Everyday Dress And Cultural Symbols

Bell bottoms and culture

In 1978, the official "reform and opening up" political order has not yet been released, and the streets of the city have begun a quiet change. Body liberation is often the precursor of ideological emancipation and social openness. The popularity of bell bottoms in this historical period is one of the important signs of body liberation.

Bell bottoms were the American fashion of 60s and 70s twentieth Century, and Elvis pushed them to the top of fashion clothes. In the popular Japanese movie "Xiang Xiang", Kurihara Komaki, who played the role of a female journalist, had a beautiful face and elegant temperament. A bell bottomed trousers showed more beautiful body lines. For a time, the culture of bell bottoms was pushed to the enchanting realm in China.

Bell bottoms are the reaction to trousers in general sense. It runs counter to the large and small size of the human body. It cuts the upper and lower sides, tightening the buttocks and thighs, close to the body package, and gradually enlarges to the bottom of the thigh, covering the ankle. Because the trouser legs and heels need to be matched with heels with high heels, it is inevitable that the appearance of high heeled shoes will be logical. Depending on the style, the size of the trouser leg is several inches to a foot, and the largest can reach nearly two feet. This kind of rebellious tailoring highlights the buttocks and has serious suspicion of seduction. Bell bottoms and other "cultural smuggling" products, such as toad, radio recorder, disco and Teresa Teng, together constitute the weird landscape of Chinese marketplace culture in the late 1970s and early 80s.

Kurihara Komaki, a female journalist, said to azaki, "when winter comes, the bell bottoms are irrigated, and I will not wear them." In reality, "cultural winter", bell bottoms are also out of season. In the era of the end of the "Cultural Revolution", this dress, which is characterized by the appearance of the body's sexy parts, has aroused the vigilance of weathering.

An official tabloid wrote: "now some fashionable young people, with big sideburns on their hair, little black beard on their lips, upper body blouse, bottom bell bottomed trousers, black shoes with feet, and a two horn recorder with Teresa Teng's sweet honey love song, are swagger across the market. These young people are blindly imitating the way of life of the western bourgeoisie. This year, a garment factory in Shanghai has made tens of thousands of bell bottoms. Men are not male, female or female. They are weird, ugly and vulgar. Even behind their eyes, it is difficult to distinguish men and women. Therefore, leaders' instructions are not allowed to be sold. All localities mobilized, members and young people went to the streets to picket and ban young men wearing bell bottoms. If you do not listen to the ban, you can make strong scissors.

The ban on bell bottoms made people feel cold again in the early days of culture. But this is rather "cultural early spring" rather than "cultural winter". It is obvious that the "Cultural Revolution" violence has been generally ignored by the public in the era of opening up, and few opponents of bell bottoms are actually using scissors to enforce it. The trend of bell bottoms is indeed declining, but it has little to do with official brutal imprisonment, but rather based on the fashion style of self transformation. After about 1984, this style of clothing was no longer popular. Until the end of the 90s and the beginning of the new century (27.91,1.19,4.45%), Fang had a small Revival on some styles of trousers.

Almost at the same time as bell bottoms appeared, represented by "today's Poetry Movement" and "Star Painting Exhibition", the cultural fate of the youth's free impulse is the same as that of bell bottoms. Cui Jian, a rock singer, was once regarded as the cultural spokesman of "unhealthy youth" and "market hooligans". But strangely enough, he did not wear bell bottoms. On the contrary, his standard costume was a revolutionary military uniform. However, at best, he can only be regarded as a soldier with a disorderly army. The collar of his uniform is wide open and looks like a casual casual dress.

This costume echoes the change from the imprisoned tunic and military uniform to the dress of an open suit. Cui Jian's rock and roll song "let me scatter a little wild in the snow" is a typical symptom of the cold and heat alternation of the "cultural malaria" in the early days of reform. "EER, eh, because my illness is just not feeling." The icy snow has become a cure for paralysis of body and mind. Cold stimulation seems to be a stimulant that liberates sensory life from the bondage of long-term political pressure and rigid educational system. The contradiction between the heat of the body and the cold environment of the external environment is fully manifested. Cui Jian sang a generation of political tact and cultural paradox.

Pedal pants and natural gait

After the severe political turmoil in the late 1980s, the sequelae of the first few years of 90s were serious. The main symptoms are numbness and indifference. The whole society is deeply indifferent and insensitive. In this long and intolerable loneliness, people have heard the call of another voice, "one way and another".

"Go back". That's all. There is no commitment to the goal, or there is no goal. A similar expression is another popular phrase among the poets at the time: "what victory is there to win? It means everything!" This tragic expression from Rilke, a poet in Austria, reveals the mental state of Chinese intellectuals in the early 1990s.

Natural and unrestrained, this is a description of a particular state of water. There is no doubt that a certain space, speed and relative lightness of quality are needed to make the water body appear as "natural and unrestrained". When this image is transformed into a metaphor for body behavior, it means not only being free but also seemingly unwittingly sprinkled to the periphery like water and let people feel it.

