ABSTRACT
For the last 400 years, Western fashion has fl irted with Orientalism as a source of reference and “inspiration” for a diversity of designs.This was never more apparent than in the 1990s when the international fashion system, from Paris haute couture to the diffused mass market, employed exotic tropes taken from Asia as stylistic references. “Oriental” dress became the subject of major exhibitions and associated publications, such as Orientalism: Visions of the East in Western Dress, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994/5, and China Chic, held at the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, in spring 1999. The reasons for this turn to the Orient were not unrelated to the general “opening up” of China after 1981, and to more specifi c events. The return of Hong Kong’s sovereignty from Britain to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, in particular, accelerated a sense of Chinese identity, and began to develop a confi dence in that identity in the colony and beyond.
