Fashion East and West

Subject

Clothing and Dress

Title

Fashion East and West

Description

In Fashion History: A Global View, fashion is defined as “changing forms of dress that are adopted by a group of people at a certain time and place” (Welters and Lillethun, p. 4). Fashion as a system exists not just in the dress of Europe and the places it colonized, but in all cultures across time and space. Australian scholar Jennifer Craik claimed that fashion was not exclusive to modern culture, which is preoccupied with individualism, class, civilization, and consumerism, but that fashion also occurred in non-Western and non-modern societies. She called the human desire for change in dress and appearance the “fashion impulse.”

In a graduate-level material culture course titled “Fashion East and West” students researched historic fashion artifacts from two different geographical regions of the world. The first, the “East,” investigated the dress of Southeast Asia, specifically China, Japan, and Korea. The second is the “West,” meaning Europe and America. The last assignment delved into hybridity, that is the intersection of two cultures. A second class, Exhibition and Storage, used the research to design and curate an exhibition in the Quinn Hall Textile Gallery in 2024.

References

Craik, Jennifer. Fashion: The Key Concepts. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2009.

Welters, Linda and Abby Lillethun. Fashion History: A Global View. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.

Contributor

Linda Welters, PhD and Susan Jerome, Collections Manager
Students from TMD 570 - Material Culture: Fashion East and West, Fall 2023

Collection Items

Woman&#039;s Robe<br /><br /> Chinese Changyi
This late Qing dynasty (1644-1911) blue wool women’s Changyi, donated by Mrs. George Matteson in 1958, was potentially originally purchased in China by her paternal grandfather. The ornate designs include eight different scenes displayed in…

Girl&#039;s Doljanchi Hanbok, Korea
The late 20th century child’s Korean hanbok jeogori and chima were donated to the University of Rhode Island’s Historic Textile and Costume Collection (HTCC) in 1994 by Associate Professor Kyung Ae Kim Cho. The ensemble was purchased by Cho in Korea…

Woman&#039;s Hanbok, Korea
During the late 19th century, Koreans coined the term “hanbok,” which refers to Korean clothing, to distinguish their traditional attire from the increasingly prevalent Western-style garments (Kwun, 2022). A century later, Western clothing gained…

Child&#039;s Trousers, Chinese Fu
Described as a “pair of green satin pants for a Chinese child's costume,” these trousers were purchased for $1.00 from B. Murray, of Chatham, Massachusetts, who sold other Chinese garments to the university in 1953. In China, the Manchu people…

Woman&#039;s Skirt <br /><br /> Chinese Mamianqun
The skirt is constructed of two pieces that connect at the waist, made of a red damask fabric with a pale green, plain-weave interior lining. Although a microscopic fiber analysis was not done, both fabrics are probably silk. The damask fabric…

Woman&#039;s Skirt<br /><br /> Chinese Mamianqun
The land of China has a history that spans over many millennia under a plethora of different empires. It was not until 1644 that the people of the Manchuria region became rulers, starting the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). The beliefs, style, and way of…

Woman&#039;s Lotus Shoes, China
The art of foot binding, known as chan zu in Chinese, is the practice of tightly binding the feet of young girls to prevent average. growth and development of the feet. over 1,000 years, beginning around the 10th century and dating back to the Song…

Woman&#039;s Padded Jacket, China
This Qing Dynasty Chinese silk padded jacket was donated to the University of Rhode Island’s Historic Textile & Costume Collection (URI HTCC) in 1975 by Mary C. Whitlock after her retirement to East Brewster, Massachusetts. The accession number…

Man&#039;s Frock Coat
Linda Steere donated her family’s collection of 19th-century garments to the University of Rhode Island Historic Textile & Costume Collection in March of 2000. This included women’s and girls’ dresses and accessories, men’s suits, shoes, and…

Woman&#039;s Dress
The 1850’s in America marked a major turning point for the textile industry. With the introduction of sewing machines, home production of dresses would soon be changed forever. Many who did not have the luxury had to wait another decade or so to have…
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