This is the most convincing and aphorism of life at that time. It was written on a T-shirt known as the "cultural shirt" for a time, and was swallowed by the darling of the times. "Cultural shirt" is a variant of the ancient tattoo technology with body as its writing material. It is a compromise strategy to avoid excessive indulgence in body writing. The aphorism is written on the intimate clothes, intended to announce to the world that he will walk around the world and remind others of his "gait" of his gait. Prior to the late 1980s, Xu Bing, an avant-garde artist, had expressed his prophetic expression of this culture in the form of behavior culture. In the pig full of articles, the prototype of "cultural shirt" has appeared, and its cultural value connotation is also clear.

In the middle of 1990s, a new round of commercial craze swept over the mainland of China. The temptation of materialism was overwhelming. Almost all of us were ready to go. Under the domination of the old idea of "no evil and no business", material desires are not far from evil. The banner of "cheesy" is the best piece of fig leaf in the sea of material desire. It becomes the reason and psychological sustenance for people to pursue their interests in peace and reason. If we say "follow the feeling" and link the walk with the proprioception of life together, the only way to go is to walk and look. It only cares about whether its own living posture has a considerable external form. It does not care about the awakening of the senses. What is important is whether the appearance of survival looks good. In the face of the reality of relative scarcity, relatively narrow living space and relatively restricted action, numbness may be a better choice. The emotional impulse to obey the instinct of life transforms into an affectation "gait performance".

Corresponding to the natural walking posture is the popularity of stepping pants. The source of foot pants is unknown. It abandons the exaggerated rhetoric of bell bottoms, and strives for the relationship between clothing and body, seeking for a clear expression of body lines. The elastic fabric is used to form a body wrap for the whole lower body line. A narrow and thin foot loop at the end can hold the sole of the foot to ensure that the whole trousers are straight and not to shorten the trouser leg due to retraction. The prominent shape seems to provide a reliable guarantee for the "natural and unrestrained" movement.

The widespread popularity of foot pads shows that at least the attention of female groups to body shape is concerned. The stepper pants are gradually transferred from the young women to the middle-aged women and even the residents' committees. They are copied by a lot of dubious dressmakers, and the poor quality of the fabrics, even though they can highlight their waistlines, make more redundant meat known to the public. The fleshy meat subverts the perfection of the foot pants and the lower part of the body is trapped in the cold. This disappointing result has cast doubt on the possibility of "going all the way". The fashion of the foot pants is over, and the "chic" is declared bankrupt.

Cheongsam and petty bourgeois revival

The turn of the century is an important stage in the transformation of popular culture. One of the most obvious signs is the rise of petty bourgeoisie. But this new species has a small birthmark on the hips. Concealed or erased this birthmark has always been a difficult cause for petty bourgeoisie.

"Rude" and "smart" are not helpful to relieve the anxiety of petty bourgeoisie. The bestsellers such as "style", "taste" and "Bobo" published at the beginning of the new century become the enlightening readings of the new petty bourgeoisie. Petty bourgeoisie is the easiest way to expose embarrassing predecessors in detail, and this kind of reading provides a paradigm for everyday affairs such as manners and dress.

The life of colonial Shanghai was the spiritual parent of the petty bourgeoisie culture. Beyond the fragmentary of everyday life, petty bourgeois has a very strong desire for expression in the body. The body of desire is pushed to a striking position, and openly and wantonly talking about "lust" is the characteristic of petty bourgeoisie culture. The exotic sentiment and desire tendency are the core of Shanghai's nostalgia culture. Wong Kar Wai's films and Chen Yifei's paintings have revived the long lost tradition. Cheongsam, the classic clothing of the colonial Shanghai, expresses the core meaning of this nostalgic culture very well and becomes an alternative to Shanghai's old dream.

Cheongsam quietly clings to the surface of the body without any publicity, just like the gentle and elegant quality of the eastern woman. The silky texture hints that the eastern woman is glossy and smooth skin, and even appears to have body temperature. Cheongsam's narration is gentle and compact. It seems to be simple and concise. If complex clothes must be pornographic at the moment of "stripping", the extreme slit of cheongsam is a distinct prompt. It is as if the temptation of an angel to open an ambiguous smile somewhere in the distance can satisfy the desire of the desire to see it. Cheongsam cleverly used the oxymoron of clothing, blending the Oriental tradition and modern style into an extremely erotic garment. Its specious cultural semantics is the real source of the so-called "Oriental sentiment" in colonial context.

However, at the end of 2007, cheongsam and its symbolic erotic body culture encountered unprecedented crises. Ang Lee's movie "color and caution" continues to express the relationship between Wong Kar Wai and Chen Yifei's clothes and desires, but he plays dangerous sexual desires in a sensitive political context. When the body returns to the realm of the nation state, the elegant and fragile small passion culture is on the brink of the national dress, Qipao, and the chill wind on the eve of the nationalist storm.


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