II. Literature Review

separates their garments from others, making their Chinese and Cantonese identity

immediately recognizable. Case Study 2 analyzes Bobblehaus’ growth from blogs as a

foundation to the launch of their clothing line, and how they utilize collaborations, pop-

up stores, and participation in social issues prevalent to their community to bring their

group together. Attention will also be paid to its name and ethos, in addition to how they

create social media and create images to make their designs understandable to their

audience.

Literature Review

Literature on Chinese Fashion Designers

The majority of research on Chinese designers remains exoticized and Othered.5

Little research has been done on the contributions of traditional Chinese values as

embodied within a Chinese designer without a Westernized viewpoint, namely due to

China’s regard as a country of production rather than that of creativity, but an increasing

amount of scholars are detailing the creative shift in the Chinese fashion landscape in the twenty-first century.6 As Asian fashion rose to become a noticeable trend worldwide in the 1990s, Chinese fashion too became embroiled in the global spotlight.7 Despite this,

the self-orientalization of Chinese designers was still present in brands such as Shanghai

5 Niessen, Sandra, Anne Marie Leshkowish and Carla Jones. Re-Orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress. New York: Berg, 2013. 6 Tsui, Christine, China Fashion: Conversations with Designers. New York: 2009, 1. 7 Niessen, Sandra, Re-Orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress, 18.

Tang and Blanc de Chine who utilized their Chineseness to adapt to the Western gaze and world during this time period.8 Clark notes the design stereotypes that persist even in the

2010s: “the use of traditional Orientalist and Chinoiserie motifs, such as dragons or

exotic birds, versus the loose body-modifying shapes introduced by the Japanese avantgarde designers in the 1980s.”9 Tsui (2013) adds that other favorite symbols include “dragons, lanterns, peonies, and ancient palaces or locations in China.”10 While Chinese

designers were aided by the interest in the East, they were also hindered by this very

same interest, reduced to the exoticized Orientalist views of the West in order to break into the Western market.11 Western expectations of what Chinese fashion should look

like continue to be limited compared to the reality of the Chinese fashion sphere, despite globalization and China’s growing power.12 The production of such Asian ideals worked to reinforce its inferior position within the Western dominant hierarchy.13 Tu builds upon

this idea in The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of

Fashion, tracking Asianness as a fashionable commodity within the Western sphere–a

rich, diverse culture that is regarded as trendy and therefore holds fleeting interest for the West.14 Yet Tsui (2015) notes that increasingly, expressions of national identity have

evolved from stereotypical or traditional Chinese symbols to the “invocation of an

abstract Chinese spirit,” signaling an increasing number of and visibility for emerging

8 Niessen, Sandra, Re-Orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress, 2. 9 Clark, Hazel. “Chinese Fashion Designers: Questions of Ethnicity and Place in the Twenty-First Century.” Fashion Practice, 4:1, 43. 10 Tsui, Christine, China Fashion: Conversations with Designers, 582. 11 Tu, Thuy Linh Nguyen. “Cultural Economy of Asian Chic.” The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010, 101. 12 Tsui, Christine. “From Symbols to Spirit: Changing Conceptions of National Identity in Chinese Fashion.” Fashion Theory, 17:5, 600. 13 Tu, 101; Niessen, Leshkowich and Jones, 6. 14 Tu, The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion, 6.

Chinese designers, broadening the scope of what is considered Chinese.15 Cultural

confidence, now a key word for China’s cultural development, can also be considered within this narrative.16 Pointing to the value of Chinese history and the merits of

Confucian ideology, cultural confidence emphasizes the importance of continuing

Chinese characteristics within their culture as well as the people-centered philosophy in ancient China.17 With China as a leading global power now, their cultural confidence has

been growing within the current century. Within design, cultural confidence can be seen

as a way of evoking their Chinese-ness whichever way they choose, allowing them to

reclaim their power.

Nieseen, Leshkowich and Jones point out that the very diverse Asian cultures and

histories are “reduced to mere stylistic flourishes and hence feminized as part of the preserve of fashion.”18 Even as Chinese designers rose within the fashion industry in the

1990s and 2000s, they continued to serve and exist within the global yet Western fashion

regime to be classified as successful, hence why many designers felt the need to self orientalize in order to break into the Western market.19 Clark and Eisenberg consider this

gap with the case studies of Ma Ke and Gosha Rubchinskiy, looking towards other

designers who are working beyond the Orientalist and self-orientalizing tropes as they engage with different aspects of their own backgrounds.20

15 Tsui, Fashion Theory, 600. 16 Cunnan, Li. “Culture Confidence becomes new buzzwords.” CCTV. July 21st, 2016 http://english.cctv.com/2016/07/21/ARTI8yXZ2iF1htJyqBskYBXs160721.shtml 17 Cao, Desheng. “President emphasizes cultural confidence.” China Daily. March 24, 2021. https://www.chinadailyhk.com/article/161313 18 Niessen, Sandra, Anne Marie Leshkowish and Carla Jones. Re-Orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress. New York: Berg, 2013, 18, 230. 19 Skov, Lise. “Fashion-Nation: A Japanese Globalization Experience and a Hong Kong Dilemma.” ReOrienting Fashion, 239. 20 Clark, Hazel and Alla Eisenberg. “Making the Ordinary Fashionable: New Sartorial Languages from Russia and China.” Rethinking Fashion Globalization, 2019.

