modernity in Hong Kong, Postcolonial Studies: Culture, Politics, Economy, 3:3, 293-309,
DOI: 10.1080/13688790020005038

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790020005038

Published online: 19 Aug 2010.

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Postcolonial Studies, Vol 3, No 3, pp 293 – 309, 2000

Fashioning change: nationalism,

colonialism, and modernity in
Hong Kong
ANNIE HAU-NUNG CHAN

Distinguishing Societies, Distinguishing Dress

Few would disagree that a society’s material culture provides rich information
about its political, symbolic and cultural economy. As exempliŽ ed by the works
of anthropologist s and archaeologists , a society’s social relations, mode of
production, level of af uence, links with the global capitalist system, and above
all, the subjective identity of the people themselves, can all be, to a greater or
lesser extent, revealed through its material culture, of which dress and fashion
are important components. Can we therefore say that the ways of dress and
fashion are useful for distinguishin g one society from another?
The globe-trotter s of today may disagree. After all, cities are becoming
increasingly cosmopolita n as the fashion system casts its spell through the mass
media, transnational corporations, and an increasing population of jet-setting
cultural intermediaries and tourists. ‘Must-haves’ for the fashion slave apply
internationally , and however original styles of dress might have been for the
subculture s of New York gangsters, snowboarding Berliners or Jamaican Rasta-
farians, they are now appropriated proudly and nonchalantly by producers and
consumers the world over, without any self-consciousness, or sense of guilt and
shame. It would seem that the motto of fashion retailer Benetton is coming
true—the world is united by its colours.
Distinguishin g a culture through its clothes only works to a certain point in
history. As the forces of globalisatio n make themselves felt in more and more
societies in an unprecedented manner, the accuracy and uniqueness of dress have
undeniably declined. While ‘national dress’ still exists, it is increasingly conŽ ned
to postcards, museums, theme parks, ceremonial occasions, festive parades and
beauty pageants. Even so, the distinctivenes s of ‘national dress’ is blurred when
‘ethnic’ clothing becomes a currency in the fashion system. Wearing tie-dye
sarongs, cheongsams or cowboy boots indicates one’s fashionabilit y not one’s
national afŽ liation.

Death of the National Dress: the West and the Rest

For many, dress is more or less a taken-for-granted indicator of how Westernised
the Rest is. As observed by Willem van Kemenade, ‘one of Europe’s most
knowledgeable and experienced special correspondents in Beijing’: ‘the Chinese
ISSN 1368-8790 print/ISSN 1466-188 8 online/00/030293– 17 Ó 2000 The Institute of Postcolonial Studies
DOI: 10.1080/1368879002000503 8
 ANNIE HAU -NUNG CHAN

are the most Westernized people of Asia, not only in Hong Kong and Taiwan,
but also on the mainland. Other great Asian peoples—such as the Indians,
Japanese and Indonesians—still wear traditional Eastern attire at least part of the
time, greet each other in an Eastern way—bowing, with folded hands—whereas
the Chinese use the Western handshake and, since the mid-1980s, wear only
Western clothing: suits and ties, T-shirts, miniskirts, jeans’.1
The Western mind is split into two when it comes to making sense of the dress
of the Rest. For some, neck braces and bound feet, veils and hajaps, sarongs and
turbans have come to signif y cultures that are barbaric, uncivilised or backward.
For others, national dress signiŽ es the other extreme, that of romanticised
exoticism as seen through patronising eyes. National dress represents purity and
innocence as yet unscathed by the perils of Western culture. The former view
represents what can be called the modernisation thesis of development, the latter
a critique of development in the form of Western capitalist modernity. The Rest,
therefore, is somehow placed in a ‘no win’ situation—stick with your national
dress and be seen as backwards and uncivilised , or else adopt Western dress and
become part of the ills of capitalist modernity.
When national dress retreats from the sphere of everyday life to museums and
postcards, or dies a natural death, the common reaction is to see this change as
an inevitable consequence of capitalist economic development, of globalisation ,
and of cultural imperialism. This line of reasoning is far from unproblematic. As
Finnane points out, the fate of various forms of national dress in today’s Asia,
such as the kimono in Japan, the hanbok in Korea, the sari in India and the
cheongsam in China, are all different, demonstrating that economic development
does not affect national dress in a uniform manner. 2 Moreover, in some cases,
economic development and globalisatio n may have very little to do with the
demise of national dress. The prime example is China during Mao’s rule, where
political ideology resulted in the standardisatio n of dress in the form of the Mao
suit. 3 The death of Mao and the liberalisatio n of the economy rapidly ‘mod-
ernised’ Chinese people’s dress, so much so that as van Kemenade correctly
observed, traditiona l Chinese dress is nowadays a rare sight in China’s cities.
Ethnic minority communities in the West also illustrate the problematic
relationship between economic development and the fate of national dress. Some
cultures use their national dress as a symbol of resistance in a hegemonic culture,
others observe dress codes in accordance with their creed, regardless of levels of
economic development or ‘modernisation ’. South Asian communities in Britain
and Hong Kong, for example, still commonly wear their national dress on a daily
basis, while Muslims around the world observe strict dress codes in spite of
fashion trends.
In this paper I want to argue that nationalism and economic development are
not necessarily the most important discourses in understandin g the death of
national dress. The case of Hong Kong—a Chinese society under British rule for
over 150 years—is used to show that when the meaning of nationalism is
problematic, other discourses such as modernity and postmodernit y replace
nationalism in articulating changing fashions. Firstly, in Hong Kong the dis-
course of nationalism within the context of colonialism is embedded within layer
upon layer of ambiguities and contradictions , rendering its meaning unstable, its
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boundaries unclear, and its status in the collective consciousnes s relatively minor
and subdued. Secondly, the realities of economic development and modernis-
ation in the context of a colonial and (in the words of Wallerstein) semi-periph-
eral society result in their differential impact on the sexes and social classes. As
will be shown below, the Westernisation of dress and fashion in Hong Kong
occurred earlier for men than for women, while it was working class rather than
middle class women who were amongst the Ž rst to switch to Western style
fashion on a mass scale.

