How to Make a Mao Suit
Clothing the People of Communist China, 1949–1976

Revisionist history of the transformation of clothing in China during the Mao years, 1949–1976.

Antonia Finnane (Author)

9781009359955, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 31 July 2023

376 pages
28 x 19 x 2.6 cm, 0.762 kg

'Garments made and worn mirror wider societal priorities, possibilities, and constraints. Antonia Finnane brilliantly illuminates the complexity of the Maoist era, a time of seemingly simple and strict sartorial aims, revealed as much more. Finnane recasts our understanding with ground-breaking gender-rich scholarship, revealing the options and boundaries shaping twentieth-century Chinese life.' Beverley Lemire, University of Alberta

When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, new clothing protocols for state employees resulted in far-reaching changes in what people wore. In a pioneering history of dress in the Mao years (1949–1976), Antonia Finnane traces the transformation, using industry archives and personal stories to reveal a clothing regime pivoted on the so-called 'Mao suit'. The time of the Mao suit was the time of sewing schools and sewing machines, pattern books and homemade clothes. It was also a time of close economic planning, when rationing meant a limited range of clothes made, usually by women, from limited amounts of cloth. In an area of scholarship dominated by attention to consumption, Finnane presents a revisionist account focused instead on production. How to Make a Mao Suit provides a richly illustrated account of clothing that links the material culture of the Mao years to broader cultural and technological changes of the twentieth century.

List of figures
List of maps
List of tables
Acknowledgements
Technical notes
Introduction
1. The Red Group tailors and the Zhongshan suit
2. Notions and sewing tools
3. Making zhifu
4. Sewing like a girl
5. Rationing
6. The time of the sewing machine
7. Pattern books I: origins, authors, readers
8. Pattern books II: how to take a measurement
9. What should Chinese women wear?
Conclusion
Appendices
Glossary
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]