Imperial Material Modern Western Fashion Theory and a Seventeenth-Century Eastern Empire

Abstract

This article explores a symbolic, non-western, non-contemporary, class-privileged, and dominantly masculine world — that of China's gentry and Imperial Courts in their transition from the Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty (1573–1722). Modern Western theories of identity and representation through dress are analyzed — using both artifact and discourse analysis — as to whether or not they can transcend cultural and temporal contexts. In particular the essay examines Eastern evidence from the seventeenth century that supports the activity of the premise behind the trickle-down theory of clothing attributed to Georg Simmel in the twentieth century West. Additionally, issues such as cultural ambivalence, creative ferment, and collective tensions in transitional contexts are considered in testing the applicability of symbolic interactionist theory of the contemporary West to the changing aesthetic codes and social meanings of the royal robes in the ancient East.

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