Portrait of Tiffany Le , 2010s
Photograph

This photograph shows Tiffany Le, a Montreal-based artist and first-generation Chinese Canadian who immigrated to Canada at five. The shirt with the dragon motif that Tiffany wears is a vintage piece from the early 2000s. It combines the form of a Western Hawaiian shirt from the movie Remeo and Juliet (1996) and the motif of a Chinese dragon and tiger. Tiffany learned from her mother that in imperial China, only emperors wore dragons. She thinks this piece demonstrates Western fashion appropriating Chinese fashion but repurposed it into popular culture to be mass-produced. Like Tiffany, the millennial generation of Chinese Canadian women often expresses a playful and critical attitude toward Chinese clothing. They are aware of the Western appropriation of Chinese fashion; however, they use counter-strategies by repurposing these pieces to form their own style. On a broader level, these self-fashioning practices play with culture, history, and power to continuously re-position Chinese Canadian women within the power dynamics between the West and China.

Exhibited by:

Violet Wolfe

Other works by Unknown

Chinese Woman’s Silver Brocade , 1920s
Violet Wolfe
Chinese Woman’s Lilac Pants Suit , 1920s
Violet Wolfe
Print Chinese-Style Sheath Dress , 1935 to 1940
104 x 40 cm (h x w)
Dress
Violet Wolfe
Lillian Wong’s Chinese Applique Sheet , 1900 to 1930
26.5 x 22.9 cm (h x w)
appliques
Violet Wolfe
Ann Rutherford’s Spring Styles 1941 , 1941
Photograph
Violet Wolfe

More from Violet Wolfe

Portrait of Lillian Sam , 1943
Photograph
Violet Wolfe
Portrait of Linda Tzang , 2019
Photograph
Violet Wolfe
Portrait of Wong Shee , 1922
Photograph
Violet Wolfe
Portrait of Lillian Ho Wong , Between 1910 and 1914
Photograph
Violet Wolfe
Portrait of Joyce Wang , 1990s
Photograph
Violet Wolfe