Chinese Fashion

I admit it: fashion matters and I love it. After reading this article in the NY Times several weeks ago, I decided I should write something about fashion in Beijing. So, after several promptings from home about trends, styles, and the look of everyday Beijingers, I have the following non-expert report on the state of fashion in Beijing.



Trends in Women's Fashion
Chinese women appear to be, on average, much more fashion-conscious than American women. Maybe they don't follow the very latest fashion, but they definitely dress up more and accessorize more. Most girls dress up their jeans with colorful stitching on the back pockets, beading, or colorful belts. For fall, the layered look is very popular – lots of long-sleeved button-up shirts under sweater vests and tailored suit jackets with scarves. I also see lots of girls wearing those combos with tall boots and leggings.

In fact, leggings merit a paragraph of their own. Leggings are available in all colors and lengths, and apparently can be worn in any season. In the summer, it was ankle length leggings under very short jean skirts. Now that it is fall, I see leggings with sweater dresses or knee-length skirts, or even paired with bloomer-type short-pants. Another popular look is the bubble skirt or bubble dress. A bubble skirt features a sort of puffy hemline with the fabric gathered up to create a kind of, well, a bubble look. I see ten times more bubble styles here in Beijing than I did in the US.

One great thing about fashion here is that any trend can be purchased in several gradations of quality. For a few dollars, you can buy a "Max Mara" dress that may disintegrate after one wash, or you can buy the real thing at any one of Beijing's seriously overpriced western-style shopping malls.

Men's Fashion
The average Chinese man appears to be much less fashion-conscious than the average Chinese woman, with the exception of hairdressers and the occasional metro-sexual. So, there's not really much to say about them, with the exception of hair dressers, who I discuss briefly below.

What of "Traditional" Dress?
Not-so traditional qipao.
Before coming to Beijing, I had a very inaccurate conception of the traditional Chinese dress. I refer of course to the brightly colored silk or pseudo-silk dresses with mandarin collars and form-fitting shape. Prior to arriving in Beijing I had pictured hundreds of effortlessly thin and beautiful Chinese girls wearing these creations to formal engagements, special dinners, dances, or maybe just to Sunday dinner. Like many mall-goers in Boulder Colorado, I had stopped at the Asian-stuff booth located in the middle of the mall to try on the shiny dresses only to discover I am three inches too tall and 10 pounds too heavy to convincingly pull off the look. This is probably for the best, however, as I wouldn't have gotten any mileage out of the dress here in Beijing—the traditional Chinese dresses in Beijing are not commonly worn anywhere, at least not by anyone outside of the service industries. Waitresses at any restaurant costing more than 20 RMB per meal generally wear the qipao as a uniform, as do hotel greeters, and the women offering samples at the grocery store.

That said, there is a modern alternative which has gained some traction amongst fashion-conscious youngsters. The new style includes a marriage of the traditional qipao cut with more forgiving cotton fabrics and modern patterns. Prior to the weather turning colder, I spotted quite a few girls wearing this style, which resembles more of a modern sun-dress with Asian design influence. The dresses frequently omit the high slit up the side of the dress and avoid any dragon or lotus-flower motifs. I haven't tried one on, so I don't know if they are available for women over 5'7'', but I assume I could have one custom made.

Oddities & Extremes
English Language T-shirts with Bad Translations
Everywhere in Beijing we see Chinese people sporting t-shirts with non-sensical English phrases. For many men of my generation, this is likely due to a desire to emulate Western culture. For others, especially younger women, it seems they will wear any t-shirt so long as the writing is sparkly, glittery, or beaded. I suspect the same problem exists in reverse in the US. American youth culture takes it even farther however, as indicated by the trend to tattoo random "asian" characters all over their bodies. I'd hate to think about how terrible some of those translations are. At any rate, some of my favorite English language t-shirts here in China include:

• "I never leave home without me kitty"
• "Unicorn sparkle"
• "Surfers like it wet"

Cigarettes and Pornography
One of the strangest trends I have noticed in both women's and men's fashion are the clothing brands that most Americans do not associate with clothing. The ones that come to mind immediately include Pepsi, Hallmark, BMW, Playboy, and Marlboro. We first encountered Marlboro (yes, like the cigarette company) at the Silk Market—the mega knockoff location that we have previously blogged about. We laughed, assuming the Marlboro brand was just a poorly-informed choice by a clothing manufacturer wishing to cash in on a famous sounding name. We were wrong.

Several weeks later while at the most upscale mall in Haidian, we discovered a "Marlboro Classics" store, complete with $100 jeans and metro-sexual men's fashion. Subsequent Google searches reveal the existence 167 exclusive "Malboro Classics" stores world-wide—including stores in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Cypres, the Czech Republic, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, the UK, and the UAE. There are no such stores, however, in the United States. Despite its marketing as a "Montana"-inspired line of clothing, I guess the Valentino Fashion Group doesn't feel its cancer-stick brand will do well in the states. Or perhaps advertising restrictions on cigarettes prevent the brand altogether.

Similarly, we were surprised to find a "Playboy" store just down the street from our apartment. Don't worry--although everything in the store is branded with Hugh Hefner's bunny ears logo, items for sale only include preppy work-out clothes, tennis shoes, and backpacks. I would even bet that the high school girls working at the counter have no idea that the cute bunny on their favorite hoodie refers to anything other than a cute bunny.

Accessories
The cell-phone dangle. Everyone here has some sort of charm, toy, or decorative symbol dangling from their cell phone. This trend is not limited to the young people and not confined to one gender. These cell phone accessories range from banal rope twists to electronic cartoon characters with lights and sounds.

The bead-studded purse. Note to the guys reading this: young guys in Beijing seem to be expected to carry their girl friend's purses. It does not matter if your girlfriend carries a large turquoise Fake Cloe bag with sparkly tassles – it is your job to sling that puppy over your shoulder and make it your own. I'm getting a gigantic pink leather bag with rhinestones just to see if Micah will carry for me.

Hairstyles. Black is definitely the standard, as you can tell from the old women dyeing out the grey in hair salons. Many young Chinese women, however, dye their hair red or blonde. (In fact, at our local hair salon on Tuesday, they had two posters on the wall advertising red hair dye, and several books of pictures.) The other big trend is curly--in Tianjin, we even saw a little girl wearing what can only be described as a do-rag with brown curly hair attached to the back.

The hair stylists, however, deserve special consideration. The influence of Japan is apparent in the Elvis-like pompadours, hairspray-filled up-dos, and rats nests. I don't know how they do it, but most stylists somehow thicken their hair into large masses of hair, most likely through a combination of crimping and perms.

Conclusions
If I had to generalize, I'd say there's three types of women in Beijing: those who will not leave the house without being completely dolled up in the latest fashion, those that are simply trying to keep warm, and those that lie somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. As for the men, there's generally not much variation in the universally uninteresting fashions they tend to wear, with the exception of a few guys here and there that have obviously been dressed up by their significant others. The hairdressers of course deserve their own category, but there's nothing really uniquely Chinese to that phenomenon.