Do you know how the samfoo as worn in Singapore (seems to be a woman’s garment with a similar look as a (roots Singapore has examples from the 1930s etc on their page)) relate to the the clothes in China proper? I thought samfu is men’s clothing in China with a center front closing? Am I getting this wrong? Is it a language thing like qipao/cheongsam where there are different words for the same thing?
I think I mentioned this in a previous post about how samfoo is apparently spelled 衫裤 shanku in Mandarin, meaning “shirt and pants”. 衫 was used interchangeably with 袄 ao, meaning robe, therefore samfoo was likely just a different spelling of the mainland Chinese 袄裤 aoku or robe and pants (which I talked about extensively in the abridged early 20th century series and other posts). Aoku rose to popularity in the early 19th century as a fashionable style for upper class women and fell out of fashion in the late 1920s, but laboring men and women have worn them for longer and continued wearing them well into the 20th century and today.
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1930s Singaporean samfoo.
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The samfoo had a similar cut to 1930s cheongsam. The silhouette and design of samfoo probably followed whatever was popular in Chinese high fashion as well.
As to what aoku/shanku looked like in China proper, the pants were unisex whereas men usually wore center front closing (对襟 duijin) shirts with an optional standing collar and women wore shirts with either a 大襟 dajin (side front closure) or duijin. Men could wear shirts with all kinds of sleeve lengths depending on the weather, but women usually wore shirts with long or quarter length sleeves. The cut and silhouette of fashionable aoku (1800-1926) was different for each time period and followed whatever cut and design was popular in high fashion, e.g. mid 19th century ones were big and poofy, 1910s ones were slender and form fitting, 1920s ones had shorter pants and flared sleeves etc..
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1900s Chinese high fashion aoku.
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Mid 1920s Chinese high fashion aoku.
Rural or working class women have worn aoku with a similar loose, comfortable cut for the majority of the 20th century. Some features like collar height or sleeve length were influenced by high fashion, but for the most part working women maintained the cut that was the most practical and comfortable.
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1960s Chinese rural women’s aoku.
For men, aoku was mostly worn by working class men, as the preferred garment for upper class men was the floor length Manchu long robe, which later evolved into changshan. Working class men stopped wearing aoku at one point in the Republican era and adopted practical Western working class garments, like shirts, dress pants with suspenders, suits and flat/pageboy caps.
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Working class men in the 19th century.
