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Acknowledgment 16
Cultural Differences in Chinese and American Costumes
I. Introduction
1.1. Background of the Research
For culture, people usually pide it into consciousness culture, behavior culture and material culture. The consciousness culture is also called as concept culture; behavior culture is called as system culture and material culture is called as object culture. Costume, which experienced people’s labor, manufacturing and practice, is a kind of cultural products which is made by man and it integrates the above three cultures. For costume culture, people can see the color and style and pattern by eyes, and can touch the material of costume by hand or smell the odor of costume by nose. The material characteristics of costume also reflect in its protective function; in addition, the costume culture is formed by the combination of mankind consciousness and behaviors; the costume cultural manufacturing methods such as collecting, planting, breeding and spinning are all artificial combination of the natural rules; furthermore, the costume culture reflects social psychological, religious and art as well as scientific ideological cultural forms to a great degree, especially the aesthetics concept which plays an important role in costume culture.
1.2. Research at Home and Abroad
Bryson(1994) did an analysis on visual culture about its images and interpretations and analyzed costume characteristics from the perspective of art. Welsch(1997) and Featherstone (1995) discussed costume culture from aspects of aesthetics viewpoint and culture and mentioned that costume was also an reflection of culture and a kind of special and metaphor cultural carrier. Mary Horne(1991) and Elizabeth. Horlick(1992) did professional researches on clothing culture and gave a systematic analysis on cloth and costume. Other related theories about costume are Alvin Schmit (2004) “The Second Skin of Human Being”; Entwistle. J(2000) ‘The fashioned body: fashion, dress and modern social theory;Scholars at home also did some researches on costume. Hua Mei (1995) discussed the relevance between costume and Chinese culture and illustrated that costume was an mirror of Chinese traditional culture; Zhu Ge Kai(1997) combined Chinese costume culture and Confucianism moral concept and digged into the costume origins of Chinese culture. Feng Ze Min & Liu Haiqing(2005) published their summary on systematic curriculum of western and Chinese costume development. There are also some related theories about costume, such as Zhang Jingqiong(1996) “Modern Clothes History at home and abroad”, and so on.
1.3. Significance of the Research
Because of the cultural background differences between Chinese and America, there are many differences in costume cultures as well. Hence, to do research on the differences of costume cultures in Chinese and American is good for people to gain further understanding of costume art and provide theoretical guidance for designing costume with national characteristics and times features and to facilitate the cross cultural communication in the end.It is good for developing domestic clothes industry and expand the marketing business in clothes and thus enable Chinese costume to walk towards the world.
II. Different Characteristics of Chinese and American Costumes
2.1. Characteristics of Chinese Costume
2.1.1. The Origin and Development of Chinese Costume
For the Chinese clothes origin, it can start from the primitive society social clothes, while the clothes origin can only be clarified with the sporadic archaeological discoveries which are related to clothes. The primitive society is the initiative times of clothes, and its development experienced two stages. The first stage is the obscure phrase, the late Old Stone Age Beijing men appeared with hazy clothes behaviors, until the cavemen period, it appeared the primitive sewing kit which is of great significance--the bone needle, and other primitive decorations, which enabled mankind’s aesthetics psychologies to be developed. For the Germination stage, the mankind entered into the New Stone Age and had the abilities of making full use of plant and animal fibers, Chinese people invented the weaving tools such as spinning drop and spinning machine, and so on. Among the textiles, China created the world’s ancient unique silk clothes which greatly changed the clothes situation of ancestors. And from hats to clothes and shoes, everything was ready. The primitive clothes had all kinds of profound stamps, and with people’s entrance into the civilization times, Chinese clothes and decorations gained overall and rapid development.