Nationalism, Dress and Fashion: China versus Hong Kong

In Finnane’s insightful analysis of women’s dress in China, she argues that even
though women have always been made representative of a society, Chinese
women’s dress has not been a potent symbol of the nation. The rise and fall of
the qipao (Putonghua for cheongsam )4 as women’s national dress illustrates the
persistent forces of patriarchy in denying women a place in signifying the nation.
The thrust of her analysis is that changes in Chinese women’s dress have to be
understood in terms of changing deŽ nitions of Chinese nationalism and women’s
place therein.5
Chinese nationalism has never been much of an ambiguous issue—being
nationalistic is to resist China’s enemies, whoever they happen to be. That is to
say, the meaning of politically correct fashions depends on who China’s enemies
are at any particular point in history. Towards the end of the Qing dynasty,
Western dress was not necessarily unpatriotic, since nationalism was then
articulated as ‘anti-Manchu’ nationalism . This made cutting the pigtail (or the
queue), unbinding the feet, and wearing Western suits and frocks more politi-
cally correct than continuing to adhere to vestimentary conventions laid down by
the Manchus. But when Japan and Western imperialist powers began to make
their intentions felt in the 1930s, wearing Western suits and consuming foreign
products became highly unpatriotic acts. When the Communist Party took power
in 1949, the building of a strong and independent China according to socialist
principles, became the nation’s prerogative. Clothes that signiŽ ed the proletarian
spirit—labour, practicality, equality and unity—were in accord with the demands
of the nationalist discourse. At the height of the Cultural Revolution in the
1960s, when bourgeois ideology was the common enemy of the Communist
Party, any form of self-adornment that was not the Mao-suit was enough to
justif y a public humiliation exercise. In today’s China, however, twenty years
after Deng Xiao-ping announced the Open Door Policy, the discourse of
nationalism must accommodate the demands of the Four Modernisations . As of
now, national sovereignty and a uniŽ ed China are high on the agenda. This
means that resisting foreign interference in China’s domestic issues (e.g., human
rights), and insisting on the one-China principle without compromising the pace
and magnitude of economic development have had the effect of relaxing the
constraints on nationalisti c attire. This new attitude has given room for fashion
and dress to be assimilated into the logic of the international fashion system
without directly challenging the prevailing discourses of nationalism.
In Hong Kong, however, the story is less straightforward. Although Chinese
295
 ANNIE HAU -NUNG CHAN

Figure 1. The “East meets West” Fashion Show at the Hong Kong Hilton, advertised
in Sing Tao Daily, 23 July 1968

296
 FASHIONING CHANGE

styles of dress such as the sam fu, qipao (cheongsam ) and changpao 6 have come
and gone in Hong Kong, their rise and fall cannot be adequately accounted for
by a discourse of nationalism alone. Like contemporary China, Hong Kong’s
fashions have become Westernised rapidly and nearly completely within a matter
of years. In today’s Hong Kong, Chinese styles of dress are no longer acceptable
as daily wear (except for what remains of the ageing rural population). While
still worn to signif y Chinese nationalism by public Ž gures and celebrities on
special occasions, ironically, they are also used as uniforms for hotel and
catering staff, and worn by night club ‘hostesses’ and ‘escorts’. To understand
the changing fashions in Hong Kong in the past 150 years, in particular the fate
of Chinese dress, it is necessary to take into account its ambiguous relationship
with both China and Britain, as well as the socio-structura l context which gave
priority to the logic of modernity and postmodernity over that of nationalism .

Colonialism and Nationalism in Hong Kong

Hong Kong was and still is a unique society in many ways. Before being a
British Crown Colony, the central administratio n of Imperial China saw it as
nothing more than an insigniŽ cant blob on the map of the southern province of
Guangdong. Given the hilly landscape, farmland was limited and its only
exploitable characteristic was its deep harbour. The indigenous population lived
mostly by small-scale farming and Ž shing. Bandits, travellers, pirates, political
exiles and merchants came and went, but few settled for good. When Hong Kong
became a British colony in 1841, it was also relatively insigniŽ cant in the eyes
of the colonisers. Hong Kong’s value lay in its potential to increase British trade
with China. The population in Hong Kong was sparse and largely illiterate, and
was generally indifferent to the colonisers. Until 1949, there was no ofŽ cial
immigration border between Hong Kong and China—people crossed over as
they pleased, and this lack of immigration control added to a blurred sense of
national belonging. However, as political and economic turmoil became more
apparent in China under Mao’s rule, the issue of nationalism for the people of
Hong Kong became increasingly tricky and ambiguous.
The circumstances under which Hong Kong was colonised—i.e. under what
China calls an ‘unequal’ treaty—contribute d to the manner in which Hong Kong
was administered by the British. Since the signing of the Nanking Treaty,
whereby Hong Kong was ceded to Britain, there was implicit acknowledgement
that Hong Kong would one day return to China. The question was not ‘whether
or not’ but ‘when’. The opening up of China to the world in the late 1970s,
needless to say, further exacerbated that inevitability . The colonisers were
careful not to impose the British way of life on the Chinese, and to some extent
were even adamant that the Chinese keep their customs and ways. There was
very little mingling of the two population s except for purely instrumenta l
reasons. For the colonised as well as colonisers, Hong Kong was understood as
a means to an end, as a place where people made use of available opportunitie s
in order to realise their own goals and dreams. The British administratio n played
a role in Hong Kong’s rapid economic development, and the af uence, freedoms
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 ANNIE HAU -NUNG CHAN

