With focus on Asian societies, Ling suggests that the principal values of the Confucian system added to the growth of Asian fashion industry success.61 The “importance of harmonious human relationships, social structure and work ethics” center around the treatment of people, thereby relaying the value of amicable relationships and close ties as a way of providing foundations for community building.62 Exchanges between designers and sewers, customers and sellers can build beyond this relationship and become “like a family,” “performing a relationship of kin” that is intimate and tight knit.63 Moon adds that kin networks allow for “informal contracts built on mutual trust,” which makes it more flexible for professional disputes to be settled.64 Shared cultural heritage and past personal histories becomes a bonding factor for communities, where connections can be easily made and core values of cultural heritage are passed down and included within the fashion sphere. The Chinese businesses are thus built around familial concepts, whether locations are abroad in Italy or within the garment district of New York. The practice of gifting within Chinese immigrant workers and designers, as Tu highlights in “All in the Family, Kin, Gifts and the Networks of Fashion,” is significant beyond the use value and beyond the economic value, as it is a symbolic meaning.65 The familial narrative allows them to do this, forming a thick solidarity despite being unrelated–their shared heritage or language allows them to feel comfortable and familiar, formulating a bond that is like a family. This structure can also be described as guanxi, a largely kin-based cultural metaphor for “shoring up social
61
Ling, Fashion in Multiple Chinas, 127. Ling, Fashion in Multiple Chinas, 127. 63 Tu, The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion, 65. 64 Moon, Critical Sociology, 525. 65 Tu, The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion, 93. 62
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