Poetry in motion

“Fashioning Chinese Women: Empire to Modernity” at LACMA

by Bondo Wyszpolski

The lavish dresses and ensembles in this elegant but austere exhibition are largely from the collection of Chere Lai Mah. For over 45 years she safeguarded the 19th and 20th century wardrobes that had belonged to her mother and mother-in-law, supplementing them with her own acquisitions, stunning outfits made not only in China but also Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore, Taiwan and Tokyo, plus San Francisco and New York.

A couple of years ago she handed them over to LACMA. Along with works from the museum’s permanent collection, they form the basis of “Fashioning Chinese Women,” covering a period from the fall of the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) through the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).

The exhibition, which is guest curated by Michaela Hansen, with a multiroom installation by Chu-Gooding, an L.A.-based architectural firm, is on view through Oct. 12.

The majority of the outfits are mounted on 3D-printed mannequins, their faces and hairstyles uniformly colored a creamy ivory, which were customized by fashion designer Jason Wu. It’s all very stylish, and in some ways singular, because for the most part the figures are highlighted without the flavor of an accoutrement or two. Meaning no handbags, cigarette holders, parasols, earrings, brooches, hats or bejeweled turbans, and no leashes with panthers or leopards.

I’ll concede that these accessories may not be necessary, but if they’d had wigs we’d better envision what the hairstyles were like at the time the individual pieces were sewn. But there’s another question one might ask: How would the women in these dresses have walked?

It’s true, as Anne Hollander wrote in “Feeding the Eye,” that “The beauty of dress comes alive in art,” but as Fritz Saxl pointed out in 1936, “”We know very little about a dress, especially about a woman’s dress, if we do not know how it looked when its wearer walked through a room, mounted a staircase, sat down, etc.”

One might get some idea from Alain Robbe-Grillet’s novel, “La Maison de Rendezvous,” in which he describes “A clinging dress, streaked at each step by slender shifting wrinkles across the hips and belly; the shiny silk gleams in the light from the shop lanterns…” But a real sense of the sultry and the slinky and what have you are perhaps best conveyed by Maggie Cheung in Stanley Kwan’s “Center Stage” and Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love”. A lesser-known film by Wong Kar-wai is “The Hand,” starring Gong Li, which is about the relationship between a prostitute and her tailor, and it conveys the attention to detail that goes into creating a wearable work of art. And I might add that earlier in the last century it was the courtesans in Shanghai and similar port cities who often influenced what became fashionable.

That’s not to imply that the outfits in “Fashioning Chinese Women” are in any way related to what are euphemistically known as brides of one night, but if these clothes were to come alive on the body of a sleek and slender woman there would likely be a certain level of irrepressible sensuality. Most of these ensembles are jaw-dropping gorgeous.

In the penultimate gallery, projected on one wall, is a “Chinese Fashion Show” filmed on March 4, 1929. And in the last room, where related books can be perused, it’s possible to sit and watch “The Toll of the Sea” (1922), a 55-minute silent motion picture — in color! — that starred Anna May Wong in what is essentially a retelling of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly”. It’s heartrending, so be forewarned. Who would have guessed, back then, that 100 years later Anna May Wong would be featured on a U.S. quarter.

I could describe how, in the middle of the last century, textile technologies advanced, so that synthetic dyes and manmade fibers expanded the range of what was more colorful or more affordable, but this is a visual show to be immersed in and not so much read about, although there is an accompanying catalogue for those looking for terminologies and details, and the difference between a qipao (Mandarin) and a cheongsam (Cantonese), both of which are long, one-piece gowns with high collars. It’s fascinating, but first you must enter the galleries, take it slow and easy, and indulge yourself.

Fashioning Chinese Women: Empire to Modernity is on view in the BCAM (Broad Contemporary Art Museum) wing of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles. Hours, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Closed Wednesday. More at lacma.org. PEN