Chinese hanfu wearing event

From my understanding, the word 汉服 hanfu in the meaning we know it as today was first used in the 1990s, when some nationalist historical costume enthusiasts decided to start a movement to revive “traditional Chinese clothing” (in quotation marks because the definition is kind of vague), giving birth to the Hanfu Movement. “Han” is the majority ethnicity in China, and “fu” just means “clothing”, “garb” or “costume”, therefore “hanfu” linguistically refers to clothing worn by Han Chinese people. The controversy surrounding this view is that while it is true that the term “hanfu” was used in some historical texts, they were often used in opposition to clothing worn by foreign peoples or 胡服 hufu (literatlly “foreign garb”) and not as a standalone term. Kind of like how we humans wouldn’t refer to our clothing styles as “Earth clothing” unless we come into contact with alien peoples whose ethnic dress is significantly different to ours. A common explanation for why they picked the word hanfu was that it was selected from ancient texts describing clothing worn by Han Chinese people. The word “kimono” or 着物 just means “clothing” in Japanese, and it wasn’t until Japan came into contact with the West, whose clothing styles were very different, that kimono came to refer to Japanese clothing specifically. Ok forget about aliens, there’s a better analogy. If you asked a Chinese person from, say, the 1580s to describe their fashion, they would probably go into detail about whatever garment or style was trendy at the moment and not respond with a simple “I wear hanfu”. This is not how we use this word today, though. Whereas if you asked the same person to describe the differences between Chinese fashion and Spanish fashion, they might use the term hanfu. Another idea I’ve been fascinated by is the theory that hanfu was invented to make a catchy term for historical Chinese clothing comparable to kimono or hanbok. This was probably true to some extent, since there was quite a bit of nationalism among early hanfu enthusiasts and I can see where the need to be “on a par” with Japan and Korea on this matter of representation comes from. Since the inception of the Hanfu Movement in the 90s, there have been multiple mainstream definitions for the term, and hanfu is a pretty decentralized and leaderless movement nowadays so everybody could attribute to it the meaning they like. Most people consider it every type of Han Chinese clothing worn from Antiquity to the end of the Ming Dynasty, though some people expand hanfu to include Han clothing of the Yuan or early Qing. Some people considered hanfu to be specifically clothing worn during the Han Dynasty, which isn’t a common view anymore. On a side note, hanfu doesn’t appear to be a common word used in academia, where scholars usually just say “historical Chinese clothing”, or refer to specific garment styles by name, further adding to the confusion. Some people consider tv and film costumes which aren’t exactly historically accurate hanfu as well. Nowadays people commonly use hanfu to refer to the community that developed from the 1990s Hanfu Movement and the clothing styles produced and worn by hanfu enthusiasts, and its exact definitions really depend on who you ask. I personally just use it to refer to anything related to the community or Chinese historical clothing pre Qing in general. Although hanfu styles are drawn from history, the original aim of the Hanfu Movement was to revive traditional Chinese clothing not conserve, making the concept of hanfu a relatively new one. Throughout the Qing and 20th century, people did have an idea of how Han clothing was a unique system different to Manchu or Western dress, but they just went with the flow and let Han clothing do whatever was considered fashionable. Clothing styles with a 大襟 dajin or curved front closure which are commonly considered “too Manchu” in modern hanfu discourse, such as changshan, cheongsam, aoqun and aoku, were the poster children for Han clothing for most of the 20th century. Han clothing was more commonly referred to as 汉装 hanzhuang (also “Han garb”) in this period, not hanfu. When hanfu came along, it challenged this established notion and proposed a different approach to “traditional clothing”–looking for older clothing styles prior to the absorption of Manchu influence. This means that hanfu isn’t so much as a traditional or conservationist community, but rather a modern, revivalist one. Because most hanfu styles popular nowadays are reproductions made by companies established in the 2010s and not directly passed down to us from older generations, we can’t guarantee that they’re 100% authentic. I’ll paraphrase this quote about Gothic Revival architecture I read which also fits the Hanfu Movement quite nicely: “it went in search of origins but came back with originality”. Some people get offended by this notion, which I don’t quite understand because it’s not a bad thing at all. TLDR, the word itself is older, but the use of this term as a standalone word not in opposition to foreign dress is a modern thing. There’s been plenty of debate (and still ongoing) on what the term “hanfu” does and doesn’t include ever since the beginning of the hanfu movement, but it has never been considered to be just the clothing worn during the Han dynasty, at least among revivalists (x). I really like that last quote – “it went in search of origins but came back with originality” – definitely captures the current spirit and trajectory of the hanfu revival movement. Thankfully these days I see less of it, but for a long time it was the number one misunderstanding people had regarding hanfu. This incorrect definition was mainly used by uninformed journalists (both Chinese and foreign) who didn’t bother to do research on the topic, thereby spreading the misconception even further. TV and film costumes which aren’t exactly historically accurate are typically called guzhuang/古装 (“ancient costume”) or yinglouzhuang/影楼装 (“photo studio costume”) (1, 2), and they are not considered hanfu by revivalists (who are fond of criticizing the historical inaccuracies of guzhuang). Wafuku/Kimono came up in opposition to Western fashion. Hanbok rose up in opposition to Wafuku. Still there is significant overlap, as modern hanfu are often inspired by guzhuang, and many hanfu shops aim to recreate guzhuang looks from popular media. Hanfu rose up in opposition to Wafuku & Hanbok. Việt phục then rose up in opposition to Hanfu.

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