Sketches:
Process:
Final Garment:
Performance:
Artist Statement:
For my studio final, I decided to address an issue that is long ignored and incredibly personal to me: Cultural appropriation of the Chinese culture. Being Chinese myself, I realized over the years that people have developed a perception of the Chinese fashion as being “cheap” or “unfashionable” based on the tag “made in China”. Much of this garment was inspired by Feng Cheng wang’s made in china menswear collection where he printed in bold red letter the phrase “MADE IN CHINA” on simple T-shirts. I thought this was a simple yet incredibly effective idea because the statement came across so powerfully and no further embellishments were necessary to convey his message. Not only did I want to address how Chinese fashion is more than just “made in china”, I also wanted to touch upon how we usually associate Chinese fashion with the printed Qi Pao’s, porcelain, dragons, etc. Which is historically accurate however, Chinese fashion has evolved much more over the centuries but people still fail to move past the idea of how Chinese fashion is somehow only timeless. I designed the garment to be like a Mao jacket because that is the real culture of China compared to the Qi Pao’s and the porcelain which only predominantly exists in the upper class socialites in china or even merely in movies. The Mao jacket is definitely way more significant than these stereotypes because not only was he one of the most well known leaders/dictators in China but the Mao jacket was basically the Chinese Uniform during the cultural revolution which was a big turning point for China. Instead of addressing issues like such, people (especially westerners) tend to focus on the glamorous and romantic aspect of China which is simply unachievable and unrealistic. Therefore, I created this garment with leftover fabric i had from last semester that symbolized the “stereotypical” Chinese fabric quite excellently. I used this fabric to create bulges on the Mao jacket to symbolize how westerners have almost “interrupted” true Chinese culture with their timeless stereotyping. I also placed tags on the protruding bulges to address the cheap “made in China” aspect of the garment. For my performance aspect of the garment, I interacted with my audience and allowed them to come up to me while I was wearing the garment and had them cut off the made in china tags. This very act symbolizes the breaking of a stereotype or a common mold. I thought the lingering image of the red threads from the cutting of the tags is quite a visceral and powerful representation of the ruins leftover from over-stereotyping of westerners on Chinese fashion. Because of this lack of knowledge westerners have on true Chinese culture and fashion, we are stuck in this “timeless Orient” stage where nothing is evolving. Whilst this is what the western world sees of china, in China, fashion is actually taking the country by storm. Major fashion weeks are emerging with new conceptual designers. Overall, this was a very personal project to me since being a Chinese designer myself, it is twice as hard getting noticed in the industry just because of the existing reputation of Chinese fashion. I want to see a world where that is and will change.
