Photo of Bride in Wedding Dress with Flower Girl, Page Boy and Female Guests

This photo was taken in Shanghai in the 1930s or 1940s. The figures in this picture wear carefully-designed apparel, shoes, hairstyles and makeups. The bride is in western-style white wedding dress, accompanied by a flower girl in a western-style one-piece dress, a page boy in shirt, vest, and short suit trousers, and a group of female guests all in adapted below-knee cheongsams embellished with various designs and palettes.
There are two main models among the female guests’ gowns, one of which, as worn by the first lady from the left as well as the one to the left of the bride, is made of an unadorned yet elegant fabric with geometric patterns such as dots and grids in combination with western tailoring and modelling elements including slope shoulder, raglan sleeves and shoulder pads which give the garment a solid structure as well as a back slit on the low standing color as opposed to the traditional front slit, making these two cheongsams much more like a western one-piece dress. Such kind of cheongsams with adaptation and changes like balloon sleeves, fishtail, collages, seams, etc., were very fashionable during that period.
The other main model, as shown on the rest of the female guests, is with a seemingly-seamless slit on the standing collar, probably in order to echo the collar design of the first model, on the basis of traditional cheongsam designs such as the super short sleeves without seams with the shoulder, piping and “一”-shaped frogs. The application of the stylish printed or jacquard fabrics with various patterns and rich palettes, adds special glamour to the cheongsams based on a harmonious visual effect, while the curled hair, white leather shoes, watches, gold or silver bracelets, unveil the diverse fashion elements of that period.