1950s Shanghai Fashion: Making New Clothes from Old

In 1957, Shanghai fashion was all about recycling: turning old clothes into new. That year, the Shanghai Clothing Company published a pattern book, “Making New Clothes From Old”, with patterns to turn your bourgeois changshan (men’s gown) into something more proletarian.

Inside, there are patterns to turn an “old style” women’s overcoat into Sun Yat-sen suit. But it wasn’t all about proletarian wear: your short-sleeved qipao could become a skirt; a long-sleeved changshan could be turned into a girl’s dance dress. And there’s even a pattern for a qipao.

  A 1956 article from the Guardian explains why: if Shanghai people insisted on making the blue cotton Sun Yat-sen suits, there wouldn’t be enough material for the farmers and workers. Instead, Shanghai people were advised, “If you have good clothes, wear them. If you need new clothes, don’t make [use] blue.”

Luckily, when it came to fabric, Shanghai did have other options aside from blue cotton. The Shanghai Textile Company made colorful, colorfast fabrics, and exported them around the region. Situated in the old Jardines building on the Bund, their ads are a treasure, showing Shanghai Textile company fabrics used as saris and sarongs, against suitably exotic backdrops. And there were fashionable permed-hair women sporting trousers and qipaos, against the skyscrapers of Shanghai.