Logically,”China”and “West”is two conception in different level,the former is a specific country while the latter is just a direction.Generally, “Chinese” culture is supposed to compare with “French” or “Italian” culture or there is a logic to compare “Eastern”culture with “Western”culture.So,why these two different level conception are put together to compare and study?Because in this article,”West” is a conception which is related closely to the next word”clothing culture”.That is, “Western clothing culture” which means the clothing culture in the Christian culture circle which have been developed and formed on the basis of  Mediterranean civilization since the Middle Ages.This subject is to compare the clothing culture which has great effect on the current clothing culture of the world with the clothing culture which is in Chinese culture circle developed and formed on the basis of the Yellow River Civilization.Islam culture circle and Indian culture circle are excluded.During the relatively long history and in the relatively independent social environment,eastern and western clothing culture have formed their own clothing system.Now as the economy is constantly developing and the technology is continuously making progress,the globalization of the world economy and trade has brought homogenization to the life style of people from d
ifferent countries.With this trend different clothing styles are becoming the same day by day.People from west look at the rise of China——the eastern dragon with new eyes,especially eastern clothing designers constantly add Chinese clothing culture elements to their new designs.Seeing through these appearances,people cannot help to ponder deeply over a series of questions,for example,what on earth the differences are between Chinese and Western clothing culture.? Are there something similar or same in this two kind of culture?The main trend of future Chinese clothing style is “international” western clothing culture,or the Chinese local clothing culture or the combination of the two? 
  Geographically,Chinese culture originated from the Yellow River Civilization,and was progressed and formed in a relatively settled and closed geographically environment.From days of old,Confucianism,Taoism philosophy,Buddhism,Islam and Christian culture have ever collided,communicated and integrated with each other on this earth.,and built Chinese culture features implicit and compatible together.In addition,under the long domination of political system of feudal society,highly advanced cultural system has been built.
  It’s certained that Chinese and Western clothing culture,a part of the two totally different cultural systems mentioned above,are characterized by clear differences.clothes和clothing
After the primitive society when eating raw birds and animals,human beings created different dress culture in different geographically environment.Chinese have made use of plant fibers such as hemp,flax and ramie and so on and animal fibers like wool etc for a long time ago,and as early as 6900 years ago,they had begun to raising silkworms to weave.Silk is one of the great contribution to humans’ clothes made by Chinese,so we can’t talk about Chinese clothing culture without mentioning elegant silk.In contrast to Chinese flourishing silk culture,ancient Egypt was dominated by flax culture,Mesopotamia was led by wool culture and India is the cradle of cotton culture.Without any innovation in dress material,ancient Greek and ancient Rome inherited the culture which combines flax culture with wool culture from the antient times civilization on Mediterranean.As for silk,although as early as BC ancient Rome had appreciated the beauty of the silk from far east via Silk Road,people of ancient Rome remained ignorant about the secret of the beautiful silk for a relatively long history.Byzentine Empire couldn’t know the secret of silk u
ntil they sent two missionaries who could speak Chinese to China in A.D.552 and one century later,Byzentium just successfully wove the silk while European couldn’t make it all by themselves until the Italian Renaissance in 13th –14th century.
  Chinese and people from west have clear differences in cogniton and priorities of clothing function: from of old times,Chinese placed great emphasis on the social ethic function of dress. They not only wore clothes just for warmth or ornament,but also paid more attention to the social ethic function of “governing the country and establishing peace throughout the world”.From Xia Dynasty,Shang Dynasty to Zhou Dynasty,as the improvement of dress and etiquette system,this concept almost runs through the whole Chinese history——monarch of every dynasty all accorded importance to unify people’s view by restricting what they wore and never tired of revising clothing system again and again to make all people from different classes conduct in accordance with their rules and “manage state affair to make their country peaceful”.As for this aspect, western cannot compare with China.People of ancient Rome had ever put great emphasis on status symbols of clothes wore by people from different classes and in feudal times,every kind of clothing bans had been constantly
made ,however,most of the bans were for forbidding extravagance and few westerners could make full use of clothing social function like Chinese,in contrast,they paid more attention to the wealth value and aesthetics function.
