About the Look

I

n November 1994, Vivienne Tam presented her spring 1995 collection, which would become one of the most notable of her career. Known as the “Mao collection,” it was comprised of t-shirts, dresses, and skirt suits featuring comical images of Mao Zedong (1893-1976), the founding father of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and former chairman of the Communist Party of China. This collection was a collaboration between Tam and Chinese artist Zhang Hongtu.

This multicolored nylon dress features a checkerboard pattern of humorous images of Mao by Zhang Hongtu (Fig. 1). The portraits include “Mao so Young” (pigtails and gingham dress”, “Ow Mao” (bee on his nose), “Holy Mao” (clerical collar), “Psycho Mao” (dark hypnotic glasses), “Miss Mao” (smear of lipstick), “Nice day Mao” (smiling face). The checkerboard pattern was intended to reflect “Mao’s changeable character” (Tam 88). Tam and Hongtu also used these portraits to be on printed t-shirts, embellished with sequins which make the designs come alive as they move in the light (Fig. 2).

Tam also designed garments with black and white images of Mao for the Spring 1995 collection, which “were more serious, symbolizing the positive and negative effects Mao had on Chinese culture” (Tam 88). This matching polyester jacket and skirt suit (Fig. 3) featured a repetitive pattern of the same Mao portrait, which is still hung in Tiananmen Square. The jacket closely resembles elements of the suit Mao regularly wore, which is called the Zhongshan suit, also known as the “Mao suit” (Fig. 4). A major trend from the spring 1995 collections included black and white skirt suits with the same standing collar, also known as the “Mao collar.” This tailoring technique was seen in collections by Chanel, Calvin Klein, and Prada (Figs. 5-7). However, none of the designers made an impactful political statement like Vivienne Tam.

About the Designer

Vivienne Tam was born in Guangzhou in 1957, almost ten years after Mao formed the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Since her family was wealthy and owned land, they were targeted by the communist party. To escape political unrest during Mao’s regime, Tam’s family escaped to Hong Kong when she was three years old. Growing up in Hong Kong, Tam’s upbringing was a blend of Eastern and Western cultural influences. She returned to China in the late 1970s to a completely different world than she grew up in. After Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, the communist party eliminated the four olds, Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Customs, to which fashion was included. The qipaos and Western suits from the 1920s and 1930s were replaced with the Zhongshan suit and military-like clothing.

Tam went on to study fashion design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. To enhance her fashion career, she moved to New York in 1983 (Goodman). Her work often included Eastern inspirations. During the early nineties, while Tam was living in New York, China experienced a Mao cultural revival. People incorporated his image on a variety of items to reflect on the past and as a form of political satire. Many avant-garde Chinese artists used Mao’s image in their work, which sold very well. One of the first Chinese artists to do so was Zhang Hongtu (Fig. 8).

About the Artist

Zhang Hongtu was born in Gansu province in 1943. His father was a leading scholar, which led him to be denounced by Mao’s regime. Growing up under Mao’s leadership, Zhang explained, “like everyone of my generation, I completely trusted in Mao” (Tu 145). However, he would later witness situations like a student being brutally beaten for sitting on a newspaper featuring Mao’s portrait. In 1969, Zhang graduated from the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts in Beijing, where he studied painting. To build up his art career, he moved to New York in the early 1980s, which was when he began experimenting with painting Mao in a humorous light. After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 (Fig. 9), he focused on manipulating Mao’s image as “a kind of mental therapy.” When he first started working with Mao’s portrait, Zhang experienced a sense of guilt, as if he was “committing a sin” (Tam 92). He explained, “You have to understand how powerful his image is for my generation. During the Cultural Revolution, in my teens, he was like a god” (Tu 152). Zhang created multiple works featuring Mao including Chairman Mao (12 works), Les Banquet, and Material Mao.