The exhibition explores indeed three different types of women: the Femme Fatale, that is a seductress, from courtesans to dancing hostesses and movie stars, all clad in glamorous dresses the Femme Savante, embodied by writers, artists and students whose new role was hinted at in the sartorial inventiveness of their clothes, and the Femme du Monde, donning sophisticated garments and representing the city's cosmopolitanism. The daring transformation in style from looser to more fitted garments that revealed a woman's figure becomes therefore extremely important, since it also helps shaping new feminine archetypes. The most interesting point highlighted in "Shanghai Glamour" remains the strong link between fashion, women and the city's vibrant cultural hybridity. In the context of the exhibition, each of these designs symbolises a transition, a stage in the process of change that the city, society and women in particular were going through in those decades. Organised by MOCA and by the China National Silk Museum in Hangzhou and guest-curated by scholar Mei Mei Rado, "Shanghai Glamour: New Women 1910s-40s" explores the allure of 20th century Shanghai through beautiful outfits that perfectly represent the cosmopolitan lifestyle of the city in those decades.Īmong the highlights of the event there are twelve outfits from 1910s to 1940s on loan from the China National Silk Museum and on view for the first time in the United States, and three dresses from prominent New York private collections. Women living in Shanghai in the early decades of the 1900s are the protagonists of a recently opened exhibition at the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) in New York. Tradition and modernity, two contrasting yet vital forces, gave life to a renovated society and soon Shanghai - the "Paris of the East" - boasted some of the most fashionable women, among them actresses, divas and wives of ministers. The busiest part of China's most cosmopolitan city, the road soon turned into the home of a new commercial culture with major department stores offering high standards of quality and merchandise and an innovative shopping experience that allowed people to buy all valuable brands imported from Western Europe, North America and Japan. The Nanjing Road became a mecca for the fashionable people of Shanghai. Between the 1920s and the ‘30s, Shanghai was one of the most prosperous and cosmopolitan cities of East Asia, a centre of business and pleasure offering a vibrant lifestyle thanks to its restaurants, cafes, cinemas, cabarets and dance halls.
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