and opportunitie s made possible by that development gave the Hong Kong
people little reason to complain. On the other side, the colonisers, no doubt for
political and economic reasons, did not fail to remind the Hong Kong people
that they were not and would never be true British nationals.7
Despite being a British colony, British culture affected Hong Kong in only
limited and selective ways.8 The Chinese culture was and still is remarkably
resilient, as can be seen from Hong Kong people’s belief systems, ideas of
family and kinship, and everyday life activities.9 Like many colonial societies,
Hong Kong was highly stratiŽ ed along lines of race, ethnicity and class, and
there were few efforts to assimilate the Chinese into the British culture. A
strong social hierarchy developed as a result of the mercantile community; at
the top were British civil servants, who had their expatriate lifestyles securely
guarded from the locals;10 one step down the social ladder were the Westernised
or English-educate d Chinese; further down were the Chinese businessme n and
labourers. Amongst the Chinese population , apart from the compradors
(‘go-betweens’ who liaised between foreign and local merchants), and a small
percentage of civil servants (mainly interpreters) and professionals, any
contact with Westerners was likely to be limited. It is no surprise then
that Western style dress was not at all common amongst Hong Kong Chinese
during the early 20th century.11 For the general population , Western clothes
were more likely seen as ‘strange’ and alien rather than desirable. Most
inhabitants still identiŽ ed themselves strongly with the Chinese culture, and it
was a taken-for-granted fact of life that as Chinese people, regardless of the fact
that they lived in a colony, it was only natural that they led their lives in a
Chinese way.
The separation between the colonisers and the colonised was clearly re ected
in the way people dressed. During the 19th and early 20th century, Hong Kong
people—the great majority of whom were peasants, Ž shermen, labourers and
servants—dressed in Chinese styles, i.e. mostly in two piece pyjama type
sam-fu which were loosely cut and made from coarse fabrics. As was the case
in China at the time, more af uent merchant classes wore changpao for men
and qipao for women—but their basic styles were not that different from the
sam of the sam-fu, just longer, and made from more expensive fabric such as
silk. All were distinctivel y Chinese in style. The British, on the other hand,
stuck to their suits and hats for gentlemen, and frilly frocks for ladies.
The fact that only a few Hong Kong Chinese wore Western clothes in the
early colonial years was not some kind of colonial resistance or expression of
Chinese nationalism, but should be more appropriately read as a ‘natural’ thing
to do given the circumstances. The general Chinese population was poor, so had
Western clothes even been available (which they were not), only a handful of
Chinese would have been able to afford them. Moreover, colonial resistance
was not much of an issue for many of the Chinese who lived in Hong Kong;
after all, given the lack of immigration control between China and Hong Kong
in those days, they had in theory chosen to live under British rule. The
laissez-faire attitude of the British administratio n towards the locals meant that
any cause for resistance was far from pressing.
During the early Republican years (1910s), trends in fashion and dress in
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 FASHIONING CHANGE

China amongst the younger intellectuals and middle classes also applied in Hong
Kong. The changpao and qipao began to lose their appeal for some; both women
and men wore their hair short, men wore Sun yat-sun suits while women wore
the jacket and skirt (quan ao), also known as the ‘freedom suit’ or ‘Republican
suit’. This was, however, a fashion that was short-lived and taken on only by a
few.
As the idea of modernising China gathered force in the 1920s, women’s
fashions changed accordingly. This was when the qipao became increasingly
popular and replaced quan ao as the standard dress for women. The original
qipao was more akin to the changpao, which was worn by men, in that both
were one piece garments, loosely cut, that almost fully covered the body.
Finnane interpreted the abandonment of the traditional female dress of quan oa
and the adoption of qipao as a progression towards vestimentary androgyny,
which in turn signiŽ ed aspirations for greater equality between the sexes.12 In
Hong Kong, however, such meanings were largely lost. Those who wore the
qipao saw it largely as modern dress rather than as a sign of greater gender
equality per se. The in uence of the May Fourth Movement in Hong Kong was
limited to a small circle of intellectuals, and the Ž rst women to wear cheongsam
in Hong Kong were socialites, celebrities and those from well-to-do families,
rather than from the circle of intellectuals . Teachers and students also wore the
cheongsam but the fabrics used were normally made of prussian blue or dark
blue satin, rather than being elaborately embroidered silk. However, given that
both groups constitute only a small minority of the female population , it was the
sam fu which remained the norm.
Although the establishment of the Chinese Republic was doubtless celebrated
by the Chinese in Hong Kong, their status as British subjects diluted the intensity
of patriotic sentiments and the meaning of this historic moment was far from
clear for most of the people of Hong Kong. As China rapidly developed into a
state of civil war, it became even more ambiguous as to where Hong Kong’s
Chinese should anchor their nationalist sentiments.

Westernisation of Fashion: Modernity and Postmodernity Considered

As mentioned above, for the most part of Britain’s 156 years of rule, the people
of Hong Kong wore Chinese style clothes. The May Fourth Movement in 1919
resulted in the return of overseas Chinese students to China and Hong Kong,
bringing with them Western style clothing and introducing Western style
tailoring into traditiona l Chinese dress. On the whole, though, people still wore
Chinese clothes. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, those who wore
Western clothes gave off the unmistakable message that they either worked with
foreigners, or had lived overseas. Even though Hong Kong people only started
wearing Western style fashion on a mass scale from the late 1960s, various
styles of Chinese dress have come and gone.
The cheongsam, which Ž rst appeared in Hong Kong in the 1920s, evolved
quickly into its present body-huggin g form during the 1930s, when the National-
ists in China called for clearer boundaries between the sexes, as exempliŽ ed in
the New Life Movement launched in 193 4.13 At this time, western tailoring and
299
 ANNIE HAU -NUNG CHAN

