Historian of Textiles and Dress

Dr Rachel Silberstein is a historian of textiles and dress in early modern China, with a broad interest in the ways people produce and consume the fabrics that adorn and define their bodies, and the impact of new technologies and trade upon these practices.

She gained a DPhil in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford in 2015, with a dissertation on fashionable dress in nineteenth-century China. This became the subject of her prizewinning 2020 monograph, A Fashionable Century: Textile Artistry and Commerce in the Late Qing, published by the University of Washington Press. She has also published articles in journals including Late Imperial ChinaFashion Theory, and Dress, and a number of edited volumes.

  • "This beautifully illustrated monograph with its learned analyses of those textual and material forces that transformed nineteenth-century Chinese fashion is an exceptional and exemplary work of scholarship and a key text for understanding Qing fashion and material culture."

    Harriet Zurndorfer, Orientalistische Literaturzeitung, Review of A Fashionable Century

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Writing

Monograph

A Fashionable Century: Textile Artistry and Commerce in the Late Qing (University of Washington Press, 2020)

A Fashionable Century uses museum collections of Chinese dress and accessories to explore the relationship between handicraft commercialization and fashion in late Qing China. Through an array of visually compelling clothing and accessories neglected by traditional histories of Chinese dress, it examines issues of gender and identity, including women's participation in textile handicraft production and the flourishing of urban popular culture. In the late Qing, the expansion of production systems and market economies transformed the Chinese fashion system, widening access to fashionable techniques, materials, and imagery. Challenging the conventional production model, in which women embroidered items at home, the book places fashion within a process of commercialization that created networks of urban guilds, commercial workshops, and subcontracted female workers. These networks gave rise to new trends influenced by performance and prints, and they offered women opportunities to participate in fashion and contribute to local economies and cultures.

The book won the Millia Davenport Publication Award 2021, Costume Society of America, was long-listed for the Textile Society of America's R. L. Shep Award, 2022, and received an Honorable Mention from the Bei Shan Tang Award, 2023.

You can learn more about the book here and read reviews of the book:

Journal of Asian History

Journal of Dress History

Journal of Chinese History

Journal of the American Oriental Society

Nan nü

Hanxue yanjiu tongxun漢學研究通訊 (Newsletter on Research in International Sinology)

Orientalistische Literaturzeitung

Published Papers

In Progress

Teaching

Rachel has taught classes on a wide range of topics in visual and material culture at institutions including the Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Washington, and the University of Puget Sound.

She has also guest lectured at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Yale University, Princeton University, and the University of Chicago.

Museum Consulting

Rachel has served as a consultant on Chinese dress and textile collections of museums including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, the Museum of History and Industry, and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.

She offers expert knowledge and research in Chinese textiles and dress for the production of collection assessment, interpretive work, and writing of exhibition and website content, gallery guides, catalogues and other publications.

  • "Over the course of the last decade, Rachel has contributed significantly to our understanding and interpretation of Chinese textiles and clothing in the collections of the RISD Museum… [bringing] to light many details previously hidden within the folds of the materials."

    Kate Irvin, Department Head and Curator, Costume and Textiles, RISD Museum

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Contact

For all enquiries, please use this form to get in touch: