Chinoiserie in the Eighteenth-Century Rococo Fashion

This study will explore Rococo chinoiserie not only as a prominent style of the decorative arts in general, but also as an important factor that influenced $18^{th}$ century fashions in dress. Two premises support the conclusion of this study. One is that the chinoiserie is truly a hybrid, a totally new style resulting from the mixture of various traditional elements from the East and the West, with little regard for the authentic nature of the original styles. The other is that the geographical scope for defining the chinoiserie influence in the Rococo fashion can be expanded beyond its lexical meaning; the style eventually encompassed visual cues from various Eastern cultures including China, India and Turkey. Regardless of the specific origins, the oriental influences for Rococo fashion can be categorized into two types. The first type is a complete appropriation of structural elements of Eastern clothing, such as pagoda hats, pagoda sleeves, turbans decorated with plumes or fur-trimmed open robes and then combining them with Western dress. These exotic and fancy dress ensembles were worn as masquerades, theatrical costumes or portraits. One extraordinary example is the banyan, a man's dressing gown, which also had a place in everyday life, not just as special costume. Although the banyan became more tailored as time passed, the traditional shape of this Eastern garment was accepted unaltered in the beginning of the $18^{th}$ century. The second type of influence shows in the use of eastern textiles, especially silks, which were made into women's dress. It did not matter to the fashionable lady if her dress was made of the silk produced in China or a European copy of the Chinese original, as long as it satisfied her taste. It is difficult to detect the signs of exotic style from a glance in this type of chinoiserie dresses since it was more ambiguous and conservative adaptation of the oriental influence in Rococo dress styles than the first type. In this study, various oriental influences appearing in $18^{th}$ century Rococo fashions can be defined as part of the chinoiserie style based upon the suggested premises. No matter what the origin of these oriental fashions was, this hybrid of the East and West made one of great impacts on the most frivolous and splendid period of western fashion history.

18세기 로코코 패션에 나타난 시누아즈리[Chinoiserie]