fashion began having an in uence. The shape of the cheongsam was altered to
make it more closely tailored to the body, giving greater emphasis to the breasts
and buttocks, at the same time having bigger and higher slits at the side to ease
movement without compromising the shapelier silhouette .
Both the Sino– Japanese war during the late 1930s and the establishment of the
People’s Republic of China in 1949 led to a large in ux of migrants into Hong
Kong, amongst them skilled tailors from Shanghai. As a treaty port, Shanghai
was then already a cosmopolita n city where fashionable dress, meaning both
Western dress and modiŽ ed cheongsams, were far more common than in Hong
Kong. At the height of the cheongsam craze between 1955 and 1960, there were
approximately one thousand tailors in Hong Kong specialising in their making.14
During the 1950s, while women from the lower classes still wore sam fu it was
the cheongsam rather than Western style dress which was the norm for Hong
Kong’s middle class women. Men’s wear, however, was already being rapidly
Westernised with shirts, trousers, suits and ties fast becoming the standard attire
for non-manual workers. During the 1930s suits already replaced the changpao
to signif y high social status, and by the 1940s business suits had become popular
amongst middle class men as well.
Hong Kong’s economy in the Ž rst half of the 20th century depended upon
entrepot trade, where Ž rms (Hongs) functioned as intermediaries importing and
exporting in and out of China. Contact with Western Ž rms was therefore
inevitable for those in business, and the overwhelming majority of these traders
were men. This was one reason why men’s attire became westernised earlier
than women’s. Capitalist modernity had also begun to make its in uence felt
through processes of modernisation, through capitalism’s logic of structural
differentiation. 15 During this early phase of economic development, the division
of labour between the sexes followed the strict divide between the public and
private domains. As it was the public (male) domain that had Ž rst-hand
experience with the modern in uences of the West, it was only ‘natural’ that it
was men rather than women who had the Ž rst taste of modernity embodied in
the form of the Western suit. More practically, there were simply more tailors
who could make men’s Western style suits than women’s Western clothes. The
outbreak of the Korean war in the early 1950s, and the Vietnam war in the
1960s, brought a steady supply of orders for suits, and as such attracted enough
apprentices to join the trade. It was estimated that in 1960s there were up to
15,000 skilled tailors of men’s suits in Hong Kong.16
Nevertheless, this is not to say that women’s wear remained untouched by
modernity. The modiŽ ed cheongsam was ultra-modern in many ways. The
garment’s appeal for Hong Kong women rested not in its nationalist symbol-
ism—it was the baggy qipao made in plain fabric which symbolise d
early Republican China and hence Chinese nationalism —but the tailored
cheongsam made with bright silks and fashionable trimmings represented
cosmopolitanism , modernity and femininity. Although the cheongsam of this
period already began incorporating Western styles, such as being worn with high
heel shoes and crop jackets, these additions were obviously considered acces-
sories to the look rather than the look itself. Why was it that Western styles for
women did not catch on at the same speed as those for men? Apart from the low
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female participation in the labour market, there was still little availability of
Western styles for women.
Women’s ready-to-wear was rare in the early post-war years, and most people
either made their own clothes or had them tailor-made, if they could afford it.
In 1948, there were only thirty-six women’s fashion shops in Kowloon and
Ž fty-two on Hong Kong Island, most of which specialised in custom-made rather
than ready-to-wear clothes.17 Imported ready-to-wear items were not properly
introduced until the late 1950s, Ž rst in department stores and later in boutiques,
many of which were run by wives of successful Western businessmen. Both of
these were outside the reach of the average Hong Kong woman.18
It was in the mid 1960s that women’s fashion took an unmistakably Western
turn. The trade embargo imposed on China following the outbreak of the Korean
war forced Hong Kong to diversif y its economy and develop light manufacturing
industries for items such as toys, electronics and garments. This was the
opportunit y for large numbers of young women to enter the workforce for the
Ž rst time and to work in the public domain. It was also a time when Western
youth culture in the form of pop music and Hollywood movies took Hong
Kong’s youth by storm. Fashionable clothes such as ski pants, mini-skirts,
knitwear and bright tops were popularised by movie stars and the mass media,
and Western fashion overtook Chinese styles in a relatively short period of time.
Despite the increasing popularity of Western style clothes, a signiŽ cant
proportion of Hong Kong people still wore Chinese style clothing during the
early 1960s. The cheongsam, in particular, remained popular amongst many
women. Economic development expanded job opportunities , but the traditiona l
areas such as tailoring attracted fewer and fewer apprentices. As a result
cheongsams have become expensive. Less well-off women found that it made
economic sense to switch to home-made or mass-produced Western style
fashions. The rising cost of cheongsams resulted in working class women being
amongst the Ž rst to take on Western fashions, although older women, irrespec-
tive of class position, still regarded the cheongsam as the most appropriate dress
for all Chinese women.
As sewing machines became increasingly affordable and technologicall y
advanced, and as patterns for making Western style clothes became more
available in magazines and speciality stores, it began to make economic sense
for the average housewife or working woman to make her own blouse, A-line
skirt or trousers, rather than pay for an expensive tailor-made cheongsam.19
However, for many women, Western style dresses as well as cheongsams were
still less practical than the sam fu, particularly if they engaged in any kind of
manual labor outside the home.
A simple survey carried out by Osgood on the type of clothing worn by men
and women in Hong Kong,20 found that Western dress for men was already fairly
common in 1960, and by 1966, even men who lived on the outlying islands
beyond the harbour of Hong Kong also favoured Western style dress. He also
found that on Chinese New Year’s day a higher percentage of men wore suits,
indicating its acceptance as a kind of formal wear or as one’s ‘best clothes’. In
the city as well as the outlying islands, Chinese style dress in the form of the sam
fu and changpao were very much in the minority for men in the 1960s. The case
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 ANNIE HAU -NUNG CHAN