  Chinese and westerners show distinctions in dressing views.Because of the influence of Confucianism and setting value on social ethic function of clothes,it shows a kind of east-style reserve in Chinese clothes——the skin was wrapped and hid carefully which at some level can be said Chinese clothing culture is a kind of “wrapping”culture in which feature cannot be showed and naked skin cannot be seen at random.There was always wide space between clothes and body which was the reason why the changes of clothes style were relatively steady and there were seldom big changes,but Chinese clothing progressed in the aspects like surface ornament,the symbol of pattern design and color,material quality and the development of ornament methods;the latter made Chinese clothing style remain reserved,which generally speaking,naked skin was hardly seen in addition to some men dress at the period of Wei and Jin Dynasties. (eg.the dress of ”Zhu Lin Qi Xian”——the famous literati in that period,including Qi Kang,Ruan Ji,Shan Tao,Xiang Xiu,Liu Ling,Wong
Rong and Ruan Han) and noblewomen dress at the period of the glorious Tang Dynasty. On the contrary,with the exception of the special period when the denial of the existence of people and the representation of the beauty of the human body appeared because of the influence of Christrian,western dress all represented realistically or even exaggeratedly the figures of  humans no matter when “wide clothes”of ancient times or “narrow clothes” of Renaissance prevailed,especially since Gothic times in the late Middle Ages,the sex characteristics of men and women in figures have been emphasized more without any concealment——westerners who designed the clothes not only endeavored to “reveal”these figure characteristics of men and women, but also expanded continuously the exposed areas and body parts of the clothes(particularly the women clothes).Speaking of “revealing”,a series of methods to improve clothes were created which made western clothes much more different from each other in the style and there were more creations by people in the structure of clothes.
  From of old times,Chinese clothes,separated and closed in front of the clothes,fixed by bands and easy to put on and take off, are characterized by a top jacket and a skirt on the
bottom;while the style of western clothes were various which developed from hanging-style to the Guantou-style(made with cloth whose length is as two times as the height of one person and was folded in the middle where a hole was made.People can wear the clothes via the hole and the clothes was fixed by a band in the waist)，then to the separated-in-front style,  fixed by decorative pins and buttons(even if western buttons were learned from Asia) and formed a set of relatively complicated dressing skills.Especially,the dressing style called Guantou-style which was rarely seen in the Chinese clothing history was very popular in western.From Tunic of ancient Egypt to Tunica of ancient Rome and Dalmatica of Byzentium,then to the Bliaut of the Middle Ages and every kind of Robe that come after Bliaut were almost the Guantou-style.Most of the dresses,one of the popular kind of modern women clothes,are Guantou-style,or it is said the Guantou-style dress is most orthodox.As early as the Spring and Autumn Period(770 B.C-476B. C),”Shenyi”(deep garment,literally means wrapping the body deep within the clothes)”which was made up of the upper and lower garment with one-piece cloth appeared in China, but from the beginning,”Shenyi” belongs to the style which was separated and closed in front and every
kind of robes and “shan”(sleeveless jacket with vent in the sides of a jacket) was all separated-in- front style. The western-style shirt which is separated in front people wear now used to be Guantou-style and after the middle of 19th century,the real separated-in-front shirt just appeared.Besides,hanging-style clothes was also very popular in western,however,this dressing way appeared relatively late in China when spreading to China together with Buddism from India and until now it’s still restricted in cowl wore by monks.The clothes hung on the body with one-piece cloth like Chiton and Himation of ancient Greek and Toga of ancient Rome etc emphasized on the graceful frills formed when being hung,which also formed a special type of clothing shape and dressing way distinct from Chinese traditional clothes.The  culture of “wide clothes” of western and China are completely two different kind of culture and can’t be compared either in the style and the content or in the concept and the effect.

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