Chinese Fashion from Mao to Now, 2nd Edition
Team: Juanjuan Wu
Program: Retail and Consumer Studies
Since the publication of Chinese Fashion: From Mao to Now in 2009, China has undergone tremendous transformation, with its GDP nearly quadrupling and substantial digitalization taking place. The fashion making system and its associated power structures have been completely reshaped. Consumers’ preferences and choices online are no longer mediated by traditional fashion gatekeepers. They have become co-designers, co-marketers, and co-retailers all in one. Luxury brands localized their designs, storytelling, and branding, expanding offerings from the tangible to the intangible (e.g., virtual labs, see Fig. 1). These local integrations cater to the new consumers’ highly stratified and diversified desires for social distinction. Meanwhile, home-grown designers have gone trans-national and gained recognition as creative authors of international fashion.
However, during the four decades of the reform era, the Chinese populace has never felt such a strong sense of uncertainty and alienation about the future as they do now. Against this backdrop of thrilling change and uncertainty, the 2nd edition of Chinese Fashion from Mao to Now calls for continuous renewal, rethinking, and rewriting. After all, “The ‘now’ of fashion is nostalgia in the making”.
Keywords: Chinese fashion, luxury branding, consumers, designers
Funders: Imagine Fund, McKnight Foundation
