Cultural Industry Review No. 3401
In the drift of space and time, the northeast flower cloth has obtained multiple identities of clothing culture, northeast culture and network culture, and has been given a cultural significance different from general patterns and colors. From a certain point of view, the production and development of northeast flower cloth is showing the empowerment of cultural meaning by the transformation of cultural context. Does the flower cloth really belong to the northeast? In the present moment, what does the flower cloth symbolize?
Author| Zhou Siyi (Cultural Industry Review Author Group; Researcher of Sanchuanhui Cultural Tourism and Sports Research Institute)
Editor-in-chief | Time (Assistant Researcher, Sanchuanhui Cultural Tourism and Sports Research Institute)
Edit the | time
The source | Cultural Industry Review
The text is 3,000 words | Estimated reading time is 6 minutes
At the premiere of "Antiques Bureau Central Bureau" a few days ago, the Northeast Flower Cloth once again made a shining appearance. The "Treasure Hunting Squad" wore a flower jacket and magically took a group photo, although Li Xianren did not come, but the battle robes must be put on. This reminds us of Zhang Xinyu's "amazing" glimpse on the red carpet of the Cannes Film Festival in 2015.
△ "Antiques Bureau Central Bureau" big flower cloth F4
The Internet ebb and flow, but the flower cloth is never out of date, often look at the new, which may make us wonder: does the big flower cloth really belong to the northeast? How is the flower cloth connected to the northeast? What kind of trend code is hidden behind the big flower cloth?
One Side Flower Cloth: The History of Social Life of Color
If you like to watch movies, you will find that the colors and patterns of the costumes in the images are impacting and shaking our memories and impressions of the times. Just like Gu Changwei's film "Peacock", the simple blue-gray shirts, the misty streets and small tiles, the mottled sky and the trees constitute the confused scenery of the northern town in the 1970s and 1980s.
△ Stills of "Peacock"
Different from such a simple blue, white and gray, the red and green flower cloth is full of a strong atmosphere, not low-key nor heavy, from the perspective of a certain era, it may be very earthy, but from the perspective of history, it is very beautiful.
When did the flower cloth leap into the lives of the people?
In the "Fine Arts Magazine" published in 1956, Zhang Jinliang and Fu Minsheng wrote in an article entitled "The People Need Beautiful Flower Cloth": "Due to the accelerated development of socialist construction and the increasing improvement of people's lives, we printed cloth pattern designers should create a lot of beautiful flower cloth patterns and make the broad masses wear beautiful flower cloth clothes." Many people have complained that they cannot buy their beloved printed cloth, which is a shame for us designers of printed cloth patterns. ”
△ Costumes from the early liberation period
Kaoru pointed out at the national printing cloth design, production and sales improvement conference: "Strive to produce more economical, practical and beautiful printing cloth. ”
There are many more historical materials that can be excavated in this way. From this we may draw three lessons:
First of all, in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, due to the comprehensive cooperation between the Soviet Union and China, the exchange of culture and clothing was also very close, and the clothes such as Lenin's clothes, Ukrainian-style pullover shirts, braj and Soviet flower cloth that swept the Soviet Union were also loved by the Chinese people and integrated into daily life.
△ Su style dress
Second, the Shanghai East China Textile Administration, established in the 1950s, undertook the heavy responsibility of reshaping cultural aesthetics after the change of old and new regimes, calling on designers to create more beautiful patterns and patterns, close to and leading the people's lifestyle. At that time, there were "hundreds of birds and phoenixes", "farmhouses", "Mandarin ducks playing in the water", "peacock peony", "peony phoenix" and other patterns that were deeply loved by people.
△ Shanghai East China Textile Administration
Third, Shanghai, as the center of China's textile printing and dyeing industry at that time, brought together design talents who integrated China and foreign countries, and applied modern printing technology earlier, combining conflicting colors with animal and plant elements and Chinese aesthetics to form a distinctive style of "Northeast Flower Cloth".
The origin of the "Northeast Flower Cloth" may not lack the influence of the Soviet Union and the West, but more importantly, the designers of new China have a new interpretation and creation of the people and clothing, life and color. Although subject to the printing and dyeing technology at that time, only four or five kinds of chromatic colors could be realized, and more exquisite patterns and colors could not be portrayed, such a floral cloth has reflected the frontier level of new Chinese clothing aesthetics and printing and dyeing technology.
In China in the 1950s, the large flower cloth with high saturation and rich colors represented a certain trend, fashion and vitality of life attitude, and also carried the people's pursuit of a better life, externalizing the inner color and condensing the full emotions.
The Second Revival: The Mysterious Power of the Northeast
If the emergence of the big flower cloth is a history of social life, then the connection between the flower cloth and the northeast is a history of media dissemination.
Try to dig up the memories of the red and green flower cloth in your mind, perhaps dating back to the Northeast Duo, the Spring Festival Gala Sketch, Zhao Benshan, "Country Love Story"... And so on, words with northeastern characteristics.
The grassroots sketches, folk songs and dances, and Benshan brands representing the northeast are flourishing around 2000, when new media has not yet been popularized, and there is no doubt that the Spring Festival Gala was an audiovisual feast that attracted the attention of the whole people at that time. In 1997, Zhao Benshan, Gao Xiumin and Fan Wei "Red Gaoliang Model Team", in 1998 Zhao Benshan and Gao Xiumin's "Bye Nian", in 2006 Zhao Benshan and Song Dandan's "Talking About Things", in 2009 Zhao Benshan, Xiao Shenyang, Mao Mao's "Not Bad Money"... In these Honyama sketches, the northeast is bound to the large red-green flower cloth, the visual impact of the sense of collision, and the strong local atmosphere.
