Still from THE LAST STITCH

Adorned

Bertha Lee reflects personally on THE LAST STITCH, which screened at the 23rd Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival.

This essay is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative, a collaborative program between Reel Asian and TACLA.

The window glows as sunlight reflects off snow and into my living room, nurturing the succulents mirrored in my half-empty teacup. “There were always so many trinkets.” My friend and I were sitting on a plush couch, beige woven with strands of orange, blue and green. In the comfort of my new living room, I asked her what her house looked like as a fourth-generation Asian-Canadian-Metis person. Looking through her photographs of her Chinese great grandmother’s house from her last trip home, what looked like a plain Vancouver suburban house was adorned with old Chinese decor, small shadow boxes and Chinese fans.

In and amongst a long history of change, small mementos of the past perpetuate and leave traces of times before. Every summer’s end when I changed my summer clothes for winter ones, I’d see my cheongsam — the unchanging pillar of my closet, not casual enough to wear and too fragile to pack away and let wrinkle. I thought it was beautiful but I couldn’t wear it unless it was Lunar New Year. Just Lunar New Year.

The Cheongsam is a Chinese garment. The patterns and cutting is different from Western clothes with a historical timeline of its own. In The Cheongsam, Hazel Clark writes, “[t]he decline in popularity in the late 1960s meant that in the following decade it was only staunch supporters who continued to wear the cheongsam regularly…One Hong Kong tailor reported that the price of making a cheongsam rose 400 percent from HK$10 in the early 1950s to HK$40 for an unlined cheongsam in 1974” (Clark 42). With the gradual decrease in cheongsam popularity, the cost of production made it difficult to sustain profit. Business at risk puts pressure on the makers to either close shop or hustle to find other business.

Hong Kong in the 1960s & 1970s was the Hong Kong of my mother’s youth. A city of the British empire, modern style meant wearing what came into fashion in America and the UK. It represented a desire to stay away from traditionally Chinese, or otherwise “old” styles. It was never the case, in her youth, that a high street window display would feature cheongsam. Cheongsam was meant for an annual reprisal of something old and traditional. But since 2010 or so I have noticed my mom sporting more elaborate and newer made cheongsam on New Year’s. It wasn’t the one she wore on repeat when I was growing up. Where was she getting these pieces from?

Little did I know at the start of The Last Stitch that Tommy Sung & Connie Sung, stars of the evening, were sitting behind me. A personal documentary made by the lesser-known Alfred Sung, The Last Stitch features Simon Sung learning his parents’ trade. The Sungs’ story on film is interwoven with flashbacks to home videos of Tommy’s father in the 90s and early 2000s, darting between the studio and clients’ homes with plastic garment bags to earn his wages, montaged with clippings from news articles of their glory days as the renowned Chinese Tailors of Repulse Bay, Hong Kong.

In the documentary, Simon Sung critiques a hip-length cheongsam being measured on a customer’s body. He folds over and pins the fabric for a shorter hem. ‘If you make it shorter, you could throw it on with a pair of jeans and wear it whenever. People just wear it casually these days.’ The days he refers to are now. While the film progresses chronologically from the long history of tailoring in Repulse Bay and Tommy Sung’s early career as a tailor in Hong Kong, Simon also speaks to the needs and cultural influences of the current times in dress and fashion.

In her book Chinese Fashion: From Mao to Now, Juan Juan Wu documents and reflects on the rising trend to reinvent Chinese identity in fashion. “On the one hand, many Chinese resented the idea of being culturally assimilated by the West. On the other hand, many Chinese were reluctant to appear merely traditional. The Chinese attempted to find or create something new enough to differentiate themselves from the traditional Chinese image, yet familiar enough to make a meaningful connection to their cultural roots (Wu 103)”. There are makers out there reinventing eastern dress, incorporating a traditional tailoring flare into new work. “In an era of globalization in which popular fashion trends and ideas are increasingly borrowed from others, China felt an urgent need for a sartorial symbol of national identity of its own” (103).

In a scene from The Last Stitch, Connie Sung gives a tour of the sewing studio, stopping at a dress on a mannequin. She describes the difference between the cuts she makes for an eastern collar and a western mixed collar. Traditional Chinese-style garments have rope button clasps that follow an edge or seam—an opening edge or seam that goes from the middle of the neck to the bottom of the armhole that provides a way for the wearer to get in and out of the garment. A western-style combo dress has a different edge where the seam goes from the side of the neck to the top of the armhole along the shoulder line. It would preserve the signature Cheongsam collar, very tightly enclosing the neck. The opening of the seam on the shoulder in combination with a zipper from the bottom of the armhole to the hip of the dress, in this western combo, allows the wearer in and out of the garment. Connie describes, in that moment, a desire to keep a particular aesthetic while having to figure out the logistics behind it.

