The Cheongsam is a straight, close-fitting silk dress with a high collar and a slit skirt, traditionally worn by Chinese and Indonesian women.

My Po Po (maternal grandmother in Cantonese) stood less than five feet tall, fine-boned with narrow shoulders. She was the perfect fit for the slender silhouette of the Cheongsam. Throughout her long life, which endured for more than one hundred years, she owned several of these dresses.

She passed away during the COVID-19 pandemic, but not from complications related to the virus. She paid little attention to that, preferring instead to spend time with family and friends. She had lived through much more traumatic times; it was simply age that took her in the end.

I remember going into her closet and seeing old silks in shades of peach and turquoise, embellished with fine prints and frog buttons. They had an exotic feel in comparison to the usual non-fashion-fashion that I encountered growing up in Canada. When she passed, I asked for those silks as they served as a window into the culture from which she came—a culture I feel is slipping away with every generation.

When I admired these Cheongsams again as an adult, the details were tantalizing: hand-stitched embroidery, inseams sewn together by hand, distinctive colors, and real silk—thick yet soft and fine at the same time. Their small size was almost doll-like. So why keep them? Who could or would wear them now?

There is a photo essay by artist Lili Almog, who photographs workers in the northern regions of China. They wear their traditional Cheongsams alongside what looks like found articles of clothing—New Balance shoes, American denim, tracksuits. The result is a striking blend of functionality and bold fashion. The photos are intriguing, showcasing how nonchalantly they mix the past with the present.

These images inspired me to bring my Po Po’s Cheongsams back to life. To do so, I knew I would need to get them tailored to fit modern sizes. My friend Anh tailors for the best of the best. When I sent her photos of the pieces and explained the project, she was happy to help. “Represent the Asians!” she said over the phone. She is Vietnamese and lives in Paris. I dropped off the dresses to her at a restaurant where she was meeting a new friend, Amy, who happened to be Chinese-Vietnamese and also living in Paris. Amy admired the Cheongsams and offered to be the fit model. We agreed to meet the next day: Anh would tailor, Amy would fit, and I would make lunch.

Before any tailoring started, I had to find fabrics for the insets at Marché Saint Pierre. I asked the man working at the fabric shop if there was anything similar to the fabric of one of the C Cheongsams. I asked in French, and I knew he understood. He looked me squarely in the eye and replied, “Non.” That was it. My knee-jerk reaction was to think, “You are an asshole,” but upon reflection, he was somewhat right. There was nothing similar—even in the best public fabric shop in Paris.

The next day, Anh cut, sewed, and navigated how to make these dresses go from size 30 to 34/36. Amy was the perfect fit model, and my lunch was not perfect but seemed to satisfy enough. The final step in tailoring was to sew the buttons of the Cheongsam, which begins at the neckline, goes past the side of the bust, and continues down the length of the dress to the point where the dress slits on the side. This must be done by hand. Amy and I offered to sew the buttons while Anh finished the sewing of the last dresses. While we stitched, we chatted about what it was like growing up in mixed Asian households—about our Asian mothers, Asian grandmothers, where our families came from, and how they got to where they are now.  We laughed, divulged and reflected on how we got to where we are now.  None of us being born in Asia but our ancestry prominent in our lives.  There was a warmth to that day, a precious memory I hope never to forget. It was the Cheongsams that created this memory—something new created from pieces of the past. I think that’s a lovely way to think of fashion: nothing is completely new or old. Fashion can be circular in spirit and practice.