A Study On The Culture Of Men 's Dress In The Republic Of China

Although the Republic of China (1912-1949) did not last long, it hadbeen the most pivotal changing period of Chinese dress custom. With thewars, revolutions and a series of other radical political and social changes,tremendous reforms are witnessed in Chinese social live and culturalideas. In those few decades, the traditional dress custom lasted forthousands years was abandoned and a great transition from classical tomodern,from Chinese style to western style,was complete. However, It isnoteworthy that, although the dress for both men and women has had ahuge change in their appearance, more significant differences wereshowed in terms of the image implication, the formal rules and theintrinsic cultural. The development of society carried out a uniquecultural change of menswear, which not only reflected the social livingcircumstances at that time, but also reflected historic features of aestheticorientation, consciousness and values. In addition, the culture of themen’s dress in the Republic of China also played an important role in thenation’s movement towards modern society. Therefore, it can be regardedas an important reference for understanding Chinese modern cultural andclothing history.By taking the culture of men’s dress custom in the Republic of Chinaas the object, this research is established in breaking through the thinking frames in the past and constructing a brand-new research paradigm. Thestudy considers that the culture of men’s dress during the Republicanperiod can be divided into two levels: the historical status of menswearevolution, as well as the image implication posed by the morphology, canbe seen as relatively explicit surface culture. However, under thepresentation of men’s dress custom, there are some more profoundcultural rules, which take clothing as a media, make the role of the malebody an object to influence social behavior and consciousness of humanthinking. Under this train of thought, the analysis is a progressive layersof the process of men’s dress culture from the shallower to the deepercore. To be more specific, this paper is divided into four chapters:1.Organizing the development of both traditional and western style ofmen’s dress in the Republic of China, summarizing the the trend anddriving factors of it.2. Inducting the morphological characteristics,analyzing the different image implication between men’s and women’sdress.3. Analyzing the deep culture of men’s dress custom in Republicanperiod and exploring its intrinsic link to the ideology, social culture aswell as the power system.4. Summarizing the internal laws of themenswear evolution in the Republic of China from a macro perspective,and explaining its impact on today’s Chinese men’s dress custom.Methodologically speaking, this paper presents its argument bycombining theory with demonstration, and a variety of research methods are used in this study, such as: antiques examination, literature review,interdisciplinary research and contrastive analysis. The paper seeks tocomparatively and systematically analyze the cultural structure of men’sdress custom in the Republican of China from a broader and deeperresearch angle.