A Fashionable Century : Textile Artistry and Commerce in the Late Qing

Clothing and accessories from nineteenth-century China reveal much about women's participation in the commercialization of textile handicrafts and the flourishing of urban popular culture. Focusing on women's work and fashion, A Fashionable Century presents an array of visually compelling clothing and accessories neglected by traditional histories of Chinese dress, examining these products' potential to illuminate issues of gender and identity. In the late Qing, the expansion of production systems and market economies transformed the Chinese fashion system, widening access to fashionable techniques, materials, and imagery. Challenging the conventional production model, in which women embroidered items at home, Silberstein sets fashion within a process of commercialization that created networks of urban guilds, commercial workshops, and subcontracted female workers. These networks gave rise to new trends influenced by performance and prints, and they offered women opportunities to participate in fashion and contribute to local economies and cultures. Rachel Silberstein draws on vernacular and commercial sources, rather than on the official and imperial texts prevalent in Chinese dress history, to demonstrate that in these fascinating objects―regulated by market desires, rather than imperial edict―fashion formed at the intersection of commerce and culture. A Fashionable Century is the winner of the Costume Society of America's Millia Davenport Publication Award and was long-listed for the Textile Society of America's R. L. Shep Award. The judges described the book as "an extraordinary achievement in scholarship working with source materials that are little-known outside of China and not otherwise available in English." Honorable Mention for the 2023 Bei Shan Tang Monograph Prize, sponsored by the Association for Asian StudiesAn innovative look at late-Qing cultural and fashion historyClothing and accessories from nineteenth-century China reveal much about women's participation in the commercialization of textile handicrafts and the flourishing of urban popular culture. Focusing on women's work and fashion, A Fashionable Century presents an array of visually compelling clothing and accessories neglected by traditional histories of Chinese dress, examining these products'potential to illuminate issues of gender and identity.In the late Qing, the expansion of production systems and market economies transformed the Chinese fashion system, widening access to fashionable techniques, materials, and imagery. Challenging the conventional production model, in which women embroidered items at home, Silberstein sets fashion within a process of commercialization that created networks of urban guilds, commercial workshops, and subcontracted female workers. These networks gave rise to new trends influenced by performance and prints, and they offered women opportunities to participate in fashion and contribute to local economies and cultures.Rachel Silberstein draws on vernacular and commercial sources, rather than on the official and imperial texts prevalent in Chinese dress history, to demonstrate that in these fascinating objects—regulated by market desires, rather than imperial edict—fashion formed at the intersection of commerce and culture.A Fashionable Century is the winner of the Costume Society of America's Millia Davenport Publication Award and was long-listed for the Textile Society of America's R. L. Shep Award. The judges described the book as'an extraordinary achievement in scholarship working with source materials that are little-known outside of China and not otherwise available in English.' "Clothing and accessories from nineteenth-century China reveal much about women's participation-as both consumers and producers-in the commercialization of textile handicrafts and the flourishing of urban popular culture in the late Qing dynasty (1644-1911). The potential of clothing and textiles to illuminate issues of gender and identity is examined in this interdisciplinary foray into cultural history and material culture, which draws on vernacular and commercial sources to explain these objects, rather than on the official and imperial texts that have prevailed in studies of Chinese dress history. As production systems and market economies created the modern phenomenon of fashion, commercialized handicrafts transformed the early modern Chinese fashion system. Challenging the conventional production model, in which isolated Chinese women embroidered items by themselves, Rachel Silberstein positions objects of fashionable dress within mid-Qing networks of urban guilds, operated commercial workshops, and subcontracted female workers. These networks gave Chinese women opportunities to participate in fashion in new, connected, and contemporary ways. The formation of a commercialized dress and handicraft industry was thus stimulated by female-oriented domestic fashionable consumption as well as by foreign markets"-- Provided by publisher Cover Title Copyright Dedication Contents Preface: In the Museum Terms, Abbreviations, and Chronology Introduction Part One: Creating Fashion Through the Dynasty 1. Visualizing Fashion: Ethnicity, Place, and Transmission 2. “Outlandish Costume and Strange Hats”: Moral Discourses of Fashion 3. Workshop, Boudoir, Village: Producing Embroidered Dress Part Two: Plays and Poems 4. Performance, Print, and Pattern: Popular Culture in Fashion 5. “The Luxury of Words”: Fashion Authorities and Aspirations Conclution Acknowledgments Appendix 1: A Dowry List for a Zhejiang Gentlewoman in the Late Qing Appendix 2: Clothing, Textile, and Accessory Shop Names in Mid-Qing Suzhou Appendix 3: Commercial Embroidery Price List from the End of the Qing Dynasty Appendix 4: Qing Dynasty Commercial Clothing, Accessory, and Embroidery Guilds Glossary Notes Bibliography Index