for women’s wear was slightly different, where the cheongsam remained much
more popular amongst middle class women.
Popular magazines and newspapers from the early 1970s showed that Chinese
dress was nearly completely abandoned in urban areas, and tailors were rapidly
replaced by retail shops and department stores that sold an increasingly wide
range of ready-to-wear fashion. From the 1970s, fashion in Hong Kong had
become unmistakably aligned with the rest of the world— ares and platform
shoes, shoulder pads and glitter, puff skirts and baggy trousers all made their
mark on Hong Kong’s fashion history—as they did in Europe, the United States
and Japan. Global chain-stores, brand names and designer labels, both local and
foreign, had all become increasingly commonplace. What sense could be made
from these examples of rapid social change? Berman has stated that: ‘To be
modern is to Ž nd ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure,
power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world—and at the same
time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know,
everything we are’. 21
The cultural experience of modernity does not stem only from Weber’s
concept of Zweckrationalitat, but also from its inherent ambiguities and contra-
dictions. If the adoption of Western fashion signiŽ ed to the people of Hong
Kong, the arrival of modernity, it also raised questions about the meaning of
tradition and nationalism. Earlier I outlined the ambiguities of nationalism for
the people of Hong Kong; the lack of a coherent discourse of the nation also
explains why changes in Hong Kong fashion and dress should be understood in
terms of the experiences of modernity rather than in terms of nationalism . After
all, fashion is a distinctivel y modern phenomenon which is most often associated
with an urban lifestyle, and which enables individuals to cope with the density,
intensity, and sociality of modernity.22
Even though it may seem possible to explain the Westernisation of fashion in
Hong Kong in terms of a modernisation thesis, the fact is that we have already
seen that the cheongsam was the norm during a period when Hong Kong’s
economy had already ‘taken-off’, which suggests that other in uences were at
work. It would, of course, be much more obvious and easier to use a world
systems or capitalist imperialism discourse to explain this cultural change. Such
a story would go something like this: as Hong Kong became incorporated into
the global division of labour and the capitalist world system in the 1950s,
cultural forms of the core countries (namely North America and Western
Europe) were also introduced to Hong Kong. The abandonment of Chinese style
clothing re ected the acceptance of the arbitrary association between ‘the West’
and ‘the good’. This association is at once an epiphenomenon of the economic
dominance of core countries and a part of the ideological apparatus which
complement and reinforce that economic hegemony. The rapid proliferation of
fashion retailers re ects capitalism’s need for continuous accumulation and
expansion. Given Hong Kong’s status as a British colony, and from its position
in the world capitalist economy, it may seem inevitable that the experience of
modernisation was in close parallel with Westernisation. However, this does not
necessarily mean that a modernisation thesis or a world system explanation is
plausible, for the obvious implication of using such approaches is that individu-
30 2
 FASHIONING CHANGE

als are seen as more or less passive victims of the world capitalist order and the
Eurocentric cultural hegemony which accompanies it.
Cultural theorists of fashion tend to describe it as a vehicle of democracy, a
champion of individuality , and a celebration of the transformative powers of
agency. Emphasis is often placed on fashion as an instrument of identity
negotiation and symbolic proŽ ling. 23 In other words, to understand why people
choose to dress in one way rather than another, it is the subjective meanings
attached to forms and styles of dress rather than their social or economic
consequences that need to be understood. But subjective meanings do not appear
out of a vacuum, and it is for this reason that we need to consider the speciŽ c
socio-historica l and socio-cultura l particularities of Hong Kong in order to make
sense of those meanings.
To further understand cultural choices, such as wearing Western rather than
Chinese fashion, we need to situate those choices within the context of a
modernisation which is not of the individual ’s own making. It is the character
of Hong Kong itself that acts as a singularly powerful factor in explaining the
adoption of Western fashions by its population . Hong Kong was and still is a
city of migrants; less than half of the population has roots that go back three or
more generations. The collapse of the Manchu empire and the civil wars of the
Republican era have resulted in a substantial increase in Hong Kong’s popu-
lation during the early 20th century. At the height of the Sino– Japanese war in
1938, Hong Kong’s population jumped to 1.6 million. During Japan’s occu-
pation from 1941 to 1945, it is estimated that around 1 million people were
repatriated to China. After the war, most of this population returned from the
mainland, and by 1946 the population had returned to 1.6 million. Due to the
lack of border control between Hong Kong and the mainland before 1949, many
people considered Hong Kong to be a place of temporary abode, i.e., a place to
work and to make a living, but not a place to settle down. It was not even a place
to spend important festivals such as Chinese New Year. The in ux of migrants
from China throughout the 1950s and 1960s was considerable—in 1951 the
population was 2 million; by 1961 it had rose to 3.1 million. Yet it was not until
the 1950s that those who had come to Hong Kong began to think of the city as
a place to settle down, to call one’s home.
A large proportion of the population during this period were migrants from
mainland China, most of whom were young people who had come to Hong
Kong to escape from economic and socio-politica l hardship. For them, Hong
Kong represented a change for the better under the somewhat exotic notion of
British rule. Their readiness to accept Western fashions, as something radically
different from the regimes of style in communist China, needs to be understood
in this context. Clothing was a powerful symbol for the Hong Kong Chinese in
the mid-1960s; it was an effective means to assert one’s subjective identity. In
the mid- to late-1960 s in China, all forms of self-adornment were regarded as
counter-revolutionary . This was a time when bright colours were condemned,
and when the standard gray/blue/green Mao-suits became the uniform for the
proletariat as well as party leaders. Western fashion, especially in the form of
mini skirts, ski-pants, knitwear and bright fabrics, could not have been more
different from that being worn by the Chinese across the border. While it might
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be naive to think that those who abandoned the cheongsam and slipped into
miniskirts were all thinking of dissociatin g themselves from the Cultural Revol-
ution, it is not unreasonable to believe that the popularity of Western style
clothes had in some way allowed their wearers to achieve a psychologica l
reassurance about their distance, both physical and symbolic, from what was
occurring in China (and was spreading to Hong Kong) at the time.
Although Hong Kong’s population of the 1950s and 1960s was largely a
population of refugees,24 not everyone who came to Hong Kong was unskille d
or poor. Amongst them were the Shanghai industrialist s who brought with them
both skills and capital to start afresh in Hong Kong, and the glamorous Ž lm
stars, producers and directors from the Shanghai Ž lm industry. The development
of the mass media certainly played an important role in the promulgation of
Western fashions. Film and television, in particular, provided images that
stimulated people’s imagination. During the Ž rst half of the 20th century,
Cantonese opera was the main form of entertainment for Hong Kong’s masses.
After the war, it was the cinema, followed by television. In the early 20th
century, cinemas in Hong Kong screened mainly Hollywood Ž lms, and it was
not until 1934 that Ž lms came with a soundtrack. The Ž lm industry in China
was already well-established by then, and some of the biggest studios were
located in Shanghai. In fact, during the 1930s, many popular Ž lms in Hong
Kong were remakes of Shanghai productions . In the post-war years, Mandarin
Ž lms were initially far more popular than Cantonese Ž lms, while many popular
Cantonese Ž lms were adaptations from Cantonese operas, and as such featured
only period costumes.25
It was not until the second half of the 1960s that teen idols such as Siu
fong-fong and Chan Po-chu began to appear in local Ž lms in Western fashions
(wearing mini-skirts and ski-pants), and immediately succeeded in gaining mass
appeal amongst the younger generation of teenagers and factory workers, who
were desperately in need of new role models. Accompanying the Ž lm industry
were popular magazines featuring gossip on the lives of Ž lm stars, whose target
audiences were mainly young women and teenagers. Although magazines about
the movie industry have existed since the 1930s (e.g., Artland) and even earlier,
a large number of new magazines about the movie industry such as Asia Movie
News, Asia Entertainment, Internationa l Screen, The Milky Way Pictorial,
Southern Screen and Hong Kong Movie News sprang up in the 1960s. Unlike
earlier movie magazines, which mostly consisted of information about Ž lms and
contained a few pictures, those in the 1960s typically featured show biz news
and gossip, plenty of photographs especially of female movie stars, and also tips
on make-up, etiquette and dress-making. It was obvious that their target readers
were mostly young women. Fashion quickly became a staple feature of these
magazines, where Ž lm stars modeled the latest styles and the dress-making
patterns of their ‘favourite dresses’ were revealed.
Themes of social criticism and moralistic paternalism that had in ected
earlier Ž lms were gradually replaced by those concerning youthful hedonism
and the interests of the post-war generation. However, as television began to
take over from cinema as the most popular mass entertainment, the in uence of
the cinema in penetrating the psyche of the Hong Kong people began to wane.
30 4
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Television broadcasting in Hong Kong was Ž rst introduced by Rediffusion in the

