Entering the Millennium: Performing Transnational Identities
At the turn of the twentieth-first century, China’s rapid economic development, globalization, and the rise of digital technologies significantly shaped Chinese Canadian women’s fashion and identity expressions. China’s Open Door Policy (1978) brought drastic economic reforms in the following decades, which resulted in rapid growth in the country’s clothing, textile, and fashion industries. It encouraged women to become consumers of new fashionable clothes and re-established China’s connections with the world. At the same time, Canada introduced more venues for new Chinese immigrant applicants, such as the Federal Skilled Workers Program and Quebec Economic Classes. As a result, the new generation of immigrants came with financial and intellectual resources. With these socio-political changes, many Chinese Canadian women coming of age between 1990 and 2010 hold a greater sense of cultural pride than previous generations. They have collected garments and clothing accessories from around the world to visualize a newly emerged, transnational identity.
Twenty-first-century fashion designers of Chinese descent, like Cydney Mar and Vivienne Tam, and artist-curators like Cheryl Sim, have reimagined Chinese cheongsam as a multicultural garment by modernizing the dress. They also incorporated Chinese visual and philosophical motifs into Western clothing to signify their Chinese heritage. These ideas were widely accepted by the millennial generation of Chinese Canadian women since their fashion is not about conformity or rebellion but explorations between the two worlds. Individuals featured in this gallery have collected jewelry pieces and cheongsams from their international travels, as well as a Hawaiian shirt that appropriates Chinese culture.
Chinese Canadian women living in the contemporary diaspora use self-fashioning practices to express their multiple worldviews. They mostly wear Western clothing in everyday life but enjoy wearing Chinese clothes to deliver cultural knowledge to Western audiences during festivals and special events. Their transnational experiences contributed to the emerging idea of being a “global citizen”.
Credit: Cheryl Sim, The Fitting Room, 2019.
