Eurocentrism in question

The coming of fashion created a new world, in which a passion for novelty, combined with rapid changes in taste, interrupted a tradition of well-established habits in the ways of dressing and the significance attributed to clothing. It is customary to distinguish between societies in which dress style was not subject to frequent cyclical change and those where rapid changes in clothing styles were the rule. In the former case we speak of ‘costume’, in the latter of ‘fashion’.Footnote ¹ The rise of fashion represents a turning point in the history of human societies, in that it introduced a new system of values to the social structure.Footnote ² Fashion could condition the behaviour of the protagonists, with regard both to individual choice and to strategies adopted by economic organizations. On the basis of well-founded arguments advanced by social scientists, fashion can be considered as a social institution, which regulates the alternation of cyclical changes in dress styles, and which supersedes the previous regulation based on prescriptive principles.Footnote ³ Fashion can also be considered as a system of rules in which sanctions are applied by expressions of disapproval, ridicule, and ostracism.Footnote ⁴ This assumption implies two essential elements: constant change in styles, and the power of individuals to follow changes without institutional restrictions. It can thus be considered that the ‘fashion phenomenon’ was present, to a greater or lesser extent, in those societies in which these two elements were to be found. Needless to say, it was not a sudden or rapid transition but rather a gradual and progressive, though irreversible, change.

Between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in Europe emerged an increasing awareness of a ‘culture of fashion’ or, rather, a mature reflection on the phenomenon and its social implications,Footnote ⁵ but there was also the idea that fashion was a characteristic typical of European society, unknown in the refined civilizations of the East.Footnote ⁶ Travellers tales contributed to this notion, such as the diary of Jean Chardin, who visited Persia in the second half of the seventeenth century: ‘Dress in the East is not subject to fashion; it is always made in the same way and … the Persians … do not vary the colours, shades, and types of material any more than the style.’Footnote ⁷ Similar considerations occur in relation to China at the end of the eighteenth century: ‘Dress is seldom altered in China from fancy or fashion. Whatever is thought suitable to the condition of the wearer, or to the season of the year continues generally, under similar circumstances, to be the same. Even among the ladies, there is little variety in their dresses, except, perhaps, in the disposition of the flowers or other ornaments of the head.’Footnote ⁸ The belief arose that fashion was a distinctive characteristic of European society, while the Orient was distinguished by the absence of changing cycles in clothing style.

Recent historiography has enriched this analysis by pertinent comparisons and well-constructed arguments without, however, changing its basic premise. Fernand Braudel, in his fundamental work on material civilization, placed fashion within the economic and social context of the age that had generated it, dealing with the topic in a comparative perspective. On the basis of the lively tales of travellers and contemporary observers, Braudel illustrates the substantially static state of the clothing systems in the Ottoman Empire, India, China, and Japan, as opposed to those of the Europe of fashion. He argues that such a different evolution is to be explained by the dynamics of divergent social change. While, in the West, the advent of fashion reflected a significant level of change, in the East, the immutability of appearances was a symptom of rigid hierarchies.Footnote ⁹

Braudel’s interpretation forms the basis for others. Neil McKendrick, author of a pioneering paper on fashion in eighteenth-century English society, considers that widespread poverty and social immobility hindered the advent of fashion outside Europe, whereas in Europe it was established with particular characteristics.Footnote ¹⁰ Gilles Lipovetsky, in a stimulating volume dedicated to fashion in modern societies, places stability in dress styles and systems of imperial power in direct connection, comparing the empires of antiquity to those of the Orient. In his view, the emergence of fashion as a typical aspect of European society was the product of a series of social conditions that emerged only in Europe, such as court society, the model of aristocratic life, the development of cities, and, above all, the rise of the individual, recognized as having the right to make free choices.Footnote ¹¹

This is hardly an unfounded theory but it is probably excessively simplistic to subsume three centuries of history, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth, and three civilizations – Indian, Chinese, and Japanese – into such a binary description. Although linked by apparently similar despotisms, they were profoundly different in terms of religion, culture, economy, and institutions. Western opinion may therefore be lacking in depth, partly because it is conditioned by the blinding European experience of frenetic changeover to fashion, and partly because the criteria that regulated the mechanisms of Eastern fashion may have been more subtle and less easily perceived by a Western observer. Commencing precisely from the latter objection, the authoritative Indian historian Kirti Chaudhuri has challenged the ‘Euro-centric’ vision of the eastern civilizations as societies without fashion.Footnote ¹² Peter Burke, who pays great attention to the cultural dimension of the processes of change, has taken up the challenge, offering a stimulating comparative analysis of the tendency to consume luxury goods in Europe, China, and Japan, and highlighting unexpected analogies. In particular, the growing and widespread propensity to conspicuous, showy consumption of food and drink, furnishings, objets d’art, and fabric as an expression of successfully scaling the social ladder, seems to have been common to European, Chinese, and Japanese societies in the early modern age.Footnote ¹³ Burke challenges the assumption that Eastern despotism impeded forms of social mobility; but a wider participation in the consumption of luxury goods does not necessarily determine the start of fashion cycles.

Fashion is an aspect of the comparative reconstruction proposed by the sinologist S. A. M. Adshead, who not only espouses Burke’s evaluation of a similarity in the propensity to consume in West and East but also pushes the revision of the Eurocentric tradition to the point of maintaining that fashion was a Chinese invention, dating from the age of the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE). It was the work of the empress Yang Kuei-fei, defined as the Chinese Madame Pompadour, whose style influenced European taste in the late Middle Ages. Such primacy did not however undergo developments comparable to those in Europe from the eighteenth century onwards, which made it the incubator of the modern world: fashion may have arisen and been established in China long before it was in Europe, but it did not succeed in becoming an institution of modernity.Footnote ¹⁴

We owe to Kenneth Pomeranz a balanced focus on the question. According to this scholar, early modern Europe and Asia did not experience forms and levels of propensity to consume that were radically diverse. Indeed, the economic and social motivations that underlay the wish to acquire and show off luxury goods in European societies were no different from the aspirations that fed conspicuous consumption in China and Japan. However, while premonitory signs were visible, the advent of fashion as an institution was hindered by the political and social evolution of the Qing era.Footnote ¹⁵ The impression given is that, on the one hand, fashion did not develop as a social institution destined to become a salient trait of modernity but, on the other hand, the great Asian civilizations did express peculiar forms of sensibility and consideration for the social significance of dress, as well as cycles of change in taste in clothing.Footnote ¹⁶ These latter aspects merit some further pondering.

