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The uniforms of air attendants for Air China
Skirts with suspenders as the major style for female students' summer school uniforms were popular for long time
The national standard uniforms for Chinese policemen.
White-collar dresses are different for different professions.
Western suits and ties are typical professional dresses for men who work in Lujiazui Financial Streetin Shanghai. | Professional dresses are the dresses that indicate the profession. In 1978, China began to reform and open its door to outside world, all kinds of professional dresses which symbolized the image of professions emerged as the times required. For staff from many professions such as public security, traffic management, procurator ate, courthouse, post office, taxation service, industry and commerce, civil air force and railway, the nation designed, made, and dispatched professional dresses according to different professions. Professional dresses were made and dispatched by their own departments even for those professions that were difficult to set a national standard. Some schools not only bought student uniforms for students, but also tailor-made western style clothes for teachers.
The trend of wearing uniform had quickly spread since 1980s. Because the color and the style were rather similar, it seemed that tipstaff are everywhere. Professional dress is different from the normalized full dress, because it has the effect of showing identity, status and power, for example, the professional dress for manager and shop assistant are different in style and color. Generally speaking, once certain profession appears in certain dress image, it will be easily identified and recognized. When people think of this profession, first thing that comes into mind is the dressing image of this profession or when people see certain specific dressing image, they will instantly correspond it to its related profession. Postmen are called "messenger in green dress" and medical staffs are called "angles in white dress." So dress could display people's social character and social character enriches the cultural image of the professional dress.
The development level of commodity economy is closely related with the development of professional dress. As early as in the Song Dynasty, because city and town economy developed quickly, professional dress had already shown the necessity of dress socialization. It was recorded that "people who sell medicine and divinatory symbols all wear hats and belts and as for beggars, they also have dress standards to follow." This standard that society created for professional dress in fact was the signs of social civilization. There were also the written descriptions for hotels and restaurants in old times, "women in neighborhood who tie blue and white cloth towels around waist and coil up wei hair bun, pour wine and exchange soup dishes for the guest." Obviously professional dresses in that time were categorized only by professions. Though a specific dressing image of certain restaurant had not formed, it actually possessed the basic features of professional dress.
In fact, the scope of professional dress is not limited to uniforms. The specific dress for diplomatic conference, economic and trading negotiations, office, scientific research labs, schools and workshops of precise instrument, and the special dress for hotels, hostels, shops and traffic profession, or the dress for hard labored workers, such as cleaners, operating personnel and cargadors, all fall into to the scope of professional dress.
Professional dress that has the effect of identification could help to build the favorable professional image for certain profession or certain enterprises and good professional dress even has the brand effect. Along with the strengthening of the CI design consciousness, designers, the theoretical circle of clothes and even users all have realized the importance and promising future of the professional dress.
Since 1990s, along with China entering the commodity economy times, professional dress has had more extensive connotations. The importance of individuation and fashion is underlined in design. Besides the fixed professional dress for special professions, shirts, western trousers and ties seem to form a standard officer worker image. When attending formal occasions, men usually wear suits and leather shoes, which have become a social etiquette. Compared with men, professional women have more choices in terms of dressing style and clothing arrangement. While seeking more career space to develop, Chinese professional women have paid more and more attention to their outlooks. Many topics in media are stressing the meaning of using decent and fashionable dress to earn more favor for one's profession.
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