Re-Orienting Fashion The Globalization of Asian Dress

by Niessen, Sandra; Leshkowich, Ann Marie; Jone, Carla

• ISBN13: 9781859735398
• ISBN10: 1859735398
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-04-01
• Publisher: Berg Pub Ltd

Summary

When Hong Kong entrepreneur David Tang opened his Shanghai Tang boutique on New York's Madison Avenue, it was not an isolated example of the globalization of Asian fashion. Further evidence is written on the labels in our closets, and paraded in the form of salwaar-kameez and silk sarongs by the rich and famous of London. The phenomenon merits scrutiny. This vanguard attempt points to the colonial era as the origin of fashion globalization, and describes its development as paralleling the gradual take-over of Asian daily wear by Western dress. From indigenous Batak weavers to Hong Kong designers, and from Indonesian businesswomen's power suits to Korean feminists' national costume, this book explores the sartorial interface of East and West. The globalization of Asian dress needs to be understood as part of an ongoing Orientalism that construes Asia as a feminine Other to the masculine West. The conventional Orientalist definition of fashion as an exclusively Western phenomenon has proved self-fulfilling in both East and West so that the conceptual boundary between the two is continually reasserted by design. Paying close attention to Asians' decisions about what clothing to make, sell, buy, and wear, the case studies in this book challenge Orientalist stereotypes of Asian style as passive and traditional and highlight how these actions are often made invisible by global cultural, rhetorical, and material practices that feminize Asia and the fashion world. This timely book will be of interest to dress and fashion theorists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, art historians and all those interested in globalization, Orientalism and their effects.

Author Biography

Sandra Niessen is an Anthropologist, in the Department of Human Ecology, at the University of Alberta.

Ann Marie Leshkowich is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology, at the College of the Holy Cross.

Carla Jones is a Vernacular Modernities Postdoctoral Fellow, at Emory University.

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: The Globalization of Asian Dress: Re-Orienting Fashion or Re-Orientalizing Asia?	1	(48)
Carla Jones and Ann Marie Leshkowich
1 Three Scenarios from Batak Clothing History: Designing Participation in the Global Fashion Trajectory	49	(30)
Sandra Niessen
2 The Ao Dai Goes Global: How International Influences and Female Entrepreneurs Have Shaped Vietnam's "National Costume"	79	(38)
Ann Marie Leshkowich
3 Korean Alterations: Nationalism, Social Consciousness, and "Traditional" Clothing	117	(22)
Rebecca N. Ruhlen
4 Designing Diasporic Markets: Asian Fashion Entrepreneurs in London	139	(20)
Parminder Bhachu
5 National Colors: Ethnic Minorities in Vietnamese Public Imagery	159	(26)
Hjorleifur R. Jonsson and Nora A. Taylor
6 Dress for Sukses: Fashioning Femininity and Nationality in Urban Indonesia	185	(30)
Carla Jones
7 Fashion-Nation: A Japanese Globalization Experience and a Hong Kong Dilemma	215	(28)
Lise Skov
Afterword: Re-Orienting Fashion Theory	243	(24)
Sandra Niessen
Index	267