Tradition and change in the Indian experience

The clothing status quo in ‘traditional’ India was based on pieces of fabric used to wrap the body, employing various draping techniques.Footnote ¹⁷ This tendency emerged under the influence of the Brahmin Hindu priestly caste, who celebrated their rites wearing only draped cloth, because items of clothing made by cutting and stitching were considered impure.Footnote ¹⁸ Although this view was widespread, the making of items of clothing was carried out in various areas of India, using a notable variety of techniques in relation to the fabric, the width, and the drape, as well as combinations with other elements of clothing. This was determined by interaction with regional customs and habits, and with the traditions of various ethnic groups. These fundamental elements of the Indian culture of appearance, albeit existing in multiple local variants, represented an underlying constant in the clothing system of the subcontinent, which survived political, religious, and social transformations.Footnote ¹⁹ Consider, for example, the longevity of the sari.Footnote ²⁰ Perhaps it was precisely the persistence over a very long period of some ‘typical’ elements of Indian costume that misled Western observers, causing them to believe that the whole culture of appearance in India could be summed up in stasis. In fact, between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, heterogeneous Indian societies were anything but adverse to adopting new ways of expression in the strategies of appearance, demonstrating that they knew how to metabolize external influences through transformation and adaptation.Footnote ²¹

The evolution of clothing in pre-modern India went through many significant phases, which can be followed in the literature.Footnote ²² Here, the intention is to probe the important discontinuity represented by the advent of the Islamic Mughals, who subdued India in the course of the sixteenth century.Footnote ²³ Recently, the tradition that attributed the introduction of sewn items of clothing to the arrival of the Mughals has been rejected, because it has been demonstrated that Indians knew and practised tailoring techniques before that time.Footnote ²⁴ That said, it is difficult to ascertain how widespread the use of sewn garments was, given the draped clothing of Hindu tradition.Footnote ²⁵ The installation of the new Mughal order gave a decided impulse to the adoption of clothing made by tailoring, even if it did not determine the extinction of the Indian costume under Brahmin ascendancy.Footnote ²⁶

The clothing cultures of the two religious groups were decidedly different in origin. The founder of the Mughal dynasty, Babur (1483–1530), noted in wonder that agricultural labourers and the lower classes in India went around practically naked. However, his successors pursued a farseeing and efficient policy, aimed at integrating Islamic and Central Asian cultural components with local traditions, by harmonizing clothing. Akbar (1542–1605) carried out a true strategy of clothing integration, revolving around the definition of a style through which Mughals and Indians could simultaneously recognize and distinguish each other. Akbar’s action was made concrete through the recovery of some types of clothing already in use, which he modified, thus achieving the double objective of freeing the renewed articles from ties with tradition on the one hand, and conferring on them the legitimization of a royal imprimatur on the other. Akbar’s reform touched principally on three elements of male attire: the tunic, the trousers, and the turban. The tunic (jama), which could also be worn without a shirt, came down to the knees. It was made of an upper section that fitted tight to the chest, tied at the waist by a cloth belt, and of a lower section that, from the waist down, widened out into wide, tightly pleated strips, like a skirt. The tunic was accompanied by long tight-fitting trousers (payjama), which covered the legs down to the ankles.Footnote ²⁷

The turban, like the other garments re-invented by Akbar, belonged to Indian clothing history, and was traditionally charged with symbolic meaning.Footnote ²⁸ In the renewed version, as the ‘Mughal turban’, it became the distinctive head covering of the new order. For Akbar, the integration of the two principal groups in his kingdom was an objective of primary importance to ensure peaceful coexistence, but he was conscious that differences of a cultural and, more importantly, of a religious nature did exist. Therefore he did not neglect to exploit the communicative potential of dress to make these differences visible, albeit in the most discreet manner. Hindus and Muslims were to fasten the tunic in two distinct ways, the former at the left underarm and the latter at the right.Footnote ²⁹ This way of dealing with the policy of appearances showed a mature awareness of the importance of clothing in the manipulation of the representation of identity.

The importance of the court for the establishment of the dress model implemented by Akbar was of a double nature. On the one hand, court ritual prescribed that those who were admitted into the sovereign’s circle should be dressed according to the dictates of Mughal style. On the other hand, the luxury of the clothes worn by the monarch and by the courtiers became the reference frame for elegance.Footnote ³⁰ Akbar’s successor, Jahangir (1605–27), followed in the wake of his father, introducing an article of clothing that was Kurdish in origin, a sleeveless over-tunic called a nadiri. The use of this was exclusive to the sovereign himself, or to those who had been given it as his personal gift. Certainly, the rise of the courtly style did not lead to the disappearance of traditional modes of dress, but it is to the centres of power, such as Delhi, Agra, and Lahore (around which the court gravitated), that we must look in order to grasp the most interesting phenomena of innovation and change in taste.Footnote ³¹

European travellers visiting important centres in northern India, such as Surat and courtly Agra, did not fail to underline the search for distinction through clothing, with Pietro Della Valle making reference to the turban and Jean Thévenot to trousers.Footnote ³² During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Indian dress taste was transformed by a growing tendency to excess and extravagance, which offers similarities to the European experience. Competition between turban and hat was only one aspect of such an evolution. The reign of Aurangzeb (1657–1707) was distinguished, for example, by exaggeration in the width of items of apparel: turban, jama, and payjama became increasingly wider, longer, and more voluminous. In contrast, in the final decades of the eighteenth century, the trend was inverted and a decided orientation towards a reduction of the dimensions of the various items of clothing set in. In the eighteenth century, there was also a desire to show off a martial attitude. This was expressed by a warrior ‘look’, constructed by allowing the beard to grow in the Sikh manner, by wearing armour breastplates, and by carrying ornamental weapons.Footnote ³³

These garments far from exhaust the multiplicity of solutions and combinations available, since only the most emblematic elements have been dealt with. The variety of climatic conditions, cultural traditions, and religious convictions within the subcontinent makes any account of the kaleidoscope of Indian clothing extremely arduous. However, this brief examination suggests that cycles of change in clothing taste did exist and that there was mature awareness of such a phenomenon, as indicated in literature and popular culture.Footnote ³⁴ This might, however, be seen as a form of conspicuous consumption, reserved for the high ranks. Kenneth Pomeranz maintains that this was the dynamic in Indian society, which, unlike China and Japan, was not completely free from the prescriptive character that regulated clothing consumption, and therefore remained impermeable to the advent of fashion. Furthermore, the distribution of incomes maintained a strong polarization, precluding wider access to the game of appearances.Footnote ³⁵ However, Pomeranz himself admits that ‘in addition to aristocrats, Indian towns and cities from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries featured growing numbers of clerks, small to medium-sized merchants, and others who often purchased non-necessities’.Footnote ³⁶

