WHEN I finally caught Lee Ang's much-hyped film Lust, Caution last year, my eyeballs nearly popped, not from overdosing on Tony Leung's derriere, but from scene after scene featuring China actress Tang Wei - with her clothes on.

It was her tailored wardrobe of oh-so-lovely cheongsams or qipao. Eight years after Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung stunned all into silence with her loud prints in Wong Kar Wai's In The Mood For Love, the high-collared tunic with frog buttons shearing diagonally across a woman's covered decolletage has made yet another comeback.

'Watching these movies makes me want to go to a tailor,' said C, a Hong Kong friend who wore no less than a gold lame version of the dress at her own recent wedding.

In Lee's film, Tang shouldered her garment a tad looser than the foxy Cheung did, letting the translucence of fine, thin silk skim her skin, hinting at the curves underneath. This, the film shows, was the uniform of calendar girls, actresses and women of high society during China's Republican Era.

In actual fact, the cheongsam began as a Manchurian man's robe some 300 years ago. It took flight in China when it was adopted as a school uniform, valued for its buttoned-up, high-necked sobriety. With the advent of the film industry and an expanding Shanghai nightclub scene, a 'slutty' version of the dress began to emerge, morphing to allow for the flashing of stockinged legs underneath a high slit. In the 1950s, the dress was also cinched in at the waist, perhaps partly inspired by the global New Look trend, and hemlines went up.

But who, really, wears the cheongsam today? What connotations - from Tiger Beer bargirl to austere dragon lady - does it carry in 2008?

I have several pet theories. Social anthropologists have observed that over the passage of time, the costume - yes, it has attained this status - makes its contemporary appearance only in ritual scenarios. These include weddings, important birthdays and Chinese New Year.

When women put on such garments, they emphasise their Chinese-ness, or at least their traditionality. They are making a cultural statement, and wearing their 'ethnicity', Manchu origin or no.

For some, this donning of traditional attire is akin to 'fulfilling one's obligation, or fulfilling one's quota of being Chinese, once a year', so said S, a Chinese music teacher based in London.

She added: 'It's like wearing red for the New Year - you want to feel festive, feel the ritual, re-connect with your roots.

'Men wear red at this time of the year, too, but women can go a step further and actually dress up a bit more.'

I am tempted to expound on her insinuation of how traditional costumes have become genderised over time, but am more eager to think about why people wear the cheongsam all year round, and not just during festive occasions.

The dress' early literary connotations, as fashion academic Lise Skov maintains, can still be seen today in how a number of top Hong Kong schools still enforce a navy, unfitted version of it upon its students. These girls complete the 'scholarly' look of the demure garment by donning white socks worn underneath velvet Mary Janes, as Tang did in her pre-spy life in the movie.

Upgrade this 'scholarly' vibe, however, and you will see how the dress is worn - still relatively formless - by women in positions of authority, such as female politicians in Taiwan. Push the concept one notch further along the social ladder, and it becomes the uniform of elite tai tais playing lazy afternoon mahjong.

Indeed, just as branded clothing has become a marker of social class, so has national costume. But different social markers, of the costume, as well as the people who wear them, continue to change.

When I was in a more active phase of wearing cheongsam tops around Singapore some eight years ago, I received funny looks from people who thought I was a runaway from a Chinese restaurant.

Those were the days when these things either came in cheap faux-satin 'dim sum waitress' brocade or 'mountain maid' indigo tie-dye prints. In the sweltering heat, I sometimes left my top button undone - to the horror of my Hong Kong friend C. She remarked: 'It's vulgar, only prostitutes wear it that way.' I duly buttoned up.

In the years that followed, Singapore designers gave the Manchu-turned-Chinese robe a contemporary spin. Some stylists gunned for the 'ang moh on beach holiday' look, patching together loose swathes of flowing linen and Chinoiserie only statuesque blondes could pull off. Others cut their fabrics more aggressively in asymmetrical patterns, patching angry colours and textures in homage to Issey Miyake or street fashion.

Where I was once routinely classed as an oddball hippie during my early days of frequent cheongsam abuse, teenagers who now don retro-print tops with Mandarin collars are labelled 'cute as a button'.

These days, women plan girly nights out and fancy dress parties on the back of Lust, Caution and In The Mood For Love. Outside China and its diaspora, where the dress once alternately represented Suzie Wong and the submissive Asian female, the cheongsam has now become a re-invented tradition. It is a statement about reconnecting with one's ethnic identity, and re-interpreting the past in a funky way.

I am the proud owner of six cheongsams and eight cheongsam tops. It goes without saying that I never have enough time - or guts - to wear them. Part of the thrill is the pleasure of knowing that I have these dresses, and enjoying the collection conceptually.

As for my last outing in a cheongsam at a recent wedding: Alas, I had failed to retain my hippie oddball status. Flaunting a belly and flabby arms, I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I had graduated into a corpulent 'wannabe tai tai'.

This story was first published in The Straits Times on Feb 28, 2008.