I saw The Last Stitch at Reel Asian on a Saturday morning with a crowd of Cantonese-speaking people at a sold-out screening. Everyone seemed to know one another. It felt much more than a film screening. It was a gathering of Hong Kong diasporic folk, breathing life to a space normally dark and stoic. This community of Cantonese people from Hong Kong was now largely situated 30 minutes away by a highway in Markham, Ontario. Surrounded by audience members, I was brought back to trips to Hong Kong and Markham, my hometown.

Get TACLA’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

Remember me for faster sign in

Director Alfred Sung’s father, Tommy Sung is the main character of the documentary, a classically trained tailor who was apprenticed his own father, runs their home studio in Markham. Tommy’s father was a tailor who created Chinese traditional clothes in Hong Kong for the rich and famous from America and the UK. Tommy’s wife, Connie (Alfred’s mother) is his co-tailor and business partner. With no one to pass on the skills to, however, the apprenticeship will end with this generation. In this business, it takes over 300 hours of construction to make a garment. It isn’t a business that will make a stable income for their son Simon. Some day, they will sew their last stitch.

How does one logically continue traditions as displacement demands one adapt to new environments?

Simon may not take on the craft for logistical reasons, but the desire to continue tradition lives with this film in the hopes that a gathering can start a conversation. In the face of adversity, survival is more important than the romantic desires of a forlorn past. Attendees of the screening of this film each have a history of their own, a timeline to their departing from Hong Kong, a timeline to the choices they made to depart or continue to gather, to depart or to continue their cultural legacies.

A week before Reel Asian, I was shopping for wardrobe on a small set and came across a green pinstripe dress shirt. It was on sale and I really like the colour green. Though on sale, the price was higher than what I would normally spend on myself without occasion or celebration. It’s always okay to collect beloved pieces of businesswear though. Job interviews, meetings, gatherings come at random, and a healthy supply of “good impression” clothing will no doubt give off a good impression. Right?

On the morning of the first day of the Reel Asian Film Festival, I layered on leggings under a black skirt, put on a black T-shirt and tightly packed a wrap dress in a small purse. I put on my well kept black boots and hopped on the bus to the cafe where I work. An afternoon of coffee slinging and tiptoeing to not scuff my shoes did not save me from working up a sweat. Additionally, closing the cafe had me on my knees dusting coffee grinds and developing a cramp. I arrived 15 minutes late to the opening night screening of To Live, To Sing and caused a disruption during one of the speeches. Delayed because I had tried to rid myself of coffee smell and sweat, to look less embarrassing, embarrassingly.

I too ran around the festival with garment bags like Tommy, making my wages as a production designer. Gigs that were too far and few in between meant I had to take on extra work in a bakery cafe. It became my pattern at the festival: wear work pants and a dress top, throw on a blazer. Wear a work top and throw on an apron to protect my nice skirt. I put in the time to plan outfits that looked “put together” but still had enough movement to do a shift of labour. I wanted to look like a businessman but softer, business work casual with Chinese-style adornment.

I was inspired to reflect on my own journey with clothing and seek out the meanings behind the motif and symbols in my wardrobe after watching The Last Stitch. I remember my trip to China in 2015 and 2018, where shopping streets were populated with both western and eastern-style boutiques. On this trip, I purchased a ceramic necklace of a ginkgo leaf, a jade beaded bracelet and silver earrings of a Chinese pattern. Affordable with my recent university graduation income, I sported all three during my attendance at Reel Asian 23. They have become my small tokens of my Asianness. I seek out intimacy in my relationship with clothes too.

At the end of it all, past the last stitch and beyond, in and amongst a long history of change, small mementos of the past perpetuate and leave traces of times before. I would like to be the great grandmother whose great-grandchild has tea with other multi-generational Asians talking about my earrings and jade beads. That would be enough.

Day 3 of the Reel Asian Film Festival. TIFF Bell LightBox bathroom. Courtesy of Bertha Lee

Bertha Lee (She/Her) is a writer. A recent Toronto retransplant from London, UK after finishing her masters of Dramatic Writing from Central Saint Martins, she hopes to write an Asian, woman-led 2046 x Fleabag. See her website greypapercrane.net/berthalee and other non-writing work @bee.lee.93 on IG.

Works Cited:

Clark, Hazel. The Cheongsam. Oxford University Press. Hong Kong, 2000.

Wu, Juan Juan. Chinese Fashion: From Mao to Now. Dress, Body Culture, Series Editor Joanne B. Eicher. Berg Publishers. New York, 2009.