These remarks seem to find confirmation in the passion for elegance that affected Indian society, in particular during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to the point that even those with limited economic resources did not eschew an elegant outfit to show off in public, whilst wearing much simpler attire in daily life.Footnote ³⁷ How much society was permeable to wider forms of consumption depended also on the mode of regulating social relationships. As Pomeranz puts it: ‘Thus, even if Indian “luxury” and “fashion” resembled Japanese, Western European, and Chinese developments more closely than I have argued here, its social relations and labor systems probably ensured that such impulses affected a much smaller proportion of the population.’Footnote ³⁸ The function that was carried out by sumptuary laws in Europe was devolved to caste relations in India.Footnote ³⁹ The effects produced on clothing by such a regulatory mechanism intersected and were superimposed on very strong local traditions, which could differ significantly from region to region. Thus, for example, the collectors of palm sap destined for the production of alcohol from Malabar and the east coast were not permitted to wear shoes or gold ornaments. Also in Malabar, with the sole exception of Brahmins, all men were formally forbidden to cover the chest above the waist.Footnote ⁴⁰ According to the Indian scholar S. N. Dar, however, economic and social condition contributed to determining the consumer’s choice in clothing at least as strongly as their membership of a particular caste.Footnote ⁴¹ Kirti Chaudhuri, too, has offered a vision of caste as more malleable and flexible than has been imagined. Phenomena of gains in wealth or, in constrat, of deterioration in the conditions of life, produced strong pressure towards change.Footnote ⁴²

It is currently difficult to determine whether undoubted changes in clothing styles succeeded in penetrating down through social ‘classes’, becoming – for those who knew how to show they were ‘trendy’ – a means to achieve social mobility. As a consequence, it is extremely arduous to estimate whether the move from a system limited by criteria of a prescriptive nature to one regulated by fashion as an institution actually took place, even if it seems sensible not to exclude such an eventuality. It is plausible to believe that the awareness of the communicative value of appearance had matured into a ‘culture of dress’ but, perhaps, not yet a ‘culture of fashion’. The Indian situation might remind us, solely with reference to the clothing system, of the French at the time of Louis XIV, the Sun King. This was an age dominated by the court as the centre of elaboration of taste, during which elegance and luxury still represented a hendiadys, with opportunities within the reach of well-defined social strata, as, for example, the aristocracy and the nouveau riche à la Monsieur Jourdain, Molière’s gentleman bourgeois.

The protocol of clothing: hierarchies of appearance in China

Western representations of Eastern models of clothing, through descriptions furnished by travellers, also offer an interesting point of departure for probing the function performed by clothing in Chinese society. Among the first tales in this context are the Jesuit accounts.Footnote ⁴³ The Portuguese priest Alvaro Semedo, who lived in China for more than twenty years during the first third of the seventeenth century, dedicated particular attention to Chinese clothing in The history of the great and renowned monarchy of China.Footnote ⁴⁴ According to Father Semedo’s reconstruction, the Chinese clothing system was formed around the fourth century CE, and from that time on nothing ever changed:

At the time in which the Portuguese Jesuit wrote, then, Chinese clothing had taken on the character of a tradition that was more than a thousand years old, not only impermeable to change but also uniformly spread over the vast territories of the Empire. This estimation could not but be a contribution, although not necessarily the first or the most influential one, to the construction of the Western view of oriental society, or at least Chinese society, as a world where the clothing culture was fossilized.

Semedo then went on to describe the salient points of Chinese dress, stressing its duration in time and underlining the prescriptive criteria that regulated it:

The class distinction was reflected in the materials used to make the various articles of clothing: ‘For shoes, they know no other materialls but silk of all sorts and colours, for the rich; and for the poore, cotton …. The richer and better sort of the people weare hose of Damask or Sattin, or any sort of white silk; the rest of white Cotton.’Footnote ⁴⁸ The differences between male and female clothing were not particularly relevant in the eyes of Semedo, with the exception, obviously, of the custom of bandaging the feet of female infants.Footnote ⁴⁹

Father Semedo has been shown to be an attentive observer, for modern studies of the history of Chinese clothing confirm most of his descriptions. Moreover, notes on the dress reform introduced in the Han age refer to the codification of the forms of the pao overdress, a kind of kimono with wide sleeves. This was worn on formal occasions, was considered as the archetype of Chinese dress, and, as such, was re-proposed by dynasties of Chinese origin every time there was a need to restore forms of traditional culture in opposition to foreign domination. This happened, for example, precisely in the period during which Father Semedo lived in China – that is, in the Ming period, a dynasty that had succeeded the Mongol Yuan (1278–1368).Footnote ⁵⁰ The testimony of Father Semedo may thus be considered trustworthy for what he directly witnessed, but his judgement as to the immutability of the Chinese dress code has to be subjected to much more careful screening.

In China, a person’s lifestyle was a function of social condition: clothing belonged to this context, and its use was regulated.Footnote ⁵¹ According to John Vollmer, the creation of a clothing taxonomy associated with social order dated back to the Zhou dynasty (1028–256 BCE), and it was consolidated under the Han. The fabric, form, and colours of the clothes of the emperor’s subjects could not be the free choice of the individual; rather, given that they represented the status, rank, and moral authority of the wearer, they had to be determined by the state.Footnote ⁵² A text from the beginning of the imperial age ruled, in tones similar to those noted in documents and tracts from early modern Europe: ‘By looking at a man’s dress it can be seen whether he is noble or humble, and by looking at a man’s flag, his power can be ascertained.’Footnote ⁵³ Fabrics and colours, variously combined, made up the map of the Chinese social hierarchy.

In general, the most precious materials were reserved for the elite, but changes in dynasties brought about the introduction of variations.Footnote ⁵⁴ Even though the hierarchy of fabrics and colours changed with the dynasties, this does not as yet demonstrate the existence of cycles of fashion. Indeed, the fact that changes in the dress code coincided with dynastic cycles seems to lead in the opposite direction, or rather to outline a situation in which changes were regulated by prescriptive principles, and were very slow – if not over a millennium, at least over several centuries. It is therefore worth focusing attention on the last two imperial dynasties – the Ming (1368–1644) and the Qing (1644–1911) – for which recent studies are available.

The Ming put an end to the dominion of the Mongol Yuan dynasty and restored imperial Chinese leadership. One of the priorities of the new order was to reinstate the uses and customs of the most authentic Chinese tradition, corrupted by a century of Mongol domination, and dress was an integral part of the institutions of Chinese identity. Successive clothing ordinances were inspired by the models of the most genuinely Chinese periods of the Han, Tang, and Song dynasties, up to the statutes promulgated in 1587 by Emperor Wanli, which systematized the matter. These regulations defined the rules for the clothing of the emperor and his family, as well as the dress for the civil and military bureaucracy and the nobility. The wardrobe of the emperor was articulated into five categories, for each of which a precise protocol of use was foreseen: ceremonial dress, leather military dress, normal military dress, formal dress, and everyday dress. The last was a round-necked yellow robe with wide sleeves fastened at the wrists, decorated with four medallions – on the chest, on the back, and on both shoulders – on which golden dragons were embroidered or woven. The dragon was not a symbol proper to the Ming dynasty, since it was probably introduced during the Yuan period, but, despite being a legacy of the unpopular Mongols, it became irreversibly established in the symbolism of Ming power, of which it became one of the characteristic elements. The voluminous robe of the ordinary everyday imperial dress – known as the dragon robe – was, in fact, adopted by the Ming rulers, who, in different periods, flaunted from four to twelve medallions showing the mythical beast. Moreover, the dragon robe became the reference model for defining the dress of nobles and officials.Footnote ⁵⁵

