The Chinese effect

"CHINA through the Looking Glass" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a spectacular new show. It looks at the way Western fashions once reflected distorted conceptions of China, and makes abundant reference to the glory days of Hollywood. Given that the exhibition is a collaboration between Andrew Bolton of the museum’s Costume Institute and Wong Kar Wai, a Hong Kong-based film director strongly influenced by romantic cinema, this is not surprising.

The show pays homage to a time before the rise of Mao Zedong, when Westerners saw China as essentially mysterious and exotic. Though China's visual imagery, its silks and embroideries, were celebrated, its was often dismissed as toothless, dangerous perhaps in terms of sex and drugs, but not economic and military might.

The exhibition has music, film clips, photography, elaborate headpieces, clothes (of course) and what seem like acres of mirrors. It opens with a modern take on China—Andy Warhol’s images of Mao, khaki military uniforms and film clips of hundreds of blue-jacketed men and women on bicycles—then steps "through the looking glass", as it were, into an earlier age. Western clothes, mostly glamorous gowns, are displayed with the paintings, porcelain, ancient bronzes, textiles and jewels that influenced them. Most of the Chinese items come from the Met’s permanent collection, but there are also rare loans from the Palace Museum in Beijing, including an embroidered robe worn by Pu Yi in 1908 when he became the last emperor of China at the age of two. Scenes from Bernardo Bertolucci's film of Pu Yi's life play in the background.

The huge exhibition not only fills the Costume Institute but also all the museum’s Chinese art galleries. Even the Ming-inspired Garden Court, usually an uncluttered place of respite, has been lassoed in. Mannequins dressed in creations by John Galliano and others levitate above the pond. Thomas Campbell, the museum’s director, says this may be the biggest show in its history: certainly none has taken over so much of its permanent exhibition space. One explanation for its size is that this is the annual spring fashion extravaganza as well as a celebration of the centenary of the founding of the museum’s Asian art collection, which is now the largest in the West.

One gallery shows the blue-and-white porcelain that the Chinese originally produced for export, alongside 17th-century Dutch adaptations and more recent gowns with motifs inspired by ceramic decorations. The frock designed by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen (2011) is outstanding, with a bodice made from tiny porcelain shards. Another room is devoted to perfume, and shows scent bottles shaped like pagodas and tasselled coolie hats. An advertisement for Yves Saint Laurent’s "Opium" gets a prominent spot.

And on it goes. In the calligraphy gallery, rubbings of ancient engravings (a permanent display) are paired with two dresses whose white fabrics are covered with black Chinese calligraphic motifs. These refreshingly simple, contemporary-looking pieces were made by Coco Chanel in 1951 and Christian Dior four years later. There's a parade of Jeanne Lanvin’s couture outfits from the 1930s with Chinese-inspired hand-quilting, and a gallery devoted to embroidered shawls and their adoption into Western frocks.

One gallery is even devoted entirely to Anna May Wong, a Chinese-American star whose career playing femmes fatales spanned both silent movies and talkies. Visitors can see slinky gowns covered in sinuous dragons that were inspired by her roles, and listen to Billie Holiday’s rendition of "These Foolish Things", whose lyrics Wong also inspired, as clips of her roles shimmer across the walls.

In an exhibition of such excess, it is surprising to come across vulgarity. A gallery lined with statues of Chinese Buddhist saints now contains at its centre a mannequin wearing a shiny gold gown (Guo Pui, 1969). Its colossal skirts fan out into an even vaster train resembling the tail of a gold peacock suffering from elephantiasis. The use of Buddhist emblems in the cloth is presumably the reason this setting was chosen, but it is an error of judgment.

Such cavils aside, this show will introduce new visitors to the pleasures of the museum’s outstanding Asian art galleries and is certainly fun. Though its glamorous nostalgia for a more innocent, more naive time could be seen as a shortcoming, it is also part of its charm.

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