Chengdus & Don'ts: How you doin'?

Me and my Zoot Suit Daddy!

Mei and her husband and party host Gavin!

The week-end before last we had the pleasure of being invited to one of our friend's wife's 40th birthday party at The Bookworm. In Chengdu style, it was a fancy dress party and the theme was "20's, 30's or old time" clothing. When I saw this on the invitation I immediately thought roaring 20's! I just thought of all the cool things I could have made. I looked on the Internet for 1920's style and I was surprised to find I couldn't find much. (Little did I know I should have been searching costume sites, but you will hear about that in another post.)

I now had to see if I could find a place to have costumes made. My Chinese teacher gave me the name of a place that had costumes to rent and I went to check it out. They only had a few things to rent and nothing that was really 1920's, so I asked in my broken Chinese if there were other places that rented costumes. The guy wrote down on a piece of paper where to go. I was so excited when we arrived on Shanxi Lu, there were a ton of shops and tailors for either renting or having costumes made. I just picked one and brought in a few pictures for them to go by. They made Jonny a zoot suit including jacket, pants, and hat and made me a a dress with scarf all for the price of around 600 rmb or (75 US$), which I found quite reasonable.

Jonny and I were one fo the first to arrive at the party and I have to admit I was feeling a bit over dressed. Most everyone had dressed up in old time Chinese wear or old time wear, so we were one of the few dressed in Western style 20's wear. Jonny was probably the most dapper dressed of anyone at the party. We had an absolutely fabulous time and everyone who was their had a great time! They had food, wine, a band, dj and lots of dancing. Here are a few photos from the night.