What distinguished the dragon robes of members of the imperial family from those of the elite of the empire were the features of the dragon: the former were recognizable by the five-clawed dragon (long), a privilege that might also be granted by the emperor to those whom he considered worthy of such a high honour. Nobles and courtiers were identified by the four-clawed dragon (mang). In the exercise of their ordinary institutional activities, the representatives of civil and military bureaucracy wore a type of long, wide tunic of brocade or damask (pao), which recalled the costume of Chinese tradition. The length of the tunic and the width of the sleeves were directly proportional to the rank of the functionary who wore it. The colour, too, could indicate the status of the bureaucrat: those of higher rank wore red, those of intermediate rank blue, and the lower ranks green.Footnote ⁵⁶ From the end of the fourteenth century, a new taxonomy was introduced to distinguish the grade of the mandarins: the emblem of rank (pu zi) was a square piece of fabric, generally silk, and embroidered with the animal that identified the grade, which was applied on the chest and on the back of the pao. The same number of symbols were assigned to the nine levels of the bureaucracy and of the military hierarchy. Thus, the mandarins were distinguished by birds, from the crane of the first level to the quail of the ninth, while military personnel were recognized by more combative species, from the lion to the rhinoceros.Footnote ⁵⁷

A similarly severe regulation defined the character of female dress. The empress’ wardrobe was divided into ceremonial, formal, and semi-formal clothing. The wives of nobles and of high functionaries were expected to show the emblems of their rank on the clothes they wore. The wives of mandarins had the right to the same animal that was embroidered on their husband’s robes.Footnote ⁵⁸

The masses did not have access to precious fabrics and luxurious robes, because of both their economic conditions and their social limitations; nor, obviously, could they aspire to the exclusive symbols of rank. The common folk wore simple clothes of hemp or, increasingly in the Ming age, of cotton. The five official colours (yellow, red, black, blue, and white) were reserved for the upper classes, and therefore the clothing of the people exhibited a limited chromatic range of shaded hues, with decoration restricted to printed designs.Footnote ⁵⁹

In implementing the programme of recovery and reinstatement of Chinese identity (which drew on the older traditions), the emperors of the Ming period attributed a primary role to the clothing system, treating it as one of the fundamental elements in the representation of imperial power. The colours, the pomp, the width, and the symbolism of the robes were considered a potent means of communicating the cultural, political, and social order of the empire.

The advent of the Qing emperors, who originated in Manchuria, brought a different culture, harbinger of notable changes in the clothing system of the celestial empire. The Qing emperors were hardly extraneous to Chinese culture; yet, wishing to safeguard their own identity and, at the same time, render the unity of the empire more compact, they did not hesitate to impose their uses and customs on the Chinese. The best-known aspect is perhaps the obligation to wear the pigtail, but clothing too had to be adapted. In particular, nobles and mandarins had to adopt the clothing of the new imperial dynasty from the north when they presented themselves at court or carried out institutional functions, while in private they were permitted to wear the clothing of Chinese tradition.Footnote ⁶⁰

The Qing came from territory beyond the northern border of the empire, where they had lived amid the typical activity of the nomadic tribes of the Eurasian steppes. They were, in fact, tribes of warriors on horseback, given to hunting and war, who had adopted a lifestyle in keeping with such occupations. Their clothing was styled to meet the needs of spending the greater part of the day in the saddle, at the mercy of the elements. The robe worn by the Manchu was long – although not as long as that of the Chinese – belted tightly at the waist, and made to adhere to the chest with frogging and toggles, to protect the body from the cold without impeding movement. The left crossover of the robe, which was closed by superimposing it on the right side at the neck, was cut on the curve, a legacy of the days when the horsemen of the steppes made their own clothing from animal skins and not from the rectangular pieces produced on the loom. Long, tight sleeves and cuffs protected arms and hands from the wind. The lower part of the robe was split back and front to give ease of movement for the rider in the saddle.Footnote ⁶¹

The two clothing cultures influenced each other reciprocally. Elements of Manchu culture came to be part of the clothing system introduced by the Qing: for example, the curved cut of the flap of the robe, the tight sleeves, and the cuffs. However, the Manchu had come into contact with Chinese taste, and they promptly adopted the model of the dragon robe, which they had learned to know through the gifts of Ming emperors. Continuity solutions introduced by the Qing emperors were clearly perceptible in the decided simplification of official dress, at least as far as volume goes, which in the later Ming period had become increasingly conspicuous.Footnote ⁶²

Harking back to the institutional practice of the Ming, regulations of 1644 and 1759 set out detailed rules for the clothing of the emperor and his family, the nobles, and the mandarins. The new classification defined the dress for official and non-official occasions, which, in turn, were articulated according to the grade of formality. The regulations also established a new hierarchy of colours. The emperor might wear any colour but yellow became the colour of imperial power, and was therefore reserved solely for the monarch. Different shades of yellow identified the members of the sovereign’s family, while nobles wore blue and brown, and mandarins blue and black. The symbolism remained the same as at the time of the Ming in terms of clawed dragons. Official female clothing was subject to the same rules as that for men.Footnote ⁶³

The emperors of the Qing dynasty kept the existing administrative order, which revolved around civil bureaucrats and military commanders, divided into a hierarchy of nine levels. The clothing of public officials was modelled on the scheme created for the imperial family and the nobles, to which was added specific rules relative to the emblems of grade level, which had not undergone radical modifications from the codification of the Ming period.Footnote ⁶⁴

The meticulous regulation promulgated by the Qing emperors was applied to the clothing that the nobility and the civil and military officials wore at court, or in the exercise of their function. The common people were not subject to the severe protocol of imperial clothing, except for observing the ban on the use of coloured clothing, fabric, and styles inappropriate to their station. Chinese subjects of the Han ethnic group could wear the items of clothing inspired by their tradition, a faculty conceded even to mandarins within the confines of their own homes, even if the influence of the Manchu style contaminated the cut of the most informal clothes. The little people – craftsmen, country folk, servants, and labourers in general (coolies) – needed a more practical garb. The whole outfit, made of blue, cotton cloth, was formed of a short tunic coming to below the waist, and soft trousers. Chinese women wore an ample robe with wide sleeves fastened on the right, combined with a skirt or, for the unmarried, wide trousers.Footnote ⁶⁵