Clark notes that increasingly there are designers who stray away from

incorporating Chinese elements into their designs, while others continue to focus on

Chinese imagery and elements, such as Vivienne Tam’s self-exoticization through various Chinese cultural references.21 In America, even the early twenty-first century

Asian American designers who do not emphasize their heritage in design such as Phlilip

Lim and Jason Wu, remain identified as Asian designers within fashion media. Their

Chinese heritage is constantly referred to and emphasized, reducing them once again to

the Orientalized Other even without discernible Chinese elements in their designs.

Tension between reconnecting and drawing inspiration from one’s heritage and being

labeled a Chinese designer is a key concern for emerging designers, and thus highlights

the importance of diversifying the conversation around them. The landscape of Chinese

designers is and has been diverse and varied, resulting from a varied and dispersed

Chinese population across the world, as well as the 56 ethnic groups that make up the mainland.22 YanYan Knits is based in Hong Kong whereas Bobblehaus conducts

production in Shanghai, leading to differing identities and approaches borne out of their

respective locations. Ling emphasizes the importance of the inclusion of other China’s

within the landscape of Chinese fashion–Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, and Taiwan, where Chinese settlements are most widely populated.23 This then results in an inter-East-

Asian cultural exchange that impacts fashion production, circulation, and consumption in these regions and beyond.24 While their joint Chinese heritage points to a unifying

21 Clark, Hazel. “Chinese Fashion Designers: Becoming International.” Fashion in Multiple Chinas, 2018, 203. 22 Tsui, China Fashion, 1. 23 Ling, Fashion in Multiple Chinas, 8. 24 Ling, Fashion in Multiple Chinas, 9.

cultural foundation, mainland China itself is a diverse country with many distinct traditions and practices.25 China’s cultural makeup is thus complicated and diverse, and

does not fit in any monolithic or singular view on the nation. The many nuances within

China’s ethnic groups and other China’s necessitates closer examination of how brands

are culturally influenced within the Chinese fashion landscape, both nationally and

internationally. Chinese designers have to “negotiate their own work and recognition in the international world of fashion.”26 While research on China’s position within the

fashion industry is rapidly expanding with its growth of up and coming fashion designers,

diversified research and analysis on the subject remains sparse.

Global integration of fashion production, distribution, and consumption blur the

boundaries that were previously used to differentiate Chinese from the West or other nonChinese populations.27 However, the development of mainland Chinese fashion designers

are frequently divided into three categories: pre-liberation (before 1949), the fashion forbidden period (Chairman Mao era), and the post-Mao era (1980s).28 A fourth group is

likely warranted nowadays: the 21st century digital age. Chinese society was relatively

stable due to the welfare advances established between the 1940s to 1970s through the

Communist party, allowing China to become the destination for foreign companies in the 1980s and 1990s.29 Since the early postwar period, “East Asian textiles and garment

25 National Minorities Policy and its Practice in China. Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva and Other International Organizations in Switzerland. https://www.mfa.gov.cn/ce/cegv/eng/bjzl/t176942.htm#:~:text=So%20far%2C%20there%20are%2056,%2 C%20Daur%2C%20Mulam%2C%20Qiang%2C 26 Clark, Hazel. “Chinese Fashion Designers: Questions of Ethnicity and Place in the Twenty-First Century.” Fashion Practice, 4:1, 43. 27 Wu, Juanjuan, Yue Hu, Lei Xu, and Marilyn R. DeLong, Fashion in Multiple Chinas, 69. 28 Tsui, China Fashion, 3. 29 Moon, Christina H. “Fashion City: Diasporic Connections and Garment Industrial Histories Between the US and Asia.” Critical Sociology Vol. 44, No. 3, 524.

industries have been oriented to exports to the West,” but the government soon imposed trade restrictions as East Asian products began to undercut local manufacturers.30 This

continues to exist in form today. As China proclaimed an open door policy in the 1980s

in the post-Mao government, Tsui argues that while China started its globalization from

this time period, Chinese designers still utilize “strong hallmarks of nationalism that actively essentialize Chineseness.”31 The later periods of 1990s and 2000s saw a stronger

increase in Asian designers, who explored heritage or traditions both for aesthetic input and as a resurgence of ethnic identity.32 Increasingly in the mid-2000s, China has further

seen ‘creativity’ and ‘innovation’ as a way to attract investment and international

prestige, incorporating the value of ‘creativity’ as a way to develop soft power and cultural economies around the globe.33 Fashion thus takes on a symbolic and economic role in nation building.34

