Rubbish in one era, vintage in another

By Zhao Xu (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-04-03 09:13

What she couldn't have imagined back then was that the demand for them would stage a sneaky revival, albeit in a different guise.

Japanese clothes with the same bright colors and exaggerated outlines of the '80s are no longer simply regarded as "second-hand". In certain, albeit small, parts of the fashion community, they are proudly known as "vintage".

Jiang Yi, an independent fashion designer based in Beijing, attributes the phenomenon to what he dubs "the discrepancy in fashion tenses". "In terms of fashion, what is pass in one time zone may be very happening in another," he says.

He considers the trend to have nothing to do with one country recycling the "sartorial waste" of another. "To think in that way would be to miss the whole point of it," he says. "In the 1980s, the majority of linen produced in China, where it was treated as inferior to other materials, such as silk and wool, was exported to Japan.

"These days, to wear pure linen and cotton represents the ultimate style and luxury. In fashion as in love affairs, people sometimes need others to remind them of what they've got."

Jiang does, however, lament China's lack of recent fashion heritage. "Because of this dramatic fault-line that exists in the country's contemporary fashion scene, it's unfair to compare vintage fashion here with that of America, Europe or even Japan," he says. "To look back for our own legacy would be to look past the three decades from the '50s and '80s, and directly into the pre-PRC era."

"But there's not a lot there that can be borrowed for today."

All that, according to Jiang, explains why young people rely overly on "borrowed fashion" when they seek to make a statement by reconnecting with the past. Most of them are blissfully unaware of China's previous and not-so-sweet encounter with these clothes.

And it is in their determination to strike out stylistically that the designer sees a distinct difference between people who shop for second-hand clothes today and those who did 20 years ago. "Between then and now, China has experienced a fashion awakening that has imbued an old trend with new meaning," he says. "Young people are looking for style, not necessarily bargains."

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