The reconstruction offered here restores the image of a Chinese clothing system constructed by a series of rules that drew up, in minute detail and with great precision, the ‘architecture’ of appearance, modelling it on the needs of the protocol representing the ranks into which the social pyramid of the empire was divided. The meticulous regulations that dictated the norms for the elite to follow were the instrument by which the emperors aimed at fixing the correspondence between social condition and status and appearance in dress. Imperial legislation numbered amongst its provisions some that were intended to discipline the consumption of the population in general, comparable to European sumptuary laws, but they were of limited impact, given that the policy of social distinction comprehended in large part the discipline of the ‘signs’ incorporated in the official clothing, namely the quality and the colour of the fabric, the number of the four- or five-clawed dragons, and the hierarchies of birds and animals.Footnote ⁶⁶

To answer the question whether such punctilious regulatory construction governed effective behaviour, there were probably forms of control that partially assured their observance, but violations of rules were not lacking. Thus, for example, there is frequent testimony to abuses committed in the use of emblems of rank level. A report submitted to the Ming emperor in 1488 declared:

The report did not cause immediate reaction but, in 1527, the orders that obliged mandarins to wear emblems appropriate to their rank were reiterated.Footnote ⁶⁸ In the Qing age, infractions must have been more widespread and more frequent, given that the repetition of similar provisions became more numerous. In 1748, to remedy the situation and to set in order and update the code, the emperor Qianlong ordered a revision of the regulations. This led to an edict under which the order of official clothing was reorganized and, at the same time, reinforced.Footnote ⁶⁹ The abuse of emblems of rank continued, however, to be difficult to stem, especially in the late eighteenth century, when the practice of the sale of offices was introduced.Footnote ⁷⁰

In the Ming period, there were also many complaints regarding the excess and extravagance in dress that was taking root in various parts of the empire. That Chinese dress taste was sensitive to the fascination of change was also testified to by Father Semedo at the end of the Ming period:

Even more explicit are the numerous Chinese testimonies to the consumer madness that infected society during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1570, Chen Yao, a student preparing for a career as a mandarin, wrote, recalling the once sober costumes, that ‘now the young dandies in the villages say that even silk gauze isn’t good enough and lust for Suzhou embroideries, Song-style brocades, cloudlike gauzes, and camel serge, clothes high in price and quite beautiful’. But what strikes Chen most is the rapidity of change: ‘Long skirts and wide collars, broad belts and narrow pleats – they change without warning. It’s what they call fashion.’Footnote ⁷² Frenzy for the new and the taste for change not only led to the corruption of antique customs but also threatened the social order itself, as a chronicler from the county of Tongcheng revealed: ‘By the Chongzhen [1628–44] extravagance became excessive and distinctions were confused.’Footnote ⁷³

In effect, there was a real danger that this behaviour would loosen the hold on the social structure, or at least the forms of representing it. It would enfeeble, or even annul, the identification of class by clothing, if models of consumption that did not respect the rules filtered down even among the common people, as more than one contemporary observer noted. An author who wrote in 1573 revealed in indignation how ‘nowadays the very servant girls dress qi and luo’.Footnote ⁷⁴ Ye Mengzhu, a tract writer from the beginning of the Qing period, reconstructs the dynamics of the spread of the taste for novelty and the changes that took place in the Ming age: ‘If we go back to the beginning, it probably started with the gentry families. Their maidservants and concubines copied their style, then it spread to relatives, and then it got to the neighbors.’Footnote ⁷⁵ This contamination was also encouraged by the circulation of items of clothing, fed by the widespread practice of renting items for particular occasions, or by the equally common habit of pawning clothing from the previous season, which would then later be redeemed.Footnote ⁷⁶ The outbreak of the passion for refinement in dress, combined with the febrile attention to following the rapid changes in taste, was established among the higher ranks and then contaminated the lower levels, according to the witnesses noted, who are only a few among the many quoted by recent studies.

This was only one of the expressions of consumer fervour that marked the later Ming age, which was an era of economic prosperity, sustained by the acceleration of the process of commercial integration of the various regions of the country, and of China itself within the world economic circuit.Footnote ⁷⁷ This transformation of the Chinese economy, which stimulated demographic growth and urbanization, had the merchants as its primary movers.Footnote ⁷⁸ Such a dynamic activated channels for the accumulation and redistribution of wealth, which (especially in some zones of the country) allowed the better off to enrich themselves further, and allowed those in more modest circumstances to improve their own tenor of life.Footnote ⁷⁹ It is valid to expect that the increased prosperity of some groups would have opened the doors to social advancement.Footnote ⁸⁰ But it is difficult to evaluate the importance of the phenomenon: all we can say is that it seems that the improved economic position of some levels of society, in particular merchants anxious for the social legitimization of their wealth, increased recourse to emulative consumption of the lifestyles of the elite. The publication of tracts on elegant life – for example Eight discourses on the art of living by Gao Liang, or the Treatise on superfluous things by Wen Zhenheng – which guided the newly rich along the paths of good taste, could be attributed to the emergence of such aspirations.Footnote ⁸¹ The picture of the later Ming period that emerges from all this presents significant analogies to contemporary European society, notably the opportunities for increased wealth, the growing propensity to consume, the transgression of the rules of social hierarchy, the passion for change, the taste for innovation, and the writing of tracts on behaviour.Footnote ⁸²

These strong analogies raise the vital question of why it was only in the West that fashion fully became a social institution. According to Adshead, the advent of fashion in Chinese society was hindered by the marginal role reserved for women. While in Europe it was precisely the female component that acted as a catalysing force in the dynamics of dress taste, in China women were inhibited from such action, both because they were obliged to have a more limited social life than their European counterparts and because their clothing was a function of the rank of their husbands.Footnote ⁸³ This interpretation is founded on plausible arguments but may be Eurocentric. If it is true that, in seventeenth-century European society, the experimentation of fashion as a social institution was in the hands of women, it is equally true that this was not the only possible solution. In other contexts, the same function might be entrusted to men.

Other sinologists, including Craig Clunas and Timothy Brook, emphasize instead the fact that the phenomenon of increasing wealth, harbinger of that emulative competition in consumption that also involved clothing, only truly affected a very limited portion of both Chinese society and territory. Therefore, it never reached a scale such as to generate widespread change. The social hierarchy, and with it the hierarchy of appearance, was only momentarily shaken, not demolished.Footnote ⁸⁴ The changes in the political and social system brought about by the change from the Ming dynasty to that of the Qing may also have contributed to exhausting the trend taking place during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The advent of the Manchu emperors reinvigorated the traditional social order centred on the articulation of the imperial bureaucracy into ranks. In consequence, the forms of representation of distinction began once again to be identified with the codified symbolism of imperial regulation, rather than with the mutable criteria of elegance.Footnote ⁸⁵

Naturally, the vast Chinese empire did not lack cases that were, at least partially, in opposition to such a trend. For example, in her recent work on the subject, Antonia Finnane has analysed the situation in the city of Yangzhou, where there was a lively passion for the constant renewal of clothing and hairstyles, even during the Qing period.Footnote ⁸⁶ However, as Li Gan, who lived in the second half of the seventeenth century, tells us: ‘In all the Empire, it is only in the prefectural city and suburbs of Yangzhou that clothes have to follow the times.’Footnote ⁸⁷ Thus, the case of Yangzhou, meaningful as it is, cannot be generalized.

