“I feel like we found fifteen amazing girls, but it was a freaking struggle. Some agencies just had no Asian girls. It just threw me for a curve. This is the first time I’m showing, and I feel like it was a huge awakening. You hear about it all the time, and then you’re in the position to request it, and I’m like ‘This is insane.’” Now he sees the modeling world differently. “It seems really funny that people have been casting all-white shows forever and that’s never discussed,” he said. “And it’s like ‘Why did you cast all white girls?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, that’s what the designer wanted.’”

The dominance of white, Eastern European models on the runways is something that’s well-known and has been spoken out against, particularly by black models. Catwalks notoriously lack diversity, which is troubling because the predominance of white models creates a specific standard of beauty, and the non-representation of models of color essentially devalues people of color in general as beautiful. In 2008, Ling Woo Liu wrote an article in Time Magazine called “Color Lines on the Catwalk,” in which she discusses what she saw as the “rise of the Asian supermodel,” pointing to the triumvirate of Hye Park, Du Juan, and Eugenia Mandzhieva as the breakthrough Asian models who have made it possible for other Asian women to pursue successful modeling careers. Since then we have had many Asian faces represented on the runway: Liu Wen famously became the first Asian woman to walk the Victoria’s Secret runway, Tao Okamoto was Phillip Lim’s muse, Hyoni Kang was the first Asian winner of Ford’s Supermodel of the World competition.

However, although Liu argues that runways are becoming increasingly diverse, she concedes that “The fashion industry has often cycled through ethnicities,” and indeed the models she highlights, though they are of different national origins (Du is Chinese, Park is Korean, and Mandzhieva is Kalmyk), they all share similar physiological features; in other words, their faces are very much a specific look of “Asianness,” i.e. features attributed to people of East Asian descent (though Mandzhieva is not “East Asian” by strict definitions). Writing for The Independent, Rhiannon Harries writes: “[Lakshmi] Menon also happens to be the only Indian model regularly seen on the runways of New York and Paris, in international fashion publications and advertising campaigns.”

Lakshmi Menon for Zac Posen S/S 09

Although so-called “East Asian” faces may be increasingly visible on runways now, other types of Asian faces, such as South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Middle Eastern, are still lacking. And, as Daniel Vosovic points out, though we may like to believe that runways are becoming more diverse, they are still predominantly white. Living with an Asian American model, I have heard stories of modeling agencies having quotas on non-white models; some agencies refuse to sign more than one Asian model, for example. Furthermore, when Asian models do get jobs, makeup artists and hair stylists tend to be less aware of how to work with their looks, reverting to stereotypes of Asian women as having straight, silky hair (my roommate’s hair is naturally frizzy and needs to be straight ironed), or not having the right shades of makeup to work with Asian women’s skin tones.

What’s at stake here is the politics of representation: if we continue to allow designers and casting directors to fill the runways with white models on the runway, we delegitimize the beauty of non-white bodies. Liu writes, “White faces [...] have always been in vogue.” Whiteness in this case equals beauty and luxury, and that beauty is constant, while (like Liu says) non-white beauty is only recognized in “cycles”: like the silhouette of a jacket or the height of a hem, the types of non-white models represented on the runway come and go.

Amy Sarabi: high score Episode 2, win Episode 4
Anthony Williams: low score Episodes 1 and 2
Christiane King: out Episode 1
Emilio Sosa: win Episode 1
Jay Sario: high score Episode 3, win Episode 2
Jesus Estrada: low score Episodes 1 and 2, out Episode 4
Maya Luz: high score Episodes 3 and 4
Ping Wu: high score Episode 1, low score Episode 2, out Episode 3

This description from Sarah Mower of Style.com says it all:

He went down Mexico way. All the way. He had a mariachi band. He had gauchos, sombreros, striped peasant blankets, Spanish shawls, and cigars. He had a conquistador moment—and then he was into the jungle, weaving leaves with indigenous peoples.

Western models, it seems, are everywhere these days in the People’s Republic of China: on department store display ads, in catalogues for clothing brands, on billboards, in commercials and on the runways at fashion shows. They are blue-eyed American and Canadian blondes like Vos, sultry Eastern European brunettes and hunky male bodybuilders with Los Angeles tans and six-pack abs selling products from jeans to underwear.

A walk through the Guiyou department store in central Beijing is instructive. On the third and fourth floors, where designer brands from Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou are showcased, there’s a display of a blonde modeling over-the-knee boots and red-and-black pumps for Hongke shoes. A pouty brunette advertises Baykal, a local brand of wool products. Even the mannequins have Western features.

“My clients feel that their products will look international if they use foreign models,” Ou said, and so they are willing to pay the higher fees, which are about a third to a half higher than those for Chinese models.

Then there is the matter of the Chinese sense of what constitutes beauty in a globalized world. “The foreign models’ faces are much more three-dimensional,” Ou said. “They look nicer in pictures.”

He added that he never hires black models. “Our clients don’t ask for black models,” he said. “It’s an issue of Chinese people’s aesthetic view.”

The last quote I think is especially poignant given the recent controversy over Lou Jing, a half-black Shanghainese contestant on the TV show “Go! Oriental Angel,” as well as the prevalence of skin-bleaching creams in parts of Asia including China, the Philippines, and India. The phenomenon of non-Western* countries looking to Western faces as ideal points to a complicated history of colonialism and capitalism, and it’s interesting to see how this history plays out in contemporary fashion. Also interesting is the comments people left on this article:

HoaLu wrote:
It is sad to see a lot of asian people chase after the beauty standards that are not theirs. Low self esteem will do that to you.

