Fashion System with Chinese Characteristics
China has rapidly transformed from a garment-manufacturing site to a fast rate fashion consumer society. With Den Xiao Ping’s open door policy (1978), China “discovered” western consumption regimes. One of its objectives was to attract foreign investments and promote cultural industries such as design and fashion to counterbalance the country’s decades of isolation. Since then, plurality characterized the process of the fabrication of Chinese fashion. Chinese fashion system in the 21st century could not merely be understood by Chinese hybridity typified by a mix of China and the west (Ling and Segre Reinach 2018). In particular, it entails a power dynamic completely re-negotiating the 21st century’s fashion hierarchies. Under Xi Jinping’s regime, the “Made in China 2025” policy is destined to redefine China’s economic and symbolic role locally and globally. Manifested from it is a radical change in ways that Chinese design, production, and consumption of fashion are made, perceived and performed in and outside of China. From its very outset, Chinese fashion system consists of multiple and at times contradictory articulations. On the one hand, collaborations are underway with established western partners, to a great extent exemplified by Sino-Italian joint ventures, and foreign alliances predominantly driven by Chinese goals. On the other hand, Chinese consumers’ aesthetic judgment is the key driver of the success of global brands facilitated largely by an advanced Chinese digital platform. Adding to this is China’s recent ‘going out’ policy, which, has not only invested its manufacturing base across the Global South but also multiplied ‘Made in China’ by ‘Made by Chinese’ mitigating quota restriction for Chinese produces instigated by the US-China trade war. With the marriage of an exponential China/ese produced fashion and its worldwide (digital) consumption, a process of Sinicization of global fashion is at play. This paper historicizes fashion-making in/from/with China from the country’s open door policy to the present time to scrutinize its impact on global reordering of fashion in the 21st century so as to articulate a fashion system in Chinese style.