Ultimately, we may perhaps presume that Chinese clothing culture was dominated by official dress. If the trends of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not persist, this was in large part due to the fact that Chinese society was a ‘full dress’ one. The object of competition, and of transgression, was to be able to flaunt clothing with the symbols of high rank, perhaps those of a higher rank than the role effectively covered, rather than to demonstrate ‘good taste’ in the choice of dress.

Japanese consumerism

The origins of Japanese clothing culture are linked to the spread of the Chinese taste of the Tang dynasty (618–907), whose influence was notable in various regions of Eastern Asia.Footnote ⁸⁸ It was during the Heian age (785–1185) that an independent Japanese style began to emerge, progressively less influenced by the models in vogue in China. The sumptuous and complex dress of the Heian elite met the needs of the representation of power, of the distinction between various levels of formality, and of class identification, through the modulation of form and the combination of colours.Footnote ⁸⁹ The formal distinctive trait of official dress of the period was probably constituted by long wide sleeves (hirosode).Footnote ⁹⁰

This long period of refined ostentation in clothing style came to an end in the Kamakura age (1185–1333), when the eminence of the military component in society made principles of simplicity and modesty prevail. These principles were reflected in clothing, and it was in this period that the dress destined to be identified with Japanese civilization in the following centuries emerged. The kosode, literally small sleeves, defined what is today universally known as the kimono. The advent of the kosode constituted a truly epoch-making change, in that it established itself as the basic garment for both male and female clothing. From the sixteenth century on, the evolution in taste and the constant change in style of dress would be principally expressed through alterations in the fabric and decorative motifs of the kosode.Footnote ⁹¹

The kosode was made from a single piece of cloth through minimal essential cutting and stitching. The making of the kosode was cheap, because it exploited pieces of cloth of a standard dimension, which were cut and sewn in rectangular portions, with no waste material. The kosode was adapted to the wearer’s body shape through cunning use of pleats – at times fixed by stitching – or of draping, or of folding on top.Footnote ⁹²

The central position of the kosode in Japanese clothing culture, both male or female, was definitively established in the period of prosperity known as the Momoyama age (1573–1615). The Japanese craftsmen had learned to make the soft silks once imported from China, and had developed sophisticated techniques for the dyeing and decoration of fabrics. The kosode was the textile base on which the technical and creative skills of weavers, dyers, and embroiderers were exercised, with the aim of satisfying an ever wider and more refined clientele, which ranged from the merchants to the feudal lords (daimyo).Footnote ⁹³

This trend was to reach maturity in the Tokugawa age, which opened in 1615 and lasted for two and a half centuries. This was a long period of internal stability under the rule of the shogun, when, to prevent the dangers of external interference, contact with the outside world was progressively reduced, with the exception of limited trading rights conceded to the Dutch in Nagasaki and the Chinese in selected ports. The stabilization plan also contemplated a new social order, based on the intention of making society clearly hierarchical. At the top were the samurai, followed by the farmers and the craftsmen, and lastly by the merchants. The last two social categories were often linked together under the term chonin (town-dwellers).Footnote ⁹⁴ It was precisely these chonin, and in particular merchants from Kyoto, Osaka, and Nagasaki, who were the creators and, at the same time, major beneficiaries of the economic prosperity that Japan enjoyed at the time of the Tokugawa.Footnote ⁹⁵ The obligation for the daimyo and their families to reside at Edo made the new capital an important consumer centre, where craft, commercial, and financial activity rapidly multiplied in order to satisfy the demand for luxury items, fed by the need to represent status within the Japanese aristocracy. This situation allowed the more able and enterprising merchants to accumulate enormous fortunes.Footnote ⁹⁶

Peace and stability made the economy, already revitalized in the final two decades of the sixteenth century, really take off. The wealthy merchants of the age, even though confined to the bottom level of the formal Tokugawa social hierarchy, found conspicuous consumption to be the means through which they could legitimize the key role that they had taken on in the economic life of the country. They thus inaugurated frenzied consumer competition for every kind of good, from furnishings to works of art and, above all, for clothing.Footnote ⁹⁷

The writer Ihara Saikaku (1641–93) has left us an extraordinary inside view of the Japanese merchant class in the Tokugawa period, telling us most effectively of the mood of the age:

What is most striking in Saikaku’s writing is the clear indication of the advent of a taste for constant change and novelty:

The kosode-kimono (henceforth kimono) had definitively become the protagonist of the consumer culture of the Tokugawa age, the object of desire through which to exhibit wealth and good taste. The style of the kimono did not undergo radical changes from its consolidated ‘T’ structure, except in the lengthening of the back, which reached the floor, and the tendency to a widening of the sleeves, which could reach notable extensions. What did change notably was the width of the sash (obi), which tied the kimono at the waist and which became progressively more visible, until it became a fundamental complement to elegant dressing. However, what determined the aesthetic and social value of the kimono above all was the decorative motif of the fabric from which it was made. The soft silks produced by the Nishijin craftsmen were the textile base on which expert decorators exercised their creativity, using sophisticated and laborious dyeing techniques, capable of producing extraordinary effects that constituted the added value of the kimono.

The fulcrum of the production line for the kimono was the textile warehouse, whose proprietor, besides dealing with sales, also coordinated the work of weavers, dyers, and embroiderers.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Among the outstanding entrepreneurs in the sector was Mitsui Takatoshi, owner of the most famous shop in Edo; he is considered the inventor of new sales techniques, such as a fixed price, discounts for cash payment, advertising flyers, clothing lent to theatre actors to publicize the business during shows, and umbrellas with the shop logo available for clients in case of sudden showers of rain.Footnote ¹⁰¹ The kimono market became increasingly large and, at the same time, taste continued to evolve with no continuity. To deal with the increase in quantity and in the qualitative articulation of the clientele, an important commercial innovation, that of the catalogue (hi-inagata), was introduced. It was a collection of designs for kimonos, printed in black and white on the page by engraved wooden blocks, on the lines of the technique called ukiyo-e. The images contained in the catalogue were accompanied by captions that gave details of the colours, of the decorative materials, and of the type of fabric used. It is difficult to say how effective these catalogues were in procuring orders. They may have served for the less practical, but more sophisticated, function of orienting the taste of the client. However, there is no doubt that these techniques were a refined form of commercial communication.Footnote ¹⁰²

Japanese society thus seems to have been pervaded by an inexhaustible desire for new clothing, decorated with motifs never seen before. Infected by a feverish anxiety for novelty, which involved members of all social classes, and solicited by the ever more attractive offers of sellers and by innovative marketing techniques, people let themselves be carried away, with no regard for the formal distinctions of rank. In a word, they were carried away by fashion. Where fashion established itself as a social institution, the hold of the traditional social hierarchy was endangered by the behaviour of those who, in virtue of their prosperous economic circumstances, adopted and exhibited a tenor of life superior to that permitted to the class to which they belonged. Ishida Baigan, the author of a tract on behaviour in the first half of the eighteenth century, warned his contemporaries, in tones very similar to those used in Europe, that

That the advent of fashion was a potential harbinger of the subversion of the social order was therefore no less clear to the shogun than it was to the sovereigns and aristocracy of Europe. Shoguns, too, found in sumptuary laws the regulatory instrument through which to consolidate the traditional order, disciplining the behaviour of consumers.