Modern fashion in East Asia is closely connected with identity politics and nationalism.35 Kaiser and Ling and Reinach (2018) note that race and ethnicity cannot be

separated from nation, therefore fashion, “an outcome of transnational exchange and

encounter,” becomes one of the most representative tools to showcase a national identity.36 Fashion can be symbolic of a nation’s ideology and cultural heritage reflected

within their design and inspirations, drawing from their own country’s complex culture

30 Skov, Re-Orienting Fashion, 225. 31 Tsui, Fashion Theory, 581. 32 Skov, Re-Orienting Fashion, 218. 33 Moon, Critical Sociology, 529. 34 Clark, Fashion in Multiple Chinas, 200. 35 Wu, Fashion in Multiple Chinas, 15. 36 Wu, Fashion in Multiple Chinas, 5. Kaiser, Susan B. “Ethnicities and ‘Racial’ Formation.” Fashion and Cultural Studies. London, New York: Bloomsbury, 2012, 141.

and history.37 Niessen, Leshkowich and Jones argue that traditional dress can be seen as

modern or fashionable because it “often involved a distanced gaze or nostalgia for a precapitalist past.”38 Kaiser draws this connection as well, emphasizing that identities tied to cultural background reference both the past and the future.39 The resurgence of

traditional clothing within the diaspora and dispersed Chinese people with the same

cultural heritage can be read as a symbol of cultural pride, and Niessen, Leshkowich and

Jones believe this is a form of re-orientalizing and re-structuring the orientalist Chinese narrative.40 They reclaim their history and heritage not purely as motifs to sell their

works, but as embodiments of their personal cultural values and confidence. Meanings of

cultural identity as represented through fashion are increasingly multilayered and

expansive, and with China’s desire to push itself to the fashion center, designers are

further reclaiming their power and reshaping the narrative of their cultural heritage.

Kaiser’s theory on subject formation for different ethnicities touches upon the

importance of representation and identity formation in addition to the importance of time and space.41 Clark’s research on the role of Chinese designers within the Western world

in the twenty-first century also expands upon this importance–as brands emerge and create a specialized identity, they must consider the space they occupy.42 The differing

identities of emerging Chinese designers broadens the scope of what it means to be a

Chinese designer and how different brand identity strategies can be in creating a

community. Rather than mythologizing the individual star designer, this notion is being

37 Clark, Hazel and Alla Eisenberg, Rethinking Fashion Globalization, 227. 38 Nieseen, Ann Marie Leshkowich and Carla Jones, Re-Orienting Fashion, 13. 39 Kaiser, Fashion and Cultural Studies, 144. 40 Nieseen, Ann Marie Leshkowich and Carla Jones, Re-Orienting Fashion, 1. 41 Kaiser, Fashion and Cultural Studies, 16. 42 Clark, Fashion Practice, 43.

challenged as fashion production is indeed a collaboration process. The reality of fashion

design, production, distribution is very much a collective, and emerging designers like

Bobblehaus and YanYan Knits both recognize this collaborative effort, emphasizing the

craft of their production teams. Rather than purely presenting their own traditions, these

designers are now aware that they are already competitors and peers in the fashion market.43

Scholarly attention to Chinese fashion has drastically increased in the past decade with China’s economic rise.44 With the globalization of the 20th and 21st century, fashion

was increasingly democratized and distributed at a wider capacity, allowing Chinese

talent to become visible within the Western sphere and vice versa. The rise of the internet

also aided this exchange–anyone with a digital device could disseminate and intake

information. As mentioned previously, the notion of Chineseness was used to break into

Western markets in the 1990s. Yet, Tu notes that for Asian American designers and

Asian fashion workers, the performance of a cultural identity “cannot be divorced from the various material incentives that have made these identities useful.”45 Similarly to their

predecessors, mentioning their Chinese heritage within the United States also allows

them to break into international markets, highlighting the support China provides for

designers that are of Chinese heritage. Tsui remarks that the “national is the international,” building upon the connection between Chinese fashion and nationalism.46

Formulating a national identity through dress allows Chinese designers to accelerate to

the international sphere, yet not all designers in the twenty-first century reflect a

43 Skov, Re-Orienting Fashion, 228. 44 Wu, Fashion in Multiple Chinas, 71. 45 Tu, The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion, 180. 46 Tsui, Fashion Theory, 580.

conscious or Asian or Chinese style.47 Rather, designers proclaim their own ties to their

Chinese heritage and culture depending where they are located in their own unique ways.48 Emerging designers rather seek to free old images of Chinese fashion with a new

form of Chinese culture–one that is modernized and as multifaceted as those who

embody Chinese heritage are. Designers are creating “a new identity for Chinese

fashion,” one that can be defined through “‘spirit,’ ‘philosophy’ and/or modern culture’” but is still about “Chineseness.”49 All of these contribute to building a new Chinese

fashion identity that allows space for more diversified and new voices to emerge.

