Fashion

October 31, 2006 - The season has changed, but aside from the tendency toward a subdued palette, the rules are the same: glitter and frills are in. Shoes (and sandals – it’s still warm most days), belts, purses and clothing are decorated with beads, jewels and sequins. Jeans, skirts, dresses and tops have ruffles, pleats, lace, sheer fabric and asymmetric hems. The white mannequins at Westmend sont très chic. In the hot-dog days of summer it seemed that few women wore high heels, and comfortable-looking flats and sandals were common, along with wedges and kitten heels. Now that high-heeled shoes and boots are more in evidence, I am less envious of those with dainty feet. My size 40 clodhoppers will do for now.

Shanghai sidewalks are filled with attractive young women in nice clothes, known to the general public, or at least to the programmers of Sonic Shanghai, as Shanghai xiaojie. You can recognize the Shanghai xiaojie by her trim figure, stylish hairdo, poise and well-groomed good looks. Sure, there are plenty of jeans, T-shirts (T-xu, in Chinese) and sneakers around, but those are not the women that draw the admiring looks. While underwear stores display imitation body parts in abundance, and Chinese women certainly wear form-fitting clothes and hip-hugging trousers, you seldom see the Chinese bulging out of their clothes. The fashion of tight-fitting maternity wear has yet to catch on in the community here; pregnant women, in contrast to the non-pregnant population, tend to wear loose frumpy dresses reminiscent of the things you made in home ec in high school. The only pregnant women I’ve seen wearing the sausage-casing look have been foreigners.

Of course, some of us draw stares just because we look out of place in this land of straight black hair and slim figures. I think I’ve finally figured out where the middle-aged women are and what they wear. Those who are retired hang out in the parks, practicing ballroom dancing and t’ai chi (taijiquan), or they’re taking care of the beloved grandchild while her parents work to pay for the apartment they bought on the 22nd floor of that high-rise near Zhongshan Park. Uncertain of a woman’s age? If her hair is short and she doesn’t look like an artist, she’s old, at least to the young. Down the street from us, on Nanjing Xi Lu, loose-fitting polyester-looking clothing, of the sort no Shanghai xiaojie would be caught dead in, can be had at a reasonable price from a store called Ice Queen. This season the ice queens have gotten hip: the mannequins sport flared pants instead of summer’s shapeless knee-length skirts. I swear I will never shop at Ice Queen, but I feel the need to bring Julia with me for protection when I enter the neighboring shops that cater to twenty-somethings.

I bought my first pair of Chinese women’s pants – size XL. They were about an inch too long; I guess extra-large Chinese women (equivalent to an American size 6?) are taller than I am. And here I was sure I was only a size L in China. These were cheap pants, however. As with many western brands designed for people over the age of 18, more expensive clothes tend to contain more fabric. I tried on a lovely skirt in a size Large in one of the fancy boutiques, but it was just a wee bit too big. Possibly too fashionable, as well, for an old fart like me.

There are other styles in evidence as well. There are men and women in suits, but many of them are westerners. Older, less shapely women sometimes wear shapeless padded jackets that hark back to the days of Mao. 80's rock star hairdos are popular among the young men, although possibly more common in Tokyo than in Shanghai. Teenage boys, for the most part, don't wear their hair really short; in fact, my Chinese textbook has a dialogue in which a boy tells his mom he wants to keep his hair long. She, of course, says that boys don’t have long hair. She’s wrong. Younger boys, and girls, however, are another story. Baggy jeans are in here, but they aren’t as baggy as in the States, generally not hanging so low as to be in danger of falling off.

In hot weather some men believe in a severe form of climate control that is not necessarily attractive. A picture is worth a thousand words – this has been demonstrated eloquently by Kevin Lee and Olivia Wu in her Shanghai Diary.

And then there are the people who wear their pajamas out on the streets. Apparently some Chinese citizens find this extremely annoying, on a par with traffic noise and the dearth of suitable mates for their grown children. Personally, I find smog and noise much less aesthetically pleasing than pjs in public. Of course, I haven’t mentioned the men in undershirts and shorts on those 37-degree days, but it’s not their fault that they’re not young and pretty.

The other BIG fashion in China is white skin. Pharmacies and beauty supply counters sell skin whiteners, some of which are likely to contain substances you wouldn’t want to take a chance on absorbing through your skin. On hot sunny days some women (and a few men) carry umbrellas to ward off the sun. In the summer women bicycle riders often wear these white cape-like batwings with this lace that covers up their arms – in the name of whiteness. Bill has offered (threatened?) to buy me one for the 7-mile ride from Berkeley to Richmond. For a more articulate discussion of the phenomenon, see Surrender, Dorothy.

And last of all, we have the fashion of Western men and Asian women. I’ve seen almost no couples of the opposite configuration – maybe one in Japan. The women are mostly young and mostly attractive. The men – well, the men are sometimes tall, but sometimes not. Let’s leave it at that.