form of cable in 1957, initially only providing a few hours of broadcast per day
(mainly news and weather programmes). By 1968, Rediffusion had over 100,000
subscribers, and by 1973 it had turned full colour and had changed from relying
on subscription s to commercial advertising as its main source of revenue.
Television Broadcast (TVB) started in November 1967, and immediately boasted
around 300,000 viewers. By June 1968, there were about 70,000 television sets
in Hong Kong, increasing to about 120,000 by the end of the same year. By the
mid-1970s, television had Ž rmly established itself as the most popular form of
mass entertainment, averaging around 3 million viewers during peak viewing
times. By law, both television stations were required to provide English language
channels, and the two Cantonese channels also provided dubbed versions of
popular (mainly) American television series. Not only did television provide
inexpensive entertainment for the people of Hong Kong people, it also height-
ened their awareness of fashion and dress.
In short, accompanying the Westernisation of fashion were experiences of
modernisation which gradually shaped a new consciousnes s in the people of
Hong Kong. The speed and magnitude with which these changes took place were
in themselves part of the culture of modernity. Today, it can be seen that fashion
in Hong Kong is intertwined with the logic of the global fashion system. But
there are local idiosyncracies and characteristics, in particular the domestication
of Japanese and Western fashion, that signif y the presence of postmodern
in uences as well. The growing popularity of appropriating and manipulating
existing signs within the fashion system, such as the compilation of the perfect
retro look amongst young consumers, tells us that the logic of fashion is not
informed by the culture of modernity alone.

Chinese and Western Dress through Colonial Eyes

I have tried to delineate the meanings of Western fashion for the people of Hong
Kong and to account for the mass Westernisation of dress and fashion in the last
part of the 20th century. I have argued that it was the arrival of modernity and
not the discourse of nationalism that has provided the main impetus for these
changes in consciousnes s and appearance. Now I want to consider the in uence
of colonialism on these same changes.
During the critical years of change in women’s fashion in Hong Kong, i.e.,
when the cheongsam was fading out and Western fashions were becoming more
obvious, there were a few social outcries condemning the abandonment of the
Chinese style and tradition. Such criticisms commonly arose from the colonisers.
In a satirical piece in the South China Morning Post in 1970, headlined ‘Hang
Yves St Laurent—Bring back the Cheong sam’, the author caricatured the
common reaction of Western men to the decreasing popularity of the
cheongsam:
The cheong sam was one of the reasons I came to Hong Kong in the Ž rst place.
Back home in Buffalo Breath, Saskatchewan, I used to read lots of travel brochures
about Hong Kong and they all had pictures in them of these lovely Chinese birds