The first ruling on the question dates back to the mid seventeenth century but it was from 1683 that a real sumptuary offensive was launched by the shogun Tsunayoshi, who promulgated no fewer than seven measures aimed at regulating the behaviour of the chonin. These regulations principally set limits on the consumption and ostentation of sumptuous clothing by the chonin, indicating the fabrics and the decorations suitable for their status. They also established the rules to follow for the dress of servants, who (as the passage quoted above testifies) were not uncommonly also dressed in sumptuous clothing. The legislation further banned using particularly costly materials or fibres in the making of cloth or kimonos, even forbidding their importation, with limitations applied to the production sector through inhibiting those techniques of dyeing and decoration held to be excessively luxurious. The sanctions promulgated by the bakufu (the shogun’s adminstration) not only concerned the chonin (although they were the main target) but also other social classes. The dress of farmers was subject to much stricter restrictions than those foreseen for merchants, even if the latter were officially considered to be on a lower social scale. The samurai, too, were the object of regulations on their propensity to consume, but in this case the objective pursued by the shogun was different. The prescription of a sober lifestyle was the instrument through which to safeguard the status of the samurai, preserving them from the risk of poverty that they might have run had they accepted the consumer challenge thrown down by the wealthy chonin, with whom they could not have competed, given the modest economic condition that most of them enjoyed. The regulation for the luxury available to the daimyo was quite bland. The concentration of their residence in Edo had, among other things, precisely the aim of pushing them to focus on fierce competition in conspicuous consumption. In order not to incur sanctions, it was therefore sufficient that they did not aspire to measure themselves on the same level of luxury as the shogun. Footnote ¹⁰⁴

The doubt that accompanies any analysis of the regulation of luxury is that of effective application. Conventionally, it is believed that the reiteration of such provisions is proof of their ineffectiveness. In Japan, the intense regulatory action promoted by the shogun Tsunayoshi raises the suspicion that they failed. This is corroborated, moreover, by some passages from the text of the laws themselves, in which explicit reference is made to repeated violations.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ It is true that the literature and memoirs refer to cases in which the glaring ostentation of luxury on the part of the merchants was punished by the shogun himself, but it is difficult to ascertain how frequent these exemplary punishments were. Nonetheless, even crediting the sumptuary laws with effective application, there was no lack of expedients to get round them. The craftsmen involved in making kimonos were quick to invent new techniques of dyeing and decoration that substituted those banned by law. Thus, for example, refined and costly embroidered motifs were substituted by applied motifs, and the refined effect produced by the laborious dyeing technique called kanoko was imitated thanks to new, simpler procedures, based on painting with stencils (tayu-kanoko) or on the use of wax (uchidashi-kanoko).Footnote ¹⁰⁶

It was, however, the regime itself that offered the best chance to elude sumptuary regulations, with the creation of ‘pleasure districts’. The most famous was at Yoshiwara in Edo, constructed after its predecessor at Nihonbashi had been destroyed in a great fire in 1657. They were well-defined areas of major cities, in most cases either surrounded by a ditch or a curtain wall, in which sumptuary laws did not apply. Inside the districts, everyone could show off their wealth liberally, wearing the most sumptuous of kimonos, with the exception of the samurai, for whom frequenting such areas was considered discreditable but who did not hesitate to dissimulate their own social condition in order to accede to the pleasurable entertainments offered there. Two figures ruled uncontested over these areas, the epicentre of what the age defined as the ‘floating world’. On the one hand, there were the beguiling prostitutes, the most famous of whom allowed themselves to be admired as they processed along the avenues in the shade of the willows (an antique Chinese symbol for prostitution), showing off the most extraordinary kimonos. On the other hand, there were the actors of the kabuki theatre, a form of popular representation that had developed within the pleasure districts, as an alternative to the classical and exclusive Noh theatre, which was reserved for the samurai and the daimyo. It was chiefly the former who performed the role of ‘trendsetters’ in fashion, setting off tastes that then created trends.Footnote ¹⁰⁷

The life cycle of Japanese fashion therefore began in the ‘free zones’ of the pleasure districts and was principally the work of actors and the more enterprising prostitutes, who had taken on the role of arbiters of taste. Innovations then spread to the rich chonin and, above all, to their wives and daughters, particularly sensitive to the fascination of fashion. The spread of fashion did not, however, terminate in the houses of the merchants but continued until it reached even the lower classes. The channels by which this ‘trickle-down’ mechanism operated, as well as the centrality of the ‘female route’ of transmission, are described in a seventeenth-century text. We read of how the young people of Edo, who went into service in the residences of the daimyo, showed off during the town ceremonies or festivities, wearing elegant and luxurious kimonos received as gifts from their masters, thereby feeding a process of emulation that also involved the lower levels of society.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ A source from the beginning of the seventeenth century indignantly declared: ‘Everyone is wearing gay and costly brocades, and even servants spend all they have for kimonos.’Footnote ¹⁰⁹ That women and servants were considered to be among the dangerous promoters of the spread of fashion is confirmed by the particular attention dedicated to them in sumptuary laws.Footnote ¹¹⁰

However, the sumptuary laws did not succeed in their intent to limit the propensity to conspicuous consumption of the emerging chonin class. On the contrary, with the institution of the ‘pleasure districts’, the authorities offered a way by which the chonin might fully express their aspirations to social legitimization through ostentation. It is therefore only apparently paradoxical that the age in which the most massive sumptuary offensive was concentrated coincided with a period of extraordinary creative flourishing in fashion, the so-called Genroku era (1688–1704). The kimono reached the height of a true work of art, involving some of the most celebrated artists of the period.Footnote ¹¹¹

The constant search for a decorative motif to astound and the ostentation of the most unusual combinations of colours, both of which characterized the luxurious fashion of the Genroku age, started to decline from the first decade of the eighteenth century. The economic condition of the country had worsened, making a more acute contrast between those who knew how to profit from the situation, enriching themselves even further, and those who underwent a consistent contraction of their income. The daimyo, unable to give up their lifestyle for reasons of prestige, became further indebted to the merchants, whose wealth grew. At the same time, drastically reduced remuneration for the samurai meant that their position progressively deteriorated, to the point that they were induced to undertake other activities in the most varied sectors. In this context, it was in the interests of the rich chonin to avoid provoking the resentment of the impoverished samurai. A new taste therefore came into vogue, oriented towards sobriety and marked by the prevalence of dark colours and more sophisticated forms of distinction. Iki was the term for the new trend, destined to characterize the clothing style of the eighteenth century. As may easily be imagined, the iki taste was only apparently the vehicle for a greater austerity in dress, since the items of clothing inspired by the new fashion were no less costly than those of the preceding period. Instead, this marked the advent of more subtle and refined canons of elegance, recognizable only to the attentive eye of the knowing observer, the elegant and distinguished tsu of eighteenth-century Japanese cities.Footnote ¹¹²

