Fashion in Multiple Chinas

Revealing the many iterations of Chinese fashion existing across the Chinese diaspora, this book examines complex and global processes behind the nation's fashionable output.

The transformation of China from a major site for clothing manufacture to an intensely fashion consuming society has been widely documented. Less has been written about the making of Chinese fashion. In Fashion in Multiple Chinas, expert authors explore how a multitude of Chinese fashions operate across the widespread, fragmented and diffused Chinese diaspora. They challenge the idea of Chinese nationalism as 'one nation', as well as of China as a single reality, revealing the realities of Chinese fashion as diverse and comprising multiple practices. They also demonstrate how the making of Chinese fashion is composed of numerous layers, often involving a web of global entanglements between manufacturing and circulation, retailing and branding. Chapters cover the mechanics of the PRC fashion industry, the creative economy of Chinese fashion, its retail and branding, and the cultural identity of Chinese fashion from the diasporas comprising the transglobal landscape of fashion production.