Dressing for business in China

[dsmolken]

We had a thread a while ago about how to dress when on business in India. What about China? I've got a week-long trip to Shanghai coming up in late October. What should I wear to be taken seriously and avoid confusing people as to who I am, how important I am etc?

I work in IT for a large multinational, so it's not really big serious business or dealing with real important people, but let's make this thread more general and hopefully useful to others as well.

Side note: when I was in India in June some people I wasn't working with directly were asking around where I'm from because I "don't look European". They were guessing Middle East or Latin America. Funny.

 

[Trompe le Monde]

 

[globetrotter]

I have much less experience in China than I do in India, but I would make two generalizations:


1. the chinese people in business today have had their cultural experience "scrambled" over the past couple of generations, so their expectations are less firmly planted than you will find in India. you will find yourself doing business with children of peasants who made good, and with people whose parents wore mao suits. so the whole issue of status is a lot more confused and fluid than in india

2. a lot of westerners in hong kong dress very well, due to all the tailors available. and a lot of the people who come through hong kong take the opportunity to buy some tailored clothing. so the people you meet with in hong kong and china have encountered a lot of westerners wearing their best, newest tailored clothing.

 

[Nicola]

http://store.zegna.com/home.asp?tsk...rce=20110914&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=it

Funny thing is this just showed up in my email

 

[dsmolken]



I have much less experience in China than I do in India, but I would make two generalizations:

Thanks, very useful. So I don't need to wear my ultra-blocky Soviet apparatchik suit, heh.

 

[RogerC]

I spent two years in China, and my experience is that sartorial expectations are low. The Cultural Revolution tried to make everyone completely equal, and dress sense hasn't recovered yet. You may meet someone who looks like a peasant, smokes hideous self-rolled ciggies, slurps tea out of mugs with a patina that would make the Berluti people give up and start over again as housepainters, and horrible teeth, only to find that this person runs a 20.000 people enterprise. Hence, it isn't difficult to come across as well dressed. I would say apply the basic rules of conservative business dress, and don't worry about the rest.

 

[dsmolken]

How about French cuffs, contrast collars etc? Good idea or bad?

 

[globetrotter]



How about French cuffs, contrast collars etc? Good idea or bad?

they are going to have seen westerners coming through hong kong wearing over tailored clothes - lots of stuff like that, fancy patterns, french cuffs, contrast collars, everything. it won't phase anybody, but it also won't bother them if you are wearing a jc penny suit.