-a paper on how to absorb the experience and enlightenment of Chinese and foreign clothing history in creative practice
From Fu's changing silk into silk, the ancient Egyptians made aprons with linen fabrics, and Sumerians wrapped wool fabrics around human bodies to form garments, it seems that the development process of Chinese and western garments will be very different.
There are great differences in the connotation of Chinese and western costume culture. China clothing culture is a single source culture. In the process of its formation, it is closely related to China's witchcraft and ritual culture, pays attention to the connotation of form, and has a strong social, political and ethical tendency. In its development process, tradition, conservatism, inheritance and continuity far outweigh variability and innovation. Western clothing culture is a multi-source culture. In the process of its formation, clothing is regarded as a special human art, paying attention to form and thinking that form is content. In the process of its development, the characteristics of the times are obvious and the style changes obviously. Variation and innovation are far greater than inheritance and continuation.
The oriental costume culture represented by China is deeply influenced by the traditional oriental culture. Emphasizing the abstract moral expression of lines and ornamentation reveals an implicit beauty. Mr. Lin Yutang once had a deep understanding. He said: "The philosophical difference between Chinese suits and suits is that the latter is already showing the shape of the human body, while the former is concerned with hiding it." This makes the intuitive beauty and static beauty of Chinese dresses and suits fundamentally different. Tracing back to the source, western clothing has been full of radical ideas and magnanimity of absorbing foreign cultures since its birth, so western clothing culture is a multi-source culture. Its culture originated from ancient Greek and Roman culture and was deeply influenced by plastic arts such as painting and sculpture at that time. His aesthetic vision has always attached importance to three-dimensional modeling. In the history of western clothing, three-dimensional and three-dimensional cutting methods have been established as early as 13 century. The invention and application of three-dimensional cutting became the watershed of eastern and western clothing. Since then, western clothing has become three-dimensional and diverse in appearance, and at the same time, it is necessary to make the shape reflect the beauty of the body as much as possible. However, the oriental culture, represented by China, takes implication as beauty, and gives people a euphemistic and implicit aesthetic feeling with obscurity and obscurity. Through the style, layout, color and lines, it gives people a harmonious aesthetic feeling as a whole, and uses a lot of decorative techniques such as embroidery, streamers and patterns to express rich meanings and imagination. It can be said that China people pay attention to the beauty of decoration and the harmony with the environment; Westerners pay attention to the beauty of clothing modeling and the contrast with the environment. Oriental clothing emphasizes "meaning", while western clothing emphasizes "shape"; The expression of the East is implicit, while the expression of the West is distinct. Eastern and western costumes are completely the reflection of two different cultures, so the style formation of costume cultural characteristics is closely related to national customs and historical and cultural origins. Obviously, clothing is a kind of culture. Due to the different geographical environment and climatic conditions, the content of historical accumulation in the development process is different, and the connotation between Chinese and western clothing cultures is also very different.
However, in the long history of clothing development, we will see the integration of eastern and western clothing styles from time to time, and this integration will often shine brightly and even affect the whole society. Today, examples of the integration of eastern and western clothing styles are still common.
The opening of the "Silk Road" brought exquisite silk from China in the Far East to ancient Rome, which made the nobles in ancient Rome fondle admiringly, and the ladies even spared no expense to achieve their goal of pursuing fashion. European medieval Byzantine costumes inherited and carried forward the civilization and artistic style of ancient Greece and Rome, and at the same time blended with exquisite and gorgeous embroidery patterns of the East, with silk as the top priority. China's ceramics and garden art have deeply influenced European artistic styles-/kloc-Rococo in the 8th century. Elaborate porcelain and garden architecture catered to the aesthetic taste of the French court and were absorbed into French art and even European art, especially the exquisite paintings on China ceramics, inlaid with gold and silver, and beautifully decorated with curves, which directly influenced the artistic style of Rococo. This style is not only reflected in clothing, but also in architecture, painting and other artistic categories.
19 10, ballets russes's performance in Paris caused a sensation, and her colorful and novel ballerinas created a new situation in fashion design. As a result, there is a shareholder craze in Europe. Designers combine the design features of China, Japanese, Russian and Indian with the classical pleated styles of ancient Greece and Rome to create beautiful clothes.
In 1960s, Yves Saint Laurant, a fashion designer, published a series of "Chinese styles". It includes cool hats and jackets inspired by the Qing government. In the 1970s, the eastern and western costume cultures collided and merged further, and the era of high fashion dominating the world came to an end, and fashion developed in a more democratic, popular, diversified and international direction. Japanese design masters Kenzō Takada and Issey Miyake used the plane cutting of traditional oriental clothes to design loose and fat clothes that did not emphasize the fit curve. This kind of non-architectural design is completely different from the narrow structure of western architecture, but under the background of anti-institutional trend of thought and oil shock at that time, it provided new choices for the world and seized new opportunities for consumption. Their designs soon spread widely, and two fashion masters from Oriental Japan stepped onto the stage of Paris fashion industry and even the world fashion industry.
Just last year, models dressed in Yves Saint Rivgauche's autumn/winter 2004/2005 high-end ready-to-wear slowly came along with the background music of the China film In the Mood for Love. The colorful satin suit with imitation cheongsam-style stand-up collar and shoulder pads, the cheongsam pants with butterfly buttons, the China totem with dragon and moire patterns, various fabrics and weaving techniques such as silk reeling, brocade and embroidery show extremely luxurious and distinctive China customs. Tom ford, a world-renowned American designer, drew a heavyweight ending for YSL with luxurious Chinese style.
Eastern and western clothing cultures have their own advantages and disadvantages. For example, during the Baroque and Rococo periods, the corset that emphasized body shape did serious harm to the normal function of women's bodies. However, the long robe and big sleeves always run through China's clothing history of more than 3,000 years, which often gives people the feeling of being dull, stagnant, with little change and innovation. Coincidentally, at the end of 19 and the beginning of the 20th century, both eastern and western costumes have undergone revolutionary changes. In the process of change, both of them have opposite development tendencies. Oriental clothing changed from loose to tight, and the wide robe and big sleeves absorbed the three-dimensional cutting of the west, making the clothing fit lightly. The improved cheongsam is the most classic and perfect embodiment of the combination of Chinese and western; The west, on the other hand, abandons the artificial and distorted beauty of human nature and liberates women from the corset that harms their health. But the same thing is to adapt to the new life, and both the east and the west have changed the complicated decoration and the complicated clothing structure.
It can be seen that there is no absolute contrast between China's ancient clothing style with wide robes and big sleeves and the western clothing style that emphasizes the beauty of human body. Facts have proved that giving exquisite and gorgeous embroidery from the East to three-dimensional clothes from the West shows dazzling brilliance. Nowadays, it is an inevitable trend of historical development that clothing elements all over the world merge and collide with each other. As we will be engaged in the fashion design industry in China, we should not only seize the opportunity of the open era, keep up with the international fashion trends, but also strive to protect and carry forward the traditional characteristics of China's clothing. Let the meaning of oriental clothing and the modeling of western clothing be rich and colorful, and let the future international fashion stage bloom with brilliant Chinese light!