Mickey2 wrote:
This is reverse discrimination where the Chinese are discriminating against themselves (mostly it’s the Chinese western-educated elites who discriminate against their fellow Chinese citizens). This also happen in all non-white countries around the world e.g. South Asian, Middle Eastern and African countries, where the local non-white elites discriminate against their fellow non-white citizens in favor of white foreigners and the western standard of beauty.

roxlaw wrote:
White’s are a minority world-wide and have engaged in practices, the most insidious of which is advertising, as a means to spread the lie of white superiority/supremacy.

Only oppressors would revel in the idea or reality of minority self hatred. This is not about business. It is about self loathing. If it was just about business then Chinese would sell in China, Japanese in Japan, Koreans in Korea and Blacks in Africa, the US and any lands they inhabit.

But you can’t really blame white people. They are just doing what they do best and like another poster said, there is a sucker born every minute.

All of these comments specifically blame the Chinese for “self-loathing,” an explanation commonly used in debates similar to this that ignores the history of international relationships and hierarchies that have produced the politics of race in the first place. By doing so, it also essentially “blames the victim” by more or less absolving the West/”the innocent whites” from any responsibility. However, it is not that the Chinese hate themselves or hate Chinese people — on the contrary, as the case of Lou Jing exemplifies, the Chinese can be extremely nationalistic to the point of publicly denouncing a Chinese-born, multiracial woman as non-Chinese because she doesn’t “look Chinese.” Rather, the Chinese have come to view white, European faces as rich and luxurious, because of the relationship between China and the West; in a reversal of the tired stereotypes of the exotic Chinese, to them white faces are exotic, but also economically and politically dominant.

* I sort of refuse to use the term “Eastern” because “the West” and “the East” are not geographic facts but political constructions. What I mean by this is that “the West” does not refer to nations geographically located in the West, but specifically to European nations, the United States, and Canada. Thus the opposite of “the West” is not geographically “the East,” but all nations that are non-Western. In other words, using the dichotomy of “the West” and “the East” ignores a large amount of the world, including Africa, South America, and the Pacific Islands.

Picture courtesy The New Yorker.

Focus on Sotomayor’s Clothing as a Signifier of Difference

Much has been made of Sotomayor’s nail polish and hoop earrings. Writer Lauren Collins continues this trend within the first few paragraphs noting:

“By the end of the hour allotted to the case, Justice Sotomayor-wearing a snaky silver cuff bracelet and with her fingernails painted sports-car red-had spoken five times.”

This is normally positioned alongside other quirky characteristics of Sotomayor [...]

During the nomination process, Sotomayor’s background was carefully scrutinized, and she was instructed to camouflage or obscure some of her normal habits. In some ways, her embrace of her own cosmetic preferences and hobbies over what is considered to be safe or acceptable signal she is not ashamed of who she is or where she has come from. Assimilation requires a very high price and her refusal to do so is an amazing stand for individual truth. There is nothing inferior about wearing colored nail polish, or wearing an off-the-rack suit to work, or rocking hoop earrings. Just as many of us are asked to remove our ethnic and regional markers in exchange for success (straightening hair, tightening diction, and avoiding items that call attention to the wearer) Sotomayor’s subtle – but persistent- refusal to fall in line implies much more than a love of candy apple red polish.

Michael Omi and Howard Winant discuss the idea of “racial etiquette” in their book Racial Formation in the United States:  From the 1960s to the 1990s:

In US society, then, a kind of “racial etiquette” exists, a set of interpretative codes and racial meanings which operate in the interactions of daily life. [...] “Etiquette” is not mere universal adherence to the dominant group’s rules, but a more dynamic combination of these rules with the values and beliefs of subordinated groupings. [...] Race becomes “common sense” — a way of comprehending, explaining and acting in the world.

If we understand race (and gender and class) as social performance (“a way of…acting in the world”), then the practice of dress plays an integral role in how we choose to present ourselves to the world. The focus on Sotomayor’s choice of clothing, cosmetics, and accessories becomes racialized, gendered, and classed: the image of “sports-car red fingernails” or “hoop earrings” is supposed to evoke a specific kind of identity; in this case, it defines Sotomayor by her multiply interconnected identities as female, Latina, and from a working-class family. Thus, we are meant to understand from these mentions of her clothing that she is “different.”

Essentially, such descriptions of her clothing work to uphold normative ideas about what a woman should look and dress like (i.e. “white”), and that if they look or dress differently (in this case, “Latina”) then they do not truly belong. We see this same kind of standards of beauty at work when we think about practices like hair straightening, hair bleaching, double eyelid surgery, skin bleaching, etc. Sotomayor, however, defies expectations to “look/dress white,” instead consciously choosing to wear clothing that are “signifiers of difference.”

Rice paddy hats are so in this season. (Photo courtesy Style.com)

In particular, much has been made of Karl Lagerfeld’s oft-cited quote: “It is about the idea of China, not the reality.” More importantly, though, I was struck by reviews of the actual show itself—in particular, this one from Style.com by Sarah Mower. Here are some particularly troublesome quotes:

“Clothes-wise it involved glancing references to Chinese sartorial history, from the terra-cotta army through cheongsams, Mandarin split-sided Qipao gowns, deep lacquer-red embellishments and silk linings, Mongolian tapestry boots and shaggy furs, and spins on Communist Mao suits and comrade caps.”

First of all, I’m not sure when the terra-cotta army became an icon of China’s “sartorial history,” or how they influenced Karl Lagerfeld (seriously, someone want to enlighten me?). Secondly, this seems like an exercise on