At 88 years old, Mr. Yan Kar Man is one of Hong Kong’s oldest master tailors of the cheongsam, a form-fitting Chinese dress. With his eyesight failing, he plans to retire by the end of September, leaving behind a legacy of dressing generations of women.
HONG KONG – 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.
“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. “Women would wear them to shop in wet markets,” recalled Mr Yan, whose workshop walls are plastered with photos of beauty pageant queens wearing his dresses.
At that time, the trade for cheongsam was so common and stable that Mr Yan recalled a plain design would cost “just a few dollars”. “Hong Kong’s cheongsam-making has developed its own style and tradition in the past century, merging skills of dimensional cutting from the West,” she told AFP.
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