Literature on Brand Identities and Communities

Tseëlon (2018) in “Fashion Tales: How we make up stories that construct brands,

nation and gender” considers the importance of the individual and collective in how we

want to come across and how we choose the community we belong to, linking this how

brands utilize storytelling, purpose, and character of products to create their brand communities.50 Both the brand and its products take on symbolic meaning translated from

the brand itself, giving significance to how we see ourselves represented in these brands

and thus formulating a community. The core value of community can be related back to

the nationalism and togetherness that Chinese designers continue to emphasize,

sharpening the sentiments of “we-ness” and “they-ness” to differentiate their ethnicities from their Western counterparts.51 As Kaiser (2012) states, fashion involves becoming

47 Clark, Fashion Practice, 47. Tsui, Fashion Theory, 582. 48 Tsui, Fashion Theory, 582. 49 Tsui, Fashion Theory, 586. 50 Tseëlon, Efrat. “Fashion Tales: How We Make up Stories That Construct Brands, Nations and Gender.” Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty 9, No. 1. June 2018. 51 Tsui, Fashion Theory, 594.

collectively with others.52 Simmel too argues that fashion is a continuous struggle

between the need to belong and a drive for individualization, emphasizing the importance

of agency within fashion but also the need for a community to belong to from a wearer’s perspective.53 This can be compared to Kaiser’s theory on fashioning the national subject

as a custom that develops over time, in which nation building and identity formation

intersect to formulate community identity in addition to personal identity. Chinese

nationalism, then, is not only what is socially and educationally imbued within emerging

designers as part of their personal identity but also a mechanism to distinguish them from the West in their brand identity.54 Utilizing inspiration from their heritage allows

customers to see themselves as reflected within the brand, forming their community.

Coelho emphasizes three pillars in brand community: shared consciousness of kind, shared rituals and moral responsibilities, and obligations to society.55 Muniz and

O’Guinn highlight similar values, claiming community is “marked by a shared

consciousness, rituals and traditions, and a sense of moral responsibility.” Both note that

each of these qualities are situated within a commercial sphere and therefore has its own

particular expression unique to each brand, in addition to the idea that brand community

functions differently than brand loyalty. However, this imagined intimacy can be significant beyond their use value, and can extend to social connection.56 Despite this,

Clark notes that “fashion and social media together create a sense of fashion as

52 Kaiser, Susan, B. “Fashion and Culture: Cultural Studies, Fashion Studies.” Fashion and Cultural Studies. Bloomsbury Publishing: 2013, 13. 53 Simmel, George. “Fashion.” The Rise of Fashion. Minnesota: 2004. 54 Tsui, Fashion Theory, 594. 55 Pedro Simões Coelho, Paulo Rita, Zélia Raposo Santos. “On the relationship between consumer-brand identification, brand community, and brand loyalty.” Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Vol. 43. 2018. 56 Tu, Thuy Linh Nguyen. “All in the Family? Kin, Gifts, and the Networks of Fashion.” The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion. Duke University Press, 2010, 75.

‘international,’ while obscuring the fact that authority in the field of fashion remains

within the control of certain nations, brands, and individuals,” thereby necessitating communities for those who are marginalized.57 With the rise of social media and

technology, social connections and online intimacies become a new way of forming

connections and communities that can exist both digitally and physically. Krause and

Bressan further build upon this idea, arguing that “families are tight knit despite being far flung,” able to establish “global households.”58

Muniz and O’Guinn (2001) further note that “community is arguably the

fundamental social relationship, having its roots in the familial relationship,” extending the fundamental idea of community to brand communities.59 While Nguyen Tu and

Moon’s research covers the kinship networks amongst Asian American designers, there is

little research on the presence of cultural values within a greater brand community for

emerging Chinese designers. Prominence of e-commerce and social media platforms

have also accelerated and shifted the focus of the Chinese fashion industry, ushering in a new period that accelerated Chinese fashion production, distribution, and consumption.60

As a result of this, the need for a sharper brand identity was ingrained within emerging

Chinese designers and all designers as a whole.

Literature on Chinese communities in Fashion

57 Clark, Fashion in Multiple Chinas, 200. 58 Muniz and O’Gunn. Tight Knit, 10. 59 Muniz, Jr., Albert M., and Thomas C. O’Guinn. “Brand Community.” Journal of Consumer Research 27, No. 4 2001, 412. 60 Wu, Juanjuan, Yue Hu, Lei Xu, and Marilyn R. DeLong, Fashion in Multiple Chinas, 91.