At 3pm on Oct 1, 1949, Chairman of the Communist Party of China Mao Zedong declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China from the tower of Beijing’s Tian’anmen Gate, joined by other prominent figures who would form the core of the country’s leadership. More than 300,000 people filled Tian’anmen Square to watch the announcement.

“For 75 years, this moment has been viewed by generations of Chinese as a deeply emotional milestone in contemporary Chinese history. Yet not many are aware of the fact that almost all who had turned up at the tower that day, including Chairman Mao himself, was wearing a special type of formal suit known in China as the Zhongshan suit,” says Liu Wei, a professor from the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, one of China’s top fashion colleges.

According to Liu, Chinese fashion in the 1950s and 60s was characterized by uniformity and practicality, due to the dominant social ideology and the era’s economic situation. Somber, muted colors like “army green” and “police officer blue” reigned.

But a decade after the official start of China’s reform and opening-up in 1978, Deng Xiaoping, whom many today regards as the initiative’s “chief architect”, focused on transitioning Chinese economy into a more market-oriented one and making the country more connected to the rest of the world.

A message was then sent out, first and foremost, by top Chinese leaders donning Western suits, which had been absent from view for the previous decade as China weathered the tumultuous “cultural revolution”.

One Chinese city to feel the immediate effects of the reform measures was Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, whose historic name was ‘Canton’.

“With preferential treatment for investors, many of whom were from Hong Kong and Taiwan, the factories in Guangdong started to manufacture at an unprecedented scale, mostly with materials and samples provided by whoever placed the order,” says Liu.

It’s no coincidence that the very first joint venture between the mainland and Hong Kong was a factory located in Guangdong’s Dongguan city that produced sample-based handbags. From Guangdong, the influence of Western fashion started to spread throughout the rest of China, first in trickles then in waves.

By the time Yang Jie, Liu’s colleague at BIFT, was in middle school in the mid-1990s, the cultural impacts of opening up were fully felt. “Film, music, fashion, hairstyles… they were all one package,” says the 42-year-old. For him and many of his peers back then, Hong Kong entertainment stars, whose images flooded TV screens, were indisputable fashion icons.

“Those were the days when young people dressed up like hippies and danced to loud rock music pouring out of cassette players,” continues Yang, who remembers vividly wearing a leather jacket to school before anyone else and was gently reprimanded by the head teacher to put his studies first.

“The economic reform had led to a substantial improvement in living standards for the average Chinese, which led to an explosion of ideas and a newfound need for self-expression, which the younger generation reveled in. Fashion allowed them to make bold statements, not completely unlike the way the revolutionaries did with the Zhongshan suit.”

Published in Dawn, October 7th, 2024