In 2000, I read about In the Mood for Love in a fashion magazine, but it took me five years to finally watch it. The restrained melodrama and stark repression captivated me, but it was the sultry parade of 22 cheongsams worn by Maggie Cheung’s character Mrs. Chan (Su Li-zhen) that enraptured, set to the sexiest, saddest soundtrack I’ve ever heard. While I rarely succumb to standards of female beauty and am a self-confessed tomboy—I don’t wear makeup, my hair is sometimes untameable, I’ve worn men’s and oversized clothing since I was a kid—I’ve made occasional attempts, squeezing myself into pink, red, and purple cheongsams to perform this idealization if only for an evening.
"I’ve made occasional attempts, squeezing myself into pink, red, and purple cheongsams to perform this idealization if only for an evening."
In haunting, slow, and quietly scorching vignettes, In the Mood for Love follows the tropical desires between two neighbours, Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow (Chow Mo-Wan) amidst social upheaval from 1962 Hong Kong to Singapore and Cambodia in later years. Each married, they eventually discover their spouses are having an affair with one another, and their own dance ensues. Enveloped in Hong Kong’s humidity, unspoken, smouldering feelings between Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow—along with the former’s high-necked drama, her three- to four-inch-high collars stiffened with sheets of clear plastic—are enough to feel the heat of claustrophobia both physical and imagined.
—
A product of globalization, the cheongsam came into being in the early twentieth century, hybridizing the traditional Manchurian tunic with Westernized frocks and heralding what some fashion historians have claimed as an era of feminism. Its signature enclosure—a series of knotted buttons called “pankou” running over a diagonal opening from the collar to the underarm—has since been replicated and appropriated numerous times over for Orientalist dress. A slit up one side or both allows for some degree of movement, but not very much. By the way Mrs. Chan sashays around town in figure-hugging, cap-sleeved and sleeveless versions, you wouldn’t guess that they feel that binding. Somehow, she looks elegant in a garish bright green number with a diamond pattern of intersecting white lines, her long and lean silhouette an “S” against hard geometry.
Only Mrs. Chan can effuse such glamour while containing messy feelings within her tidy comportment, sweating as she waits for take away wonton noodles at a damp and dingy dai pai dong. On one visit, she’s wearing a very classy, vertical striped shot silk version in a muted rainbow of hues including merlot, mustard, navy, and aqua, a dress that features several times throughout the movie. In the Mood for Love reads like a moving fashion plate: Wong paints scenes with colour through light, dresses and interiors in all their steamy nostalgia.
Suppressed by social expectations of the time, Mrs. Chan’s energetic aura comes alive on her cheongsams with playful prints and designs, reflecting interior fervour outwards: two-tone taffeta in olive and vermilion edged in a floral trim; a bold printed pattern of pink-red roses on a bright turquoise ground; a chaos of cherry, lime, and periwinkle spirals on white, trimmed with cerulean embroidery. But my favourites are the semi-sheer cheongsams layered atop slip dresses. In a scene where the two eat dinner in the hotel room Mr. Chow rents for their implied dalliances and his side gig writing martial arts serials, Mrs. Chan encases herself in a gauzy white dress with purple blue flower appliqués, translucent enough to offer hints of skin underneath and reveal the collar’s glossy plastic insert. Then there’s the sheer teal organza version with a similar floral appliqué that she wears when creeping on Mr. Chow in Singapore years later, leaving traces of her presence in his room before disappearing. Like Wong’s filmmaking, these cheongsams suggest, but never fully reveal.
"Like Wong’s filmmaking, these cheongsams suggest, but never fully reveal."
In looks paired with black pumps, costume jewellery, perfectly coiffed updos, and those wide, horizontal mid-century handbags, Mrs. Chan plays effortless refinement to Mr. Chow’s debonair humility. The two engage in masochistic role-play as their spouses, rehearsing lines for when they might confront their respective spouses about cheating. As viewers, we never really know if they are playacting or being themselves. In one scene at the now-shuttered Goldfinch Diner in Causeway Bay, they sit in a booth across from each other, eating Western-style steak dinners. Wearing an ice blue cheongsam printed with a pattern of large daffodils and finished with jade-coloured trim, Mrs. Chan eats steak daintily, dipping bites in spicy mustard that Mr. Chow has daubed onto her plate. “Do you like it hot?” he asks, to which she responds, “Your wife likes hot dishes.” In an ill-conceived attempt to experience some shred of this ambience years ago, I dragged a partner and my family across the island to the Goldfinch to eat classic Hong Kong dishes like baked seafood rice and pork chops on spaghetti. Of course, nothing can compare to the specific embodiment of wearing a cheongsam in my own imagined Hong Kong of the 1960s: its structural integrity, its cultural history, its unintended yet opposing forces of feminism and Orientalist femininity. Nevertheless, the memory of that booth has been firmly ensconced in my mind, like a dress that I can still try on from time to time. Though fleeting, this moment is mine too.
