Thank you Lai Wah for the photo, your mother is beautiful. Her chungsan reminds me of this boy looking up to his mother in that same period of time. Regards, Peter
Thank you, Aagg, for your kind request to add the detail of my mum's chungsan in colour. It's taken me a while to locate the silk dress (which is now fragile and slightly discoloured), but here are a couple of snaps.
Amazing that the dress still exists, it appears to be in perfect condition and I looked at the beading up close - not one bead is missing.
I assume this silk dress is now an heirloom in your family.
Thank you for taking the time to locate your mother's precious dress, and for taking photos of it. Gwulo's female members need more female-oriented posts like this!
Looking at the beading up close, there does not look to be any applique fabric under the beads so I take it that each line of beads was sewn on by hand.
How kind of you, Aagg, to show such an interest - which in turn has given me a new appreciation of the dress. I wouldn't say it is in 'perfect' condition (it has a couple of tiny holes), but it's not bad considering it's 70 years old. (Coming from a poor background, my mum always looked after her clothes.) Yes, the beads are all intact and would have been sewn on by hand, straight on to the silk. This is very much a precious family heirloom, along with three other surviving chungsans that I thought you might like to see. Each one measures 13 inches across the waistline, the equivalent of a size 6. My mum had a tiny waist into her twenties, which she attributed to the scarcity of food during the war and severe rationing in the aftermath.
With the photo of your mother wearing a chungsan in https://gwulo.com/media/38371 , although that photo is not fully clear, one can see decorative shapes on it, probably flowers, and I think I identified that particular chungsan as being the one which has a purple background with white flowers and leaves that you posted because the position of the flowers looks the same on both photos - but I might be wrong.
The pink dress on the left, and the white one on the right, if you look at them close-up, both have sheer semi-transparent fabric amongst the floral patterns, but ladies in the 1950s usually wore slips underneath their dresses for added coverage. (I am sure your mother is wearing a slip in the above-mentioned Dance Club 1950s photo, you can see the slip's corners next to her knee.)
Your mother's four chungsans are a part of Hong Kong's fashion heritage, so thank you for sharing the photos of them!
Comments
Chungsan
Thank you Lai Wah for the photo, your mother is beautiful. Her chungsan reminds me of this boy looking up to his mother in that same period of time. Regards, Peter
Thank you, Peter, that's kind
Thank you, Peter, that's kind of you to say.
The photographer used the…
The photographer used the lighting well to capture the beading at its sparkly best.
If this white dress with blue beading still exists, would you take a photo of it and post it so that readers can see the ornate design in colour?
Chungsan update
Thank you, Aagg, for your kind request to add the detail of my mum's chungsan in colour. It's taken me a while to locate the silk dress (which is now fragile and slightly discoloured), but here are a couple of snaps.
1950s chungsan
Amazing that the dress still…
Amazing that the dress still exists, it appears to be in perfect condition and I looked at the beading up close - not one bead is missing.
I assume this silk dress is now an heirloom in your family.
Thank you for taking the time to locate your mother's precious dress, and for taking photos of it. Gwulo's female members need more female-oriented posts like this!
Looking at the beading up…
Looking at the beading up close, there does not look to be any applique fabric under the beads so I take it that each line of beads was sewn on by hand.
How kind of you, Aagg, to…
How kind of you, Aagg, to show such an interest - which in turn has given me a new appreciation of the dress. I wouldn't say it is in 'perfect' condition (it has a couple of tiny holes), but it's not bad considering it's 70 years old. (Coming from a poor background, my mum always looked after her clothes.) Yes, the beads are all intact and would have been sewn on by hand, straight on to the silk. This is very much a precious family heirloom, along with three other surviving chungsans that I thought you might like to see. Each one measures 13 inches across the waistline, the equivalent of a size 6. My mum had a tiny waist into her twenties, which she attributed to the scarcity of food during the war and severe rationing in the aftermath.
1950s silk chungsan, by Lai…
Wow, a size 6 waistline. …
Wow, a size 6 waistline.
What a pity that your mother's lilac with black beads chungsan in https://gwulo.com/media/38373 went missing.