Chinoiserie in fashion: History and Key Facts

Chinoiserie in fashion refers to the any use of chinoiserie elements in fashion, especially in American and European fashion. Since the 17th century, Chinese arts and aesthetic were sources of inspiration to European artists, creators, and fashion designers when goods from oriental countries were widely seen for the first time in Western Europe. Western chinoiserie was also often mixed with other exotic elements which were not all indigenous to China.

Throughout its history, chinoiserie in fashion was sometimes a display of cultural appreciation; but at times, it was also associated with exoticism, Orientalism, cultural appropriation, Western imperialism, and colonialism, and eroticism.

The imagining of China was always more fanciful than real. Trade provided products, but even more importantly, the West copied the Oriental land that it had never conquered. It never possessed the dragons, butterflies, or pagodas that it admired and emulated. If it was an unrequited colonialism, the West's passion for China abides today in the continuing aesthetic fascination for that Far East land

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