HONG KONG, Oct 1 — Bent over a magenta chiffon fabric, an elderly Hong Kong tailor wearing thick glasses meticulously stitched on embroidered butterflies, working to transform the shimmering material into an elegant, high-collared Chinese dress known as a cheongsam. At 88, Yan Kar-man is one of Hong Kong’s oldest master tailors of the cheongsam — literally “long clothes” in Cantonese — a dress recognisable for its form-fitting silhouette which was famously featured in Wong Kar-wai’s film In the Mood for Love . Experts say the silver-haired tailor is among roughly 10 remaining cheongsam-makers in Hong Kong, which in the mid-1960s used to have about 1,000, according to records from the Shanghai Tailoring Workers General Union.
But after dressing generations of women ranging from housewives to movie stars like Michelle Yeoh and Shu Qi, Yan has decided he will hang up his measuring tape soon — by the end of September at the earliest. “I can’t see clearly — my eyes are not working well, and neither am I. I have to retire,” he told AFP as he stooped closer to his sewing machine to tack on an embroidered border on the dress.
With about 10 more dresses to finish, Yan hesitated to give an exact closing day for his tiny workshop located in the bustling Hong Kong commercial district of Jordan. Evolved from the long robes worn by Manchurian people in China’s Qing dynasty, cheongsams have dominated the wardrobes of ordinary Chinese women for much of the 20th cent.
