- Home
- A-Z Publications
- International Journal of Fashion Studies
- Previous Issues
- Volume 4, Issue 2, 2017
International Journal of Fashion Studies - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2017
Volume 4, Issue 2, 2017
-
-
Dilute to taste: Kimonos for the British market at the beginning of the twentieth century
By Akiko SavasAbstractThis article investigates the significance of the kimono in British fashion at the beginning of the twentieth century and clarifies who was active in promoting its popularity throughout Britain. It also examines the colour trends that developed for kimonos made for the British market. In the early twentieth century, large numbers of kimonos specially designed for the western market were exported to Britain by Japanese manufacturers, such as Takashimaya, where they were sold in shops and department stores in and around London. This made it increasingly possible for anyone to easily obtain kimonos, in contrast with the nineteenth century when collectors were the primary consumers of kimonos. Thus, in British fashion history the phenomenon of the ‘Japan craze’ was most notable in the 1900s–10s. Not only does archival evidence allow the export of kimonos to be tracked, it also demonstrates how changes to the garment to suit foreign markets came about. According to documented reports, the colours of kimonos needed to be ‘subdued’ for the British market. This change proved to be a highly effective ‘translation’ in design as the kimono moved from Japanese culture to the very different cultural language of British society.
-
-
-
The birth of modern fashion in Korea: Sartorial transition between hanbok and yangbok through production, mediation and consumption
By Jungtaek LeeAbstractSartorial change from hanbok (Korean dress) to yangbok (western dress) is commonly seen as marking the transitional Opening Port era of the late nineteenth century, when modern fashion emerged, seemingly replacing ‘traditional’ Korean dress with ‘modern’ western dress. However, when examining actual cases of Korean sartorial practice, this linear and dichotomous framework – non-western traditional versus western modern – has limits in its approach, lacking the multiplicity of local meanings and experiences in line with particular social and cultural contexts. This study instead explores the protean transition of dress and fashion in Korea as a way of challenging Eurocentric notions of fashion. In particular, it seeks a better understanding of the sartorial transition and local practice of modern dress and fashion emerging in colonial modern Korea through production, mediation and consumption. Critically reinterpreting diverse sources of object, image and text gleaned from the modern colonial period (1910–45), the framework of production–mediation–consumption builds up a rounded picture of the emergence of modern Korean dress and fashion that materialized through not only yangbok but also hanbok. Reflecting modern ironies of the time and the specificities of colonial society, the dichotomy between the two dress systems (hanbok and yangbok) was rather nuanced, multifaceted and intricately developed in relation to modern fashion, local modernities and the ways in which they evolved in the vernacular Korean context, across colonial and western fashion discourses.
-
-
-
Westernization and the consistent popularity of the Republican qipao
By Yu LiuAbstractThis article is focused on the ways in which the qipao in mainland China kept pace with western fashion from the 1920s to the 1940s. Using historical garments, pictures and documents, the research makes comparisons between qipao styles and western female fashions, including tailoring, accessories, make-up and hairstyling. The qipao inherited some traditional Chinese details and absorbed western mainstream fashion elements at the same time. Its selective westernizations enabled it to be at the forefront of fashion during the Republican period (1911–49). The emergence and development of the qipao is a successful example of a national costume that survived through mainstream fashion trends.
-
-
-
Socialism and the fashion business: The case of China and Hong Xiang
More LessAbstractThis article explores how fashion businesses were transformed from capitalist fashion firms to socialist fashion firms after the Communist Party established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. By exploring the case of the first Chinese fashion company, Hong Xiang, through business records stored in the Shanghai Municipal Archive Center, I argue that during the Mao era (1950s–1970s) the Chinese government socialized fashion businesses in five key areas. It first took over ownership of private businesses in the name of a ‘merger’, while imposing a particular ideology in which working attitudes and clothing represented people’s political attitudes towards the nation. In clothing design, a set of dichotomies defined what was socialist dress and what was capitalist dress: socialist design was simple, economic and practical; capitalist design was complicated, luxurious and over-decorated. In business management, the government encouraged the Chinese to believe that socialist systems were better than anything under capitalism by manipulating business information and offering different interpretations of bourgeois business strategies. At a micro-level, the socialist country meticulously manipulated particular vocabularies to reflect the change of the system from capitalism to socialism. This article re-examines this rich history to offer new insights into the tensions and translations between capitalism and socialism that occurred in the Chinese fashion business between the 1950s and the 1970s.
-
-
-
Fashioning tradition in contemporary Korean fashion
By Yunah LeeAbstractThis article reconsiders the debate of ‘self-orientalization’ in Asian fashion within the context of contemporary Korean fashion and its place in the promotion of the national economy and culture. Case studies of Korean fashion labels such as Tchai Kim and Isae reveal that they have challenged the typical images of hanbok, the traditional Korean dress, and provided styles and brands that resonate with local Korean characteristics as well as global fashion concerns. By reinterpreting traditional shapes and purposes of hanbok, employing traditional dressmaking methods and craft skills, and cleverly presenting and promoting their products and brands, these fashion companies have created a hybrid design and style. This has been built from the development of complex and mutually reinforcing interactions between local and global fashion knowledge and practice. This article argues that these new movements in contemporary Korean fashion provide further understanding of the complex and multifaceted dialectics of Korean fashion, beyond the dichotomy of tradition versus modernity.
-
-
-
The role of madoguchi in transnational fashion
More LessAbstractThis article uses the Japanese concept of madoguchi, literally ‘window opening’, and applies it in the context of a transnational fashion landscape. Here, a madoguchi acts as an essential go-between person, operating as a mediator between two cultures as well as functioning as a scout, fashion hunter and interpreter. The author’s personal experience as a fashion journalist reporting on notable British creative talent for Hanatsubaki, Shiseido’s Japanese in-house fashion magazine, provides a relational perspective on the role, value and skills of a transcultural madoguchi, as well as consideration of the challenges that arose from this exchange. Reflections on the peculiarities of translation when communicating cultural content to a foreign readership reveal the ‘traffic in things’ involved in global flows and the impact of evolving technology on professional fashion transmission.
-
-
-
Book Reviews
Authors: Christine M.E. Guth, Lauren Downing Peters, Elizabeth Kutesko and Axelle BoyerAbstractThe Stories Clothes Tell: Voices of Working-Class Japan, Tatsuichi Horikiri (2016), translated and introduced by Reiko Wagoner Lanham, Boulder, New York and London: Rowman and Littlefield, 206 pp., ISBN: 9781442265103, Paperback, $29.00, ISBN: 9781442265110, Hardback, $79.00
Dress History: New Directions in Theory and Practice, Charlotte Nicklas and Annabella Pollen (eds) (2015, First edition) London: Bloomsbury, 215 pp., ISBN: 9780857855411, Hardback, £85.00
Fashioning Identity: Status Ambivalence in Contemporary Fashion, Maria Mackinney-Valentin (2017, first edition) London: Bloomsbury, 186 pp., ISBN: 9781474249102, Hardback, £84.99
‘Black Fashion: Art. Pleasure. Politics’, Noliwe Rooks (ed.), special issue, Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art, 37 (2015) Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 132 pp., ISSN: 10757163, Paperback, $27.00 e-ISSN: 2152-7792
-