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in cheong sams. I thought at the time that this has to be the sexiest dress in the
world! But when I actually came here there were very few cheong sams in sight.
And as the years passed they became fewer and fewer … I couldn’t complain at the
time because the miniskirt was taking over, and that’s a pretty sexy piece of
drygoods itself.26
The cheongsam’s exotic sexual appeal was and is still deeply ingrained in the
colonial mind. During the 1950s and 1960s, both Western males and females
favoured the cheongsam for Chinese women. A 72-year-old English woman who
has lived in Hong Kong for most of her life, recounted to me her reaction when
she saw, for the Ž rst time, a Chinese woman in a Western dress. She remarked
how shocked she was because it was such a rare sight back in 1964. More
importantly, ‘… it just didn’t look right. She looked so much more beautiful and
elegant in a cheongsam’. She also commented on the inappropriatenes s of the
wearer’s posture and general demeanour in the dress, saying that she looked
‘awkward’ and ‘unnatural’. This view is not uncommon among Westerners. In
an article from the Hong Kong University’s undergraduate magazine, expatriate
staff were asked of their opinions on the dress styles of students (arguably some
of the most Westernised youth in town back then):
Mrs. Rowe-Evans and Mrs. Scott were agreed that the cheong-sam looked better on
the Chinese girl than the more often seen European dress. The Chinese Ž gure is
ideally suited to the cheong-sam, and it should be, after all, the cheong-sam is their
national mode of dress.27
In the same feature, the cheongsam was described as ‘such a sophisticate d dress’
that socks must not be worn with it. The sophisticatio n of the cheongsam was
a view that was shared by many, and it was often contrasted to the crudeness and
working class image of the sam fu. The fact that criticisms regarding the
inappropriatenes s of Western fashion for Chinese women were seldom seen in
the Chinese mass media showed that Western dress was already normalized; the
‘foreign-ness’ or strangeness perceived in Western fashion, which was common
in earlier colonial days, no longer applied. In movie magazines in the late 1950s
and early 1960s, for instance, pictures of stars wearing cheongsams were often
singled out with captions commenting on the wearer’s sophisticatio n and
femininity. In one magazine which showed pictures of movie stars at a party, the
dance steps of one star (who was wearing a cheongsam ) were singled out and
described as ‘… the most sze man (reserved and appropriate)’ because she said,
‘I’m wearing qipao (cheongsam )!’28 Despite the growing popularity of Western
fashions, the cheongsam is still worn by social dignitarie s and movie stars at
important festivals, such as the Chinese New Year, as an indication of its
increasingly strong association with Chinese-ness, and its decreased association
with modernity.
At the height of the a-go-go fashion, another feature in the same university
magazine enitled ‘Fashion in HKU’, asked for the opinion of a ‘young tutor’, a
Mr. Lovell, on women’s fashion on the Hong Kong University campus. His
opinion was that HKU girls were ‘2 or 3 years behind the girls in other
countries, say, Britain’ and ‘up till now, I haven’t seen any undergraduate here
in a mini-skirt, whereas in Britain, no undergraduate dares to appear in anything
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but the mini-skirt. I think what is fashionable now, here, is already old-fashione d
in Britain’. Chinese girls were portrayed as conservative imitators who could
never be as fashionable as the girls in Britain. The editors responded defensively
by including towards the end of the article a quote from ‘A lady who has been
to Paris recently’, who was reported as saying that ‘in HKU, there was hardly
any girl who was ‘queer looking’ in her dress. She even complimented some of
the HKU girls who had come up to the standard of the girls in Paris’.29
When the a-go-go craze was in full swing, in 1967, there were also riots and
disturbances in Hong Kong. Students claimed that the mini-skirt was for
teenagers and would be ‘awkward and vulgar’ if worn by an undergraduate.
Other items of fashion such as big earrings, fancy stockings and boots were also
declared vulgar and inappropriate for the Chinese female student. Apart from
university students, who might have felt that it was inappropriate to embrace
fully Western fashions, many Chinese women also found Western fashions
objectionable . Their aversion stemmed not so much from their mourning of the
beautiful and sophisticate d cheongsam, but to the crudeness and vulgarity of
Western fashion on the grounds of good taste.
The sexualised oriental woman for whom the cheongsam was a symbol, as
seen through the eyes of Western men, can be contrasted to the oriental woman
as elegant, sophisticated , and feminine in the eyes of Western women. In either
case, the cheongsam was inevitably seen as ‘naturally’ suitable to the Chinese
woman’s Ž gure and demeanour. The latter view is to some extent shared by
Chinese women of an older generation; but for younger Chinese women, the
cheongsam had come to represent ‘Chinese-ness’, which in turn symbolise d
‘tradition’, ‘backwardness’ and even ‘dullness’. In contrast, Western fashion, the
miniskirt in particular, was seen by the older generation as crude, inappropriate
and downright ugly. Chinese and Western dress as depicted in the mass media
also demonstrated the changing meanings associated with women’s dress. In the
1950s and early to mid-1960s, advertisements depicting housewives with dom-
estic items such as rice cookers, recipes books and washing machines, typically
showed a woman in a cheongsam. Advertisements for ‘outdoor’ products such
as portable radios, ofŽ ce equipment, typewriters and so on, tended to show
women in Western dress. Amongst the younger Hong Kong Chinese, although
there were few objections to Western fashion, a subtle but deŽ nite change in the
meanings of Chinese and Western dress had deŽ nitely occurred. Much had
changed but the sam fu had retained its association with the working class. In the
late 1960s, when Western fashion was increasingly the norm, the sam fu had
come to represent the country bumpkin, who is crude, unsophisticate d and
parochial.
Chinese dress today is still perceived differently through Western and Chinese
eyes. The use of Chinese dress in today’s Hong Kong is deeply associated with
colonial visions of the Chinese which equate being Chinese with being either
servile or sexually exotic. Hotels and restaurants still use the sam fu as a uniform
for lower level service workers, while the cheongsam is used as a uniform for
younger female employees who serve as ‘escorts’ or ‘hostesses’ in restaurants
and night clubs. In the early days of colonial Hong Kong, the single largest
occupational group was that of the household servant, for whom the sam fu was
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standard dress.30 These traditional garments have become complex symbols in

today’s culture. Those in uenced by western sensibilitie s attribute to the
cheongsam an exotic oriental female sexuality not unlike that dramatised by
Nancy Kwan in the infamous Ž lm, The World of Suzie Wong. The older
generation still have some resistance against the trends of modernisation, as
symbolise d by Western fashions, and describe Western clothes as vulgar,
indecent and crude. Dressing in western fashions can suggest to them that one
is decadent, rebellious, and generally ‘bad’. Western fashions, however, have
become ‘normalised’ in today’s Hong Kong for the younger generations,
although the exotic appeal of Chinese dress still remains in the eyes of the West.
The kitsch appeal of the cheongsam amongst the young women of Hong Kong
today (it is something to wear at Halloween and fancy dress parties) exempliŽ es
the extent to which Chinese-ness in dress and fashion has become exoticised, a
vision that they have come to share with the colonial mind.

