The Wartime: Living the Fantasy through Fashion

From the 1920s to 1949, feminist movements of the “New Woman” in both the West and parts of China as well as the Second World War, contributed to hybridity in clothing and fashion among Chinese Canadian women. China experienced the Japanese invasion and conflicts between the Republicans and the Communist Party. As Chinese Canadian women lost their cultural confidence due to the war and China’s global image, Canada banned Chinese immigration, making their living condition harsher. Between 1923 and 1947, many Chinese Canadians had to cope with the hardship of separation from their families in China, as well as restrained economic and limited employment opportunities in Canada. According to the 1941 Census, over ninety percent of Chinese Canadians lived in or close to Chinatowns in cultural isolation. 

There was a tendency among young Chinese Canadian women during this period to adopt “strategic hybridity” – to form a mixed, transnational style combining traditional Chinese garments with elements of Western design. Many dresses maintained the structure of Chinese cheongsam but adopted “Westernized” lengths, cuts, and collars to fit into modern women’s active lifestyle. During wartime, fashion prioritized utility and comfort over elaborateness. As a result, Chinese Canadian women started to wear loosely fitted dresses with simple decorations instead of traditionally restricted cheongsams. The war played a crucial role in shaping modern femininity. It also inspired Chinese Canadian women coming of age between 1930 and 1940 to use fashion to express modern identities, freedom, and more active social engagement. 

During this time, Hollywood culture heavily impacted women’s self-fashioning practices. Chinese Canadian women saw Western fashion as a strategy for fitting into mainstream society and as a way to experience beauty and elegance that only belonged to their white contemporaries. Due to anti-Chinese racism and alienation, some women, like Lillian Sam, fantasized about white people’s appearances. They used their fashion as a citation of power to create a persona that is distanced from their foreign identity to embody beauty and citizenship rights. 

Portrait of a Group of Chinese Women, not before 1930s (Credit: UBC Library Chung Collection: CC_PH_00200)