Shopping Cart   |   Help

Changing Clothes in China: Fashion, History, Nation

Antonia Finnane

February, 2008
Cloth, 360 pages, 200 illus
ISBN: 978-0-231-14350-9
$35.00


"It is clear from these pages how frequently the world of fashion has turned to China for inspiration." — Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

"[A] beautifully illustrated book . . . with delightful analysis of how gender, class,

and nationalism have influenced Chinese fashions through the ages." — The China Beat

"This is the long-awaited, authoritative, and definitive study of fashion in modern China. Antonia Finnane, a pioneer in this area, has accomplished an incredible feat—producing a vigorously-argued book that would advance intellectual debates while remaining accessible to the general reader. This is the first book-length work that situates 'fashion' in historical contexts, from the world trading system and urban development to revolutionary movements in modern China. It will launch fashion study as a serious intellectual endeavor in the field of Chinese studies while appealing to scholars in comparative fields (fashion studies, socioeconomic history, cultural history, and postcolonial studies) and the general reader alike." — Dorothy Ko, Columbia University

"This attractive and approachable book is to be welcomed as a contribution to the debates about culture, modernity, and gender in twentieth-century China, and, more widely, to the growing body of work on clothing and identity." — Verity Wilson, former Curator of Costume, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Related Subjects


About the Author

Antonia Finnane is reader in history in the School of Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne. She studied at Sydney University, the Beijing Language Institute, and Nanjing University before completing a Ph.D. in Chinese history at the Australian National University. She is the author of Speaking of Yangzhou: A Chinese City, 1550-1850, which was awarded the 2006 Joseph Levenson Book Award for a work on pre-1900 China.

top of page