'Dress' at least says what it is. A cheongsam may turn out to be the ideal sort of dress I need for my project, but if it does not show up when I search for a dress I may not find it.

The thing being a dress is just one aspect. It also being chinese (style) is just as important. Then for need of variation or standing out in origing the maker may name it 'qipao' or, in other spelling 'chipao'. Then this would only work for users relying on a Latin character set. Not sure if a user working in chinese would see those items turning up in a search.

Of course this holds not only for chinese dresses for 'Kleid' (German), 'Robe' or 'Jupon' (French), 'Vestido'(Spanish) 'Jurk'(Dutch), or what you want.   

The name of a thing can be a unique identifier, but anything unique by definition is not suitable as a searchable term unless one knows the answer to the search already. John Wilkins Real Character was a nice try but it did not work.  

The name of the maker in the product name is just a waste of space. 

Really more effort should be put in providing searchable Metadata. Search terms should be standardized ('clothing, female, skirt typelower part'), and stores should not accept items without a fully filled metadata file and add a unique identifier of the item. 

However, this would reduce the waste of content by users (who will buy new things when they already own a similar item but failed to find it) so it would be bad for business and will not materialize.