How worm thread ties you, me and history together

Author Alison Lloyd's newsletter #58

Do you ever look at your wardrobe, or at clothes to buy, and think ‘I don’t know whether that’s appropriate for me?’ This newsletter takes you on an excursion into cross-cultural fashion — it’s vibrant and interwoven history between China and the west particularly.

This week I heard a podcast refer (negatively) to ‘mainstream’ culture as ‘white’. Well, ‘white’ might be ‘mainstream’ in that podcaster’s surrounds. But I’ve just come back from a holiday overseas. China reminded me, powerfully, that in most (~60%) of the world, mainstream = Asian. I was bemused to find my foreign face is still a walking curiosity there, even in the internet age. Local tourists remarked on my clothes. Some even wanted photos!¹

If you don’t care about cultural commentary, stick with me, or at least scroll down, because I’ve got some lovely historical clothing pics for you too.

China also reminded me that cultural borrowing is fertile ground for artists and activists, and it’s pretty much unstoppable. We started our trip in the mega metropolis of Shanghai. In Shanghai East meets West. You can see the tide marks of history, especially in the city’s architecture.

Shanghai’s central shopping strip, Nanjing Rd. L:1930s; R: 2025 (on a quiet day, when it was about to rain).

Today’s Shanghai wouldn’t exist without colonialism. Two hundred years ago, the area was agricultural. But Shanghai is in a strategic spot — it’s where the huge Yangtze River, winding from inland China, finally meets the sea. In 1842, imperial China lost the first Opium War. As part of the peace deal, the British, French and Americans demanded that parts of Shanghai be signed over to their control. Foreigners were given navigation rights on the Yangtze River a few years later (in 1857). Shanghai took off as a trading hub. An enormous tide of textiles, tea and money flowed through Shanghai and out the Yangtze river mouth.

Silk was one of Shanghai’s major exports. (Incidentally, it’s how my husband’s great-grandfather made his fortune. He was a silk middleman, buying in Shanghai for sale upriver in Nanjing. The business, and the fortune, was later appropriated under the Communist government. But let’s stick to silk.)

A traditional silk factory in Wuzhen, closed only in recent years. L to R: cocoons; a treadle spinning machine; brocade loom; detail of brocade weaving.

Silk is made by unwinding thread extruded by an insect — the silk worm. China has been transforming this unlikely source into glorious works of textile art for millennia.

R: Qing dynasty (1644-1911) women’s embroidered silk jacket in Shanghai Museum. L: detail of jacket.

How Qing dynasty women’s clothes looked on the wearer. L: women in Han costume, like the jacket above, taken by Lai Afong in 1880. See how capacious the jacket is, and how it comes below the knee. R: the Chinese ambassador’s wife in 1895, in the long robe worn by the ruling Manchu minority.

The European world has coveted Chinese silk since the Roman empire. In eighteenth and nineteenth century boudoirs, the imitation of Chinese style was a mark of sophistication.

Man’s banyan (dressing gown) and long sleeve waistcoat, made in Italy around 1750, from a Qing court robe. The dragon’s eyebrows are made with peacock feathers! Source: V&A

But styles and ideas flowed in both directions. In the early twentieth century, Chinese students were the first to adopt a more European look, as a political statement, expressing a desire for change and modernisation.

Detail of photo of students at the women’s college of Yanching University, taken around 1920. The tops and skirts have shortened a little compared to the Qing dynasty, and the shoes are changing shape. If you look carefully, the woman in the front centre has bound feet.

The new look spread. Below are two 1930s women’s outfits from the region of Wuzhen, 125km/80 miles from Shanghai.

1930s women’s clothes, in a museum in Wuzhen. Taken by myself, 2025, with apologies for the glass reflections.

These are such graceful clothes, to my eyes. You can see how they integrate both traditional patterns and (a little bit of) western influence. They’re not as stiff as the earlier woman’s jacket above.

But they’re still relatively loose-fitting and modest. Shanghai changed that! Awash with both foreigners and money, Shanghai was outside traditional government structures. It was renowned for its racy and revolutionary lifestyle — it was where the Chinese Communist Party held its first national congress in 1921. (Communism is itself a cultural import to China, Karl Marx being German.)

76 Xingye Rd, the building in the French Concession, Shanghai, where the first Communist Party congress happened in 1921

Horse-racing, nightclubs and ‘sing-song’ girls were also big business in the city.

As you can see above, Shanghai loved the flapper look. Young Shanghainese women cut and crimped their hair and lifted their hemlines. But, as the Chinese government is fond of saying, this was western fashion ‘with Chinese characteristics’. In Shanghai, female clothes kept the mandarin collar and the brilliant silks. Under the ministrations of Shanghai tailors, the silks now clung to the wearer’s figure. Behold the new qipao, or cheongsam.

1930s, girl in qipao against Shanghai backdrop, 1930s. By Yuan Xiutang (dates unknown) collection of the Shanghai History Museum

Front cover of the ‘Shanghai Sketch’, 1929.

I adore both Qing styles and cheongsams. Those flowing lines and rich colours and intricate swirling patterns! Costume photo shoots are currently popular at Chinese tourist destinations. I’d love to slink around in a cheongsam or swish about in royal robes. I thought about it. But I was embarrassed that my European face and grey-brown hair was going to look weird perched on top of the Oriental finery. I didn’t hire a costume package.

Western culture has become very sensitive about over who wears what. Sure, the forms and symbols of clothes do have meaning. Once, only the imperial family were supposed to wear dragons. Han women wore one style; Manchu women another; the flappers another again. But they’re always shifting. No place or people group gets to own them forever. Besides, I believe in shared humanity.² I’d rather see in Qing robes or the cheongsam an expression of common human desires, for beauty and meaning. Even if you don’t own Asian styled clothes, you’ve probably got some form of imitation silk in your wardrobe.

So, while I didn’t do a costume photo shoot, I did buy a Tibetan coat. Plus some silk gifts, to wind the shimmering threads of culture round the world…

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you have a favourite cultural borrowing? Textiles for me I think… Or stories…

1. In case you’re wondering, I speak Chinese, although people don’t know this by looking at me! My husband is from China - we met as students. That’s a story for another day. If you’re interested, leave a comment or send a return email :)

2. Because I’m a Christian, which is itself a religion that came out of the Middle East, speaking of cultural borrowings. Despite the sins of Christians, including racism, Jesus’ church is a body of people amongst whom there is ‘no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female’ (to quote the New Testament). Personally, I think this is a more attractive and positive approach than fracturing the world into competing identity groups.