The Study Of Women’s Aesthetic On Costume In 1930s By Analyzing Linglong Magazine

Being one of the most prevailing women pictorial in 1930 s of the Republic Period, Linglong witnessed the transition of costume from ’Chinese’ to ’Western’ style within seven years between 1931 and 1937. Abundant pictures of women’s costumes and body, as well as the publication of women’s reviews on costume from all over the country were all featured in Linglong. It therefore supplements as a more detailed research data and provides an insightful perspective for the study of Aesthetic of Costume. In other words, Linglong is an essential material for us to study the changes in women’s aesthetic in 1930 s.This article first provides brief introductions of five of Linglong’s characteristics. Then it compares Linglong with Women’s Magazine(Funu Zazhi) and Liangyou according to the type of women magazine and pictorial. Finally, it gives a detailed explanation on Linglong’s graphics and text information, analyzing women’s costume of the Republic Period and potential changes in women’s aesthetic ideas based on the following three levels.First,there are three categories of text information incorporated in Linglong. They are general knowledge about costume, costume news and comments. Editors of Linglong magazine, spreading the latest costume information and dressing advices for women, mainly wrote the general knowledge and news. The comments came mainly from women of Republic of China reviewing on all types of costume. Based on whether to accept western costume and western images, the comments are categorized into neutral, supportive and opposed perspectives.Second,Linglong contains a wide types of images. Except for pictures of western female wearing fashion costumes in entertainment columns, the rest of them were mainly real pictures posted by authors and readers of Linglong. These pictures show different types of costumes prevailed at that time. From movie stars, celebrities to ordinary students, Qipao was the most frequently worn item among those groups. This article also conducts the overall and case analysis on Qipao between 1931 and 1937 based on the images in Linglong. By studying the ’linellae’ element of Qipao in 1930 s as a start point, this article shows the conflict and inclusiveness between Chinese and Western aesthetic idea and explains the reason why Qipao replaced ’The new clothes’ to became the prototype of female costume in modern times. Besides Qipao, other costumes exhibited in Linglong can be divided into Chinese style and Western style. However, the number of Chinese style costume was not nearly as many as western ones.Third, in addition to images of costume themselves, other types of images were also featured in Linglong. I divide them into three types of female body images—naked pictures, pictures of women wearing a particular cloth for highlighting a specific part of body and pictures of women doing sports in various sporting occasions. This article not only conducts the analysis of impacts those pictures had on women’s body aesthetics of the Republic Period respectively, but at the same time analytically compares the pictures of Chinese women’s body and western women’s one.To sum up, we are able to better understand many aspects of women’s costume in 1930 s of the Republic Period and the transition of their aesthetic ideas by studying the means of how Linglong expressed its graphic and text information.