Made in China: Fashion Boomerang

For

years now they've been all the rage on runways in the West: the Mandarin collars, the high-slit cheongsams, the lime-and-fuchsia silk jackets in dragon brocade. Shanghai Tang, the Hong Kong-based clothing and home furnishings emporium, has built a lucrative business on this faddish foundation. Across Europe and North America, import stores can't keep Ming-style chairs, altar tables, lacquer boxes and celadon vases in stock. And Chinese antiques are commanding higher than ever prices at Christie's and Sotheby's auctions. Two current books -- one a hip visual feast by designer icon Vivienne Tam, the other a more serious study by fashion historian Valerie Steele and sinologist John S. Major -- share the same trenchant title: China Chic.

This is not the first time that Chinese style has struck the fancy of the West. In the last quarter of the 18th century, the ever-fashionable French were swept up in a craze for all things Chinese. The impetus for chinoiserie, as the dernier cri would come to be known, lay largely in the writings of Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire. In a series of influential essays, the Parisian gadfly praised the middle kingdom's meritocratic, secular Confucian bureaucracy and China's "philosopher-king," the Qianlong Emperor, as an attack on aristocratic rule, the Catholic Church, and the despotism of the French monarchy.

Its weighty origins in Enlightenment political theory notwithstanding, chinoiserie's only lasting legacy was in the lighter world of art and design, most notably in the intricate ornamentation of rococo. It's the rare Westerner who would hold up the Chinese state today as a foil to liberal democracy, but in style and in art, we're in the midst of a full-fledged chinoiserie revival.

Cast an eye about the hipster hangs of Beijing and Shanghai on any weekend night and it's clear that traditional Chinese fashion elements are very much in vogue. But why only now? Chinese boutiques specializing in these styles have done a brisk business with European and North American clients since the mid-90s, but only in the last two years have these styles really become popular with Chinese customers. Is this just the usual fashion lag-time? Or did it take Western acceptance of these styles to validate them in the eyes of Chinese?

Lamentable as it may be, the latter seems to be the case. "Chinese people are starting to appreciate traditional-style Chinese fashions mainly because foreigners like them more and more," says Wang Ying, 24, manager of Tian Arts in Beijing's high-rent Full Link Plaza. The boutique carries the fashions of Hong Kong based designer Flora Cheong-Leen, a former ballet dancer who grew up in South America and danced in the U.K. This assessment is shared by Yan Bingbing, 31, whose shop, Bingbing, is popular with expats and Beijing hipoisie alike. When Yan set up her custom tailoring and fashion boutique shop in Beijing in 1995, she intended to make Western-style formal wear. But one item on display in her shop drew a disproportionate amount of attention from Western customers: a little red silk blouse with a Chinese collar. She's done Chinese-style clothing ever since. "Foreigners have always liked Chinese styles, and have been wearing them since about 1995," she says. "But now that they've become so popular internationally, Chinese are discovering them too." Her sales to Chinese customers now represent 60% of her total revenue, up from about 40% two years ago.

When it comes to Chinese-style clothing, there is a discernible difference between the tastes of Westerners and Chinese. "Foreigners like purely traditional clothing with no modern elements at all. Chinese like clothing that incorporates a synthesis of Chinese and Western styles," says Hui Xin, 22, store manager at Binbing. Popular items among Chinese customers include jeans cuffed with Han-style batik or embroidered silk, or embellished with sequined Peking Opera masks. Higher-end favorites include asymmetrical stylistic collages of various silk patterns in bright colors.

"China has always been a bit backward in the fashion world," says Yan. "But Chinese designers have a great tradition to draw on, and now that elements of Chinese style are part of international style, I think that in the years to come, Chinese designers are going to be real fashion leaders."

Kaiser Kuo is English Editor-in-Chief of Chinanow.com