The Japanese clothing system had evolved, in the shadow of the ‘isolation’ decreed in the first third of the seventeenth century, in ways that were completely independent of the conditioning of both Chinese civilization, significant in preceding centuries, and Western society. With regard to the latter, however, there were astonishingly strong analogies. The aspirations of merchants to show off their wealth through the luxury of their dress, and the attempts of nobles to defend themselves against this through sumptuary laws, parallel the phenomena taking place in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The rhetoric of indignant remonstrance on the part of those who, in Japan as in Europe, saw in fashion the primary cause of the subversion of the social order, was similar. Furthermore, the fundamental role played by women as protagonists of the fashion scene and the function of servants in activating the ‘trickling down’ of taste appeared in both Europe and Japan. Finally, the same eighteenth-century evolution towards a more sober and refined taste seems once again to invite a parallel between the trends present in European societies and in those operating in Japan.

Certainly, one might object, there were unforeseen analogies, but also significant differences. The longue durée of the kimono as the central point of the Japanese clothing system was a peculiarity that was in decided contrast to changes in European clothing style. The ‘culture of fashion’ in Europe, elaborated through a specialist press, does not seem to have a correspondence in Japan, despite the early appearance of the printed kimono catalogues. Finally, though the argument is strictly linked to the preceding one, the ‘status’ of fashion within society was different. While in Europe the function of fashion had been recognized and legitimized, in Japanese history fashion had been confined within the pale of the ‘pleasure districts’ of major cities. In other words, in Japan fashion remained a ‘weak’ social institution, created in a particular setting: a ‘greenhouse fashion’. It was perhaps due to this ‘weakness’ that Japanese fashion, despite boasting centuries of sophisticated weaving and decorative techniques, not to mention refined taste, had difficulties in surviving the impact of Western culture, which flooded into the country in the second half of the nineteenth century. Western clothing (yofuku, as opposed to wafuku, Japanese dress) progressively conquered diverse social groups: first the men and, among these, the bureaucrats, the military, and the students; then, more slowly, women succumbed, and the kimono became an ethnic garment, used principally within the confines of one’s home and on ceremonial occasions.Footnote ¹¹³

Fashion was not a European invention

The aim of this article was to answer the question ‘Was fashion a European invention?’ In the light of the elements considered, the response is negative: fashion was not a European invention. The analysis of the evolution of Indian, Chinese, and Japanese clothing systems has underlined how these societies underwent phases in which, thanks to propitious economic conditions, the accentuated propensity towards consumption stimulated behaviour that challenged the traditional hierarchies of appearance, usually regulated by canons of a prescriptive nature. From this emerged a taste for change and an ever more marked desire for novelty, which created the conditions for the activation of cycles of turnover in clothing styles. Situations of a similar type, albeit with notable differences from case to case, may be seen in Mughal India, in the China of the late Ming, and in Tokugawa Japan. The reconstruction of these experiences has brought to light notable analogies with the European situation of the same time, especially in the cases of China and Japan. For example, the increasing passion for change and the insatiable search for novelty; the ‘contagious’ propagation of such behaviour down to the lower ranks of society; and the indignant reactions of contemporaries, who saw fashion as a means to subvert the social order.

These correspondences have already been highlighted by more than one author, but significant differences also emerge and, in the end, prevail. The dynamics of the change that marked the turnover of fashion in Indian, Chinese, and Japanese societies revolved around the renewal of the fabrics, the colours, and, above all, the decorative motifs. In contrast, the cut and the style of the various types of clothing remained substantially unvaried for long periods, with the kimono as emblematic of this. On the contrary, in Europe between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, in parallel to the renewal of fabrics, colours, and decorative motifs, the style of clothing, both male and female, was transformed. Consider, for example, how male clothing changed, passing from the effeminate and pompous French style of the end of the seventeenth century to the refined but sober taste – ‘in the style of the young Werther’ – of the final decades of the eighteenth century. Another example is the transformation that took place in the structure of women’s dresses in the course of a few decades, from the complex architecture of the hoop petticoat to the simpler chemise à la reine.

There was a second important difference between European and Asian fashions. In Mughal India, in late Ming China, and in Tokugawa Japan, fashion was identified in large measure with luxury, for even the sober kimono in the iki style was extremely expensive, and the spread of fashion took place in the ‘trickle-down’ mode. In Europe, in contrast, the evolution in clothing taste was ever more marked by the increasing availability of items of clothing and ‘trendy’ accessories of contained cost, for example populuxe goods. Moreover, cases of a ‘trickle-up’ contamination were not lacking. In Europe it was possible to follow the trends in vogue at the moment, even if one did not have great means. Therefore, the influence of fashion extended to a large part of society, contrary to what happened, for instance, in China, where the phenomenon of consumer anxiety documented during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries affected only a very limited portion of both Chinese society and territory. As a consequence, it never achieved a scale such as to generate widespread change.

This limiting of fashion in Asia contributes to explaining a third element (perhaps the most important) that clearly distinguishes the role that fashion had assumed in Europe, in comparison with the great Asian civilizations. In the former, a sophisticated and shared ‘culture of fashion’ was established, which matured both thanks to the attention dedicated to it by intellectuals and also as a result of the birth and spread of a specialist press. Not even the Chinese manuals of behaviour or the Japanese kimono catalogues could equal this culture of fashion, which was the best demonstration of the legitimation of the function that fashion performed in society. This may therefore explain why the clothing styles established in Indian, Chinese, and Japanese society did not become ‘fashions’ in the full sense of the word, but were progressively relegated to the ethnic environment, or confined to limited use in the domestic context. Certainly, we do not lack examples of oriental clothing adopted by Europeans, but we are dealing with forms of expression of snobbery, or particular trends of Western fashion.

Fashion was not a European invention, but it first fully developed as a social institution in Europe, while in India, China, and Japan it only evolved partially in pre-modern times, without being able to obtain full social recognition. In the nineteenth century, there was no other fashion than that established in Western society, which was then imposed on the rest of the world, relegating the other clothing traditions to particular niches. This may signify that fashion contributed to the process of globalization. Certainly it could be numbered fully among those ‘seeds of civilisation’ that, according to Niall Ferguson, were planted throughout the world by British domination and that opened the way to ‘modernity’ in lands beyond the West.Footnote ¹¹⁴