Conclusion
The changing meanings of Chinese and Western dress for Hong Kong’s Chinese
women during a period when economic development and modernisation have
been in full swing illustrates how changes in dress and fashion go hand in hand
with the forces of globalizatio n and changing self-perceptions . The view that the
Chinese woman in Western clothes is ‘inappropriate ’ illustrates the unease felt
by Westerners when modernisation unleashes threats to existing categories of
Oriental-ness and speciŽ cally, Oriental sexuality. Not so long ago a British
friend visited Hong Kong for the Ž rst time, and after a couple of days he could
no longer resist asking whether Hong Kong women were as sexually open-
minded as they looked. This serves to illustrate the rigidity in typiŽ catory
schemes employed in the evaluation of fashion and dress, speciŽ cally by a
Western man as applied to the dress of a Chinese woman. The association
between types of dress and modernity have changed for Hong Kong’s men and
women. The cheongsam has changed from representing sophisticatio n and
modernity to representing Chinese-ness, servility and kitsch. Western dress and
fashion have changed from being objects of curiosity to become the norm. But
the changes are not stable or without ambiguity. The sight of a Chinese woman
in Western fashion still manages to remain a puzzle for some. Colonial meanings
attached to Chinese dress still persist, and the globalisatio n of fashion remains
highly asymmetrical. This illustrates the power of the discourse of modernisation
as a form of Westernisation, and how this all-encompassin g ideology is still
capable of determining an individual ’s subjective attachment to fashion and
dress.

Notes
1
W van Kemenade, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Inc.: The Dynamics of New Empire. Translated from the
Dutch by D. Webb. London: Abacus. 1997, p. 451.

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2
A Finnane, ‘What should Chinese women wear? A national problem’, Modern China, 22 (2), 1996,
pp. 99 – 131.
3
J L Kunz, J Lock. ‘From Maoism to ELLE—the impact of political ideology on fashion trends in China’,
International Sociology, 11(3), 1996, 17– 335.
4
The qipao, meaning ‘banner gown’, was a modiŽ ed version of robes worn by Manchu women.
5
Finnane, op. cit.
6
Sam fu refers literally to top and pants, and is a two piece pyjama-type suit that is loosely cut, with either
a side or center fastening. The qipao literally means a ‘banner gown’, is also know by its Cantonese name
cheongsam , which derived from Manchu women’s dress. Changpao refers to a ‘long gown’, men’s attire
similar to a qipao but worn with trousers.
7
The citizenship status of Hong Kong Chinese born under British rule is that of the British Dependent
Territory Citizen, and changed to that of British National (Overseas) after the signing of the Sino-British
Agreement in the 1980s. Both entitled one to passports that are nearly identical to those of ‘true’ British
citizens. The obvious difference being that only ‘true’ British citizens have the right of abode in Britain.
8
C T Smith, Chinese Christians, Elites, Middlemen and the Church in Hong Kong, Hong Kong: Oxford
University Press, 1985; D Faure (ed) Society: a documentar y history of Hong Kong. Hong Kong, 1997.
9
Wong Siu-lun, ‘Modernization and Chinese culture in Hong Kong’, China Quarterly, 106, 1986, pp. 306–
325. See also Lau Siu-kai and Kuan Hsin-chi, The Ethos of the Hong Kong Chinese, Hong Kong: Chinese
University Press, 1988.
10
For instance, the Peak was kept until the Second World War by law as a reservation for Western style
houses only.
11
Wai-kwan Chan, The Making of Hong Kong Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992; also Faure, op.
cit., 1997, p. 22
12
In the West, incidentally, the fashion of the 1920s also incorporated androgynou s elements such as short hair
for women and tailoring which achieved a boyish silhouette in contrast to styles that emphasise female
curves.
13
Finnane, op. cit.
14
H Wu (ed) Hong Kong Fashion History, Hong Kong: Committee on Exhibition of Hong Kong Fashion,
1992.
15
C Offe, Contradictions of the Welfare State, London, Hutchinson. 1984.
16
Wu, op. cit.
17
Qin Lu, Rear view mirror of Hong Kong people’s lives, Hong Kong: Joint Publishing (in Chinese), 1991,
p. 35.
18
South China Morning Post, 17 October 1969; 7 November 1969; 22 November 1969; 2 December 1969;
30 December 1969.
19
South China Morning Post, 1 Novermber 1969.
20
The survey was done by categorising the type of clothes worn by the Ž rst one hundred people who passed
by the Star Ferry terminal on a particular day. The Star Ferry was then the only means of transport between
Hong Kong island, where the main business district lies, and Kowloon peninsular. C Osgood, The Chinese:
a study of a Hong Kong community. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1975.
21
M Berman, All that is solid melts into air: the experience of modernity. London: Verso, 1983, p. 15.
22
H Blumer, ‘Fashion: From Class Differentiation to Collective Selection’, Sociological Quarterly, 1969, 10,
pp. 275– 291; see also G Lipovetsky, The Empire of Fashion—dressing modern democracy. Translated by
C. Porter, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994; E Wilson, Adorned in Dreams: fashion and
modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
23
See D Hebdige, Subculture—the meaning of style. London: Methuen, 1979; G Lipovetsky, The Empire of
Fashion, ibid; M Douglas, ‘On not being seen dead’ in Thought Styles, London: Sage, 1996, pp. 77 – 105.
24
Those who grew up in HK and reached adulthood in the 70s and the 80s have no such experiences and have
had to relearn and rebuild a relationship with China as a nation. As such, any attempt to account for fashion
changes in Hong Kong for the post-war generation will not be well served by using the same factors that
account for the Westernisation of fashion and dress during the 1950s and 1960s.
25
Of the 1,519 Cantonese Ž lms produced in Hong Kong during the 1950s, 51 were Cantonese operas, and in
the 1960s, there were 193 Cantonese operas out of the 1,548 Ž lms produced . C-y Lee, ‘Cantonese Opera
Films in Retrospect’, in Yue Mo-wan (ed) History of Hong Kong’s Cantonese Ž lm developmen t. The 11th
Hong Kong International Film Festival, 1987.
26
South China Morning Post, 27 December, 1970.
27
The Undergrad, November, 1958.
28
Asia Entertainment, 1967, vol. 111.
29
The Undergrad, 1967.
30
In 1872, over 8% of the total working population were classiŽ ed as servants (the largest group were ‘coolies’
at 14%). The Ž gure stood at 16.4% in 1876, and reached 24% in 1881, then dropped to 7% in 1891. In 1901,
25% of all employed men and 10.2% of all employed women worked as household servants. Census and
Statistics Department, Hong Kong Census Data, 1841 – 1941, Hong Kong: Governmen t Printer, 1951.

309