In 2000, I read about In the Mood for Love in a fashion magazine, but it took me five years to finally watch it. The restrained melodrama and stark repression captivated me, but it was the sultry parade of 22 cheongsams worn by Maggie Cheung’s character Mrs. Chan (Su Li-zhen) that enraptured, set to the sexiest, saddest soundtrack I’ve ever heard. While I rarely succumb to standards of female beauty and am a self-confessed tomboy—I don’t wear makeup, my hair is sometimes untameable, I’ve worn men’s and oversized clothing since I was a kid—I’ve made occasional attempts, squeezing myself into pink, red, and purple cheongsams to perform this idealization if only for an evening.
"I’ve made occasional attempts, squeezing myself into pink, red, and purple cheongsams to perform this idealization if only for an evening."
In haunting, slow, and quietly scorching vignettes, In the Mood for Love follows the tropical desires between two neighbours, Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow (Chow Mo-Wan) amidst social upheaval from 1962 Hong Kong to Singapore and Cambodia in later years. Each married, they eventually discover their spouses are having an affair with one another, and their own dance ensues. Enveloped in Hong Kong’s humidity, unspoken, smouldering feelings between Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow—along with the former’s high-necked drama, her three- to four-inch-high collars stiffened with sheets of clear plastic—are enough to feel the heat of claustrophobia both physical and imagined.
—
A product of globalization, the cheongsam came into being in the early twentieth century, hybridizing the traditional Manchurian tunic with Westernized frocks and heralding what some fashion historians have claimed as an era of feminism. Its signature enclosure—a series of knotted buttons called “pankou” running over a diagonal opening from the collar to the underarm—has since been replicated and appropriated numerous times over for Orientalist dress. A slit up one side or both allows for some degree of movement, but not very much. By the way Mrs. Chan sashays around town in figure-hugging, cap-sleeved and sleeveless versions, you wouldn’t guess that they feel that binding. Somehow, she looks elegant in a garish bright green number with a diamond pattern of intersecting white lines, her long and lean silhouette an “S” against hard geometry.
Only Mrs. Chan can effuse such glamour while containing messy feelings within her tidy comportment, sweating as she waits for take away wonton noodles at a damp and dingy dai pai dong. On one visit, she’s wearing a very classy, vertical striped shot silk version in a muted rainbow of hues including merlot, mustard, navy, and aqua, a dress that features several times throughout the movie. In the Mood for Love reads like a moving fashion plate: Wong paints scenes with colour through light, dresses and interiors in all their steamy nostalgia.
Suppressed by social expectations of the time, Mrs. Chan’s energetic aura comes alive on her cheongsams with playful prints and designs, reflecting interior fervour outwards: two-tone taffeta in olive and vermilion edged in a floral trim; a bold printed pattern of pink-red roses on a bright turquoise ground; a chaos of cherry, lime, and periwinkle spirals on white, trimmed with cerulean embroidery. But my favourites are the semi-sheer cheongsams layered atop slip dresses. In a scene where the two eat dinner in the hotel room Mr. Chow rents for their implied dalliances and his side gig writing martial arts serials, Mrs. Chan encases herself in a gauzy white dress with purple blue flower appliqués, translucent enough to offer hints of skin underneath and reveal the collar’s glossy plastic insert. Then there’s the sheer teal organza version with a similar floral appliqué that she wears when creeping on Mr. Chow in Singapore years later, leaving traces of her presence in his room before disappearing. Like Wong’s filmmaking, these cheongsams suggest, but never fully reveal.
"Like Wong’s filmmaking, these cheongsams suggest, but never fully reveal."
In looks paired with black pumps, costume jewellery, perfectly coiffed updos, and those wide, horizontal mid-century handbags, Mrs. Chan plays effortless refinement to Mr. Chow’s debonair humility. The two engage in masochistic role-play as their spouses, rehearsing lines for when they might confront their respective spouses about cheating. As viewers, we never really know if they are playacting or being themselves. In one scene at the now-shuttered Goldfinch Diner in Causeway Bay, they sit in a booth across from each other, eating Western-style steak dinners. Wearing an ice blue cheongsam printed with a pattern of large daffodils and finished with jade-coloured trim, Mrs. Chan eats steak daintily, dipping bites in spicy mustard that Mr. Chow has daubed onto her plate. “Do you like it hot?” he asks, to which she responds, “Your wife likes hot dishes.” In an ill-conceived attempt to experience some shred of this ambience years ago, I dragged a partner and my family across the island to the Goldfinch to eat classic Hong Kong dishes like baked seafood rice and pork chops on spaghetti. Of course, nothing can compare to the specific embodiment of wearing a cheongsam in my own imagined Hong Kong of the 1960s: its structural integrity, its cultural history, its unintended yet opposing forces of feminism and Orientalist femininity. Nevertheless, the memory of that booth has been firmly ensconced in my mind, like a dress that I can still try on from time to time. Though fleeting, this moment is mine too.