△ Spring Festival Gala skit with Northeast flower cloth
We may have such a speculation that in the 1950s, the Shanghai East China Textile Administration gave the first life of the large flower cloth, when the large flower cloth still carried the people's pursuit of full color and fashion life, and with the improvement of printing and dyeing technology and the change of social aesthetic thinking, the over-saturated large flower cloth became a tacky and gorgeous synonym, and gradually snubbed. However, northeast literature and art with grassroots, locality, and comedy as the core need such an impactful pattern as the big flower cloth, and constantly deepen this visual memory in its works, which also gives the big flower cloth a second life.
The mysterious connection between the big flower cloth and the northeast comes not only from the literary and artistic works of the northeast, but also from the stereotypical imagination of this region in the northeast for hundreds of years: cold, desolate, folk customs, and full of local atmosphere. For people who have never set foot on this land in the northeast themselves, the scenery there is gray tones, there are vast black soils, icy snow fields and scorching chimneys; the countryside there is mysterious, there are Hanzi who broke into the Kanto and girls who are as hot as tigers...
△ Gray northeast and color northeast
It just so happens that the large flower cloth with a variety of colors, just like a touch of emerald color in the gray water, and a bright sun on the yellow dragon, reflects into people's minds and can never be forgotten. This strong color conflict made the northeast suddenly deeply rooted in people's hearts. The large flower cloth represents the warmth of the northeast, the hot hope of the northeast, and the brilliance of the northeast, which is an indispensable embellishment in the black water of the White Mountains.
Isn't there such a big flower cloth in other places? Or, do people in the northeast wear red with green like this? Of course not, under the influence of globalization, in fact, the clothing of ordinary Northeasterners is no different from other places. But this stereotype, although it simplifies people's understanding of the northeast, is often promoted to the public as a "selling point" of the northeast because it is distinct enough. This conscious choice also puts a strong northeast brand on the big flower cloth.
Therefore, the large flower cloth is not produced in the northeast, but the northeast produces the memory of the large flower cloth. In the dissemination of video media, the big flower cloth completed its transformation from public clothing to regional costumes, and gained new meaning and belonging in the title of "Northeast Flower Cloth".
Triple Identity: The Fashion Code of Flower Cloth
Interestingly, in the context of the Internet, the big flower cloth has a new identity, and this time, the flower cloth no longer points to "soil", but "tide".
In 2015, with the exposure of Zhang Xinyu's big flower jacket on the red carpet of the Cannes Film Festival, it triggered a cosplay boom on Weibo.
At that time, whether it was a celebrity or a city building, whether it was a reunion hero or an anime teenager, he could not escape the "most dazzling northeast wind" that swept the country.
△ When the city puts on the flower cotton jacket
△ Avengers flower cloth shape
As the saying goes, "the end of the world is in Iron Ridge, the end of fashion is in the northeast". Until recently, the Northeast Flower Cloth is still a trendy product brought by star netizens.
△ Song Yi's catwalk style
△ Supreme's Spring/Summer 2021 collection
△ He Junlin's mobile phone case
△ Xin Zhilei's large cotton jacket
△ And netizens' memes...
Northeast Flower Cloth seems to have bid farewell to the original local context and cultivated new aesthetic functions and cultural meanings in the Internet. Why can the northeast flower cloth become popular? For the current public, what does the Northeast Flower Cloth represent?
First of all, the "rustic" gene of the northeast flower cloth meets the carnival needs of netizens who joke and play with terriers. "I heard that everyone in your city likes to play like this" "Northeast flower cloth is the only criterion for testing the appearance value", "Explosive model, do you dare to buy it" "If I become like this, will you still love me"... Such flower cloth stems are popular throughout the Internet and have become a high-quality topic for people to ridicule and laugh at themselves. This is more similar to the current popular "earthy culture", which is the embodiment of a kind of rough vitality at the bottom, and is a hunting aesthetic based on the senses.
Second, the Northeast Flower Cloth provides a good soil for "trend" and "fashion". On the one hand, the entertainment industry and the fashion industry have played with the flower cloth, although there are many innovative and eye-catching purposes, but objectively also let the big flower cloth contaminate the temperament of fashion, blurring the boundary between the elite and the grassroots. On the other hand, the northeast comedy atmosphere and traditional local characteristics contained in the Northeast Flower Cloth itself collide with the trend culture, deducing a certain aesthetic characteristic of elegant and customary appreciation, adding a humanistic color of the great custom, that is, daya. For example, the second-hand rose of the Northeast Band integrates the visual essence of the Northeast Flower Cloth into the grotesque music style, creating a dream of feelings for people.
△ Second-hand Rose Band
At present, the Northeast Flower Cloth has become a symbol of connecting the countryside and the city, deconstructing the elite and authority, creating contrasts and surprises, and it presents the roughness and freshness of the northeast original countryside in a small mischievous way, which has a more sense of life. At the same time, because it wanders between fashion and kitsch, this uncertainty stimulates people's passion for exploration and creative desire, making it a vocabulary flowing on the Internet and constantly renewing new aesthetic values.
epilogue
From being created to reviving to being reborn, the big flower cloth has undergone several contextual transformations and realized its own aesthetic change. In this process, the big flower cloth is also superimposed on the triple identity of clothing culture, northeast culture and network culture, becoming a rather interesting object.
Perhaps, the interesting thing about the Northeast Flower Cloth is that it is not only the "only criterion" for testing the appearance of the face, but also the "only way to test creativity", so some people are discouraged, but there is no lack of people who come forward.
Topic interaction
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