1 - The Red Group Tailors and the Zhongshan Suit

Summary

As a single-party state, Communist China had a precedent in Nationalist China. As a vestimentary regime the party state of the People’s Republic of China shared important features with its predecessor, most noticeably the cadre suit. The shared human resources of the two party states included the Red Group tailors, masters of Western tailoring in the former Treaty Ports, especially in Shanghai. The story of the Zhongshan suit takes various forms but most involve the Red Group. Chapter 1 relates their story, important in Chinese history not only because of this hagiographical element but also because of the manifest significance of the group as agents in the transformation of tailoring techniques. In a historical context characterized by often sharp oppositions between West and East, China and Japan, and Nationalists and Communists, the history of the Red Group shows the links between the Western suit and the Zhongshan suit, tailoring techniques in Japan and China, and dress practices in the Nationalist and Communist eras respectively.