'When Western designers are inspired by China's long and rich history, they invariably gravitate toward the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), the Republic of China (1912–49), and the People's Republic of China (1949–present), and respectively, the Manchu robe, the modern qipao, and the Zhongshan suit (after Sun Yat-sen, but more commonly known in the West as the Mao suit, after Mao Zedong). For designers, these garments serve not only as a kind of shorthand for China and the shifting social and political identities of its peoples, but also as sartorial symbols that allow Western designers to contemplate the idea of a radically different society from their own.
By integrating references to the Manchu robe, qipao, and Mao suit into their fashions, designers engage in a form of romantic Orientalism that emphasizes the role of dress as a performative act. Their clothes—like those depicted in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Orientalist paintings—allow the wearer to fabricate an alternative identity through a process of cultural displacement. While some may perceive an implicit power imbalance in such costuming, designers are driven less by the logic of politics than by that of fashion, which is typically more concerned with an aesthetic of surfaces rather than the specifics of cultural context."
~Metropolitan Museum of Art
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