I. Clothing and Identity

A. Pham: Asian superbloggers, taste work, racial aftertaste, and fashion insiders
B. Racialized response to Asian online taste work as contemporary form of Orientalism (Said)
C. 1980s "Japanese invasion" - Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo (Comme des Garcons), Yohji Yamamoto (Kondo)

1. Seen as "Japanese designers" by international fashion press
2. Role of Orientalism

D. Asian Chic in 1990s-2000s (Leshkowich and Jones, Tu)
E. Asian American designers (Tu)

 

II. Orientalism

A. Edward Said, Orientalism (1978)
B. Definition: "...[A] way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in European and Western experience. The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other" (1)
C. East as opposite of West which defines what West is
D. Islam today as mysterious, dangerous other
E. Three forms of Orientalism

1. Academic specialty, regional studies: anthropologists, sociologists, historians, art historians, literary scholars, economists, political scientists, demographers, etc.
2. Mode of thought in literature and philosophy, Oriental/Occidental
3. Combination of two as practical strategy for colonial rule: "the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient -- dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over it" (3).

F. To know is to classify, and to classify is to control

 

III. Orientalism and the Japanese Invasion of the 1980s

A. Orientalism involved feminization of Orient

1. Weak, submissive, effete
2. Seductive, alluring
3. Penetrated by Westernization

B. Fashion = challenge to Orientalism, but not necessarily liberating
C. 1980s: designs by Rei Kawakubo, Issey Miyake, and Yohji Yamamoto

1. Cloth as guide to design
2. One size garments, draped, tied
3. Deconstruct items of clothing: what is a jacket?
4. Black as anti-color color

D. Reactions to Japanese designers

1. Lumped together as Japanese
2. Designs seen as traditionally and essentially Japanese
3. Criticized

a. Kawakubo = "Hiroshima bag-lady look"
b. Hanae Mori: "The fabric, uncut, formed flowing kimono evening dresses. What a lovely surprise to see Madame Mori return to her original source of inspiration after years of misguided attempts to imitate European style" (69).

E. Japanese-ness also reflected conscious intent by designers

1. Appeared in 1980s in Milan, Paris, New York
2. Challenge Western fashion
3. Make Japan equal to West as center for fashion

F. Self-Orientalizing

1. Adopt outsiders' gaze, measure self by their standards
2. Orientalize others: Japanese traditions, Southeast Asia

G. Transposed, re-inscribed Orientalism

1. Japan = avant-garde, high-tech experimentalism
2. Emulates Western fashion, but is inherently different and Other
3. Fashion = feminized realm, reproduces gendered aspects of Orientalism

H. Wim Wenders, Notebook on Cities and Clothes: Does it use language and camera techniques to Orientalize and feminize Yamamoto?
I. Issues of resistance

1. If resistance = completely subvert conventions and relations of power, then fashion isn't resistance
2. But, can we step outside of power? Dressing always involves capitalism, gender, race, history
3. Resistance according to Kondo

a. Challenge notions of convention, gender, race
b. Recognize that we also reproduce these notions, but modify them
c. Japanese designers force us to reconsider what it means to be Japanese, what constitutes fashion, what garments are, and how one wears them

 

IV. Ethnic Chic in Vietnam

A. Globalization = dramatic increase in the frequency, quantity, and importance of flows of people, things, money, and ideas around the globe

1. Consumer items produced around world
2. Travel
3. Internet
4. Not new, but it's become easier, cheaper, faster
5. Ideological position: we think of ourselves as connected globally

B. Two theories of globalization

1. Homogenization = people becoming similar, one global culture, Americanization

a. Modest Islamic fashion and hijab as reaction against homogenization

2. Heterogenization = appreciate diversity, cultural uniqueness

a. Cosmopolitan identities and status

C. 1980s-90s: Foreigners "discover" ethnic fashion in Vietnam
D. "Chinese" pajamas

1. 1994: Lan, owner of a downtown boutique
2. 1995: Lan's children send her six women's Chinese-style outfits from the US, these outfits are copied and sold as "ethnic chic" to foreign tourists
3. 1996: Mai, a market trader, adapts Lan's design and sells it to Vietnamese as a Chinese-inspired look
4. Tourists' quest for authenticity ==> hybrid product
5. Cosmopolitan locals have capital (economic, social, and cultural) to adopt "authentic" tradition

 

V. Performance practices (Leshkowich and Jones)

A. Move beyond homogenization v. heterogenization
B. Re-appropriation, characterization, and an exoticizing gaze: us v. them
C. Performance Theory

1. Self created through performance
2. Performance constrained by pre-existing conditions

D. Practice Theory (Pierre Bourdieu): taste reflects position
E. Performance practices attends to interaction between intentionality and positionality of both performer and audience

1. To enhance status, challenge Orientalism, audience must read performance correctly (i.e., according to performer's intent)
2. Reading depends on status relationship