Asian Addicts Anonymous

Have you ever read a book where clothes are involved, and found yourself with no idea of what the author was talking about? I like to read old Chinese stories, but the descriptions of what the characters are wearing are continually over my head.

That’s why I wound up with a copy of “Chinese Dress: From the Qing Dynasty to the Present” by Valery Garrett.

Now, this book doesn’t go far enough back in history to cover a lot of the stuff I like to read, but it does cover a whole darn lot of clothes, and it does it with photgraphs. I really hate when things are described, and all you get are woodblock prints, because only in, like, La Mode Illustree do you ever see prints detailed enough that the reality of the outfit gets through all the confusion.

The bad part of this book is that it’s a coffee table book, so it’s clunky to hold onto, and it’s a rather dull read.

The good part, like I said, are the scads and heaps of photos of Chinese outfits, with plenty of detail about who would wear what, when, and why. And it’s not just what the court would don… It goes comfortably into the 70s, with minor details about the 80s and 90s. It even covers the 2000s, though that section felt self-indulgent and lazily presented.

I think my favorite part of this book came with the Republic, because that’s when stuff got pretty. All sorts of dresses, Chinese and Western, and plenty of photos, advertisements, and pictures. There were a few outfits I wanted to snatch right off the pages.

It’s also interesting to note how classic some of the clothes are. There’s a photo from the 1960s of a group of women, and one of them is looking right at you and clearly acknowledging that her style is timeless, and she could blow you away right now just as much as she did back then.

So would I suggest reading this book? Maybe not…

Would I suggest flipping through it if you have any interest in the history of Chinese clothes, or fashion history in the past hundred years? Totally.