Rogue Flows: Trans-Asian Cultural Traffic

10 - Fashion Shows, Fashion Flows: The Asia Pacific Meets in Hong Kong

Fashion is such a liquid phenomenon that it makes many of the other forms of popular culture appear comparatively stable. It continues to be Western dominated — at least in the fashion centres in Europe where big-name designers present their collections to fashion editors and photographers who fly in from all parts of the world. At the same time, fashion is highly globalised; many Asians today have grown up wearing Western-style clothes, and although they may admire the beauty of traditional dress and fully endorse its national significance, they may not feel entirely comfortable wearing it. To acknowledge that Western-style dress has long since taken root in Asia (and elsewhere), I prefer the term ‘world fashion’ to ‘Western fashion’ (cf. Eicher and Sumberg 1995). This is not to overlook the fact that in many parts of Asia, Western fashion brands are perceived to be prestigious. Since the 1970s, East Asian patronage has, in fact, guaranteed the financial wellbeing of many a Paris and London fashion house. As a global centre-periphery system, fashion is thus based on cultural asymmetry. Here I wish to analyse the cultural production of world fashion from an Asian perspective. The chapter is about a fashion show and the meeting in Hong Kong of a group of fashion designers from Asia-Pacific countries. The event was organised as a self-conscious attempt to enhance Hong Kong’s position as a fashion city within the region. This was in many ways an interesting and noteworthy project, but, as we will see, it had some inherent problems. Promotional events are not always successful; as future-oriented investments they inevitably involve a risk. Unlike business scholars who 10 Fashion Shows, Fashion Flows: The Asia Pacific Meets in Hong Kong Lise Skov 222 Lise Skov present a successful case as a model to emulate, and unlike fashion writers who celebrate famous designers for their brilliance, I believe that promotional failures provide fertile material for cultural analysis, exactly because they demonstrate how imperfect strategic investments and economic power can be. In 1997, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council launched the Asia Pacific Young Fashion Designers’ Show as a part of the entertainment programme put on during Fashion Week. Historically, Hong Kong Fashion Week has seen its main task as establishing links between local garment manufacturers and Western buyers. So, the Asia Pacific Show marked a turn towards Asia and a new strategy for presenting Hong Kong as a regional fashion centre. In the first section of this chapter, I discuss different conceptions and forms of fashion and dress in Asia, in order to uncover on what terms we may speak of such a thing as ‘Asian fashion’. Secondly, I explore the development of Hong Kong’s export-oriented garment industry relative to its changing position in the globalised business sector. In relation to this, I present the historical background for Hong Kong Fashion Week, which is not only one of the region’s biggest trade fairs but also an official showcase for Hong Kong. These sections provide the context — in style, industry and institution — for an analysis of the Asia Pacific Show itself. In the third section, I present the social organization of the show, and section four is devoted to an analysis of the images of Hong Kong that the fashion show generated. Finally, I reach the conclusion in which I address the issue of power in intra-Asian fashion flows.1 Is There Such a Thing as Asian Fashion? Under what conditions can we talk about Asia as a region in fashion? We must start with this question because, when studying fashion in Asia, we cannot make reference to an uninterrupted continuity or a family similarity in the way that fashion scholars routinely do in their studies of Europe and the US (see for example Davis 1992, 28; Lipovetsky 1992, 38). There, notions of Paris fashion or English style are based on centuries of exchange. By contrast, the only way we can conceive of a homogeneous Asian fashion is through the sweeping success of Western-style clothes. Of course, there are important differences in the ways in which world fashion has been adopted in Asia. But even in India, where local fashions are holding strong, world fashion has made huge inroads during the last two Fashion Shows, Fashion Flows: The Asia Pacific Meets in Hong Kong 223 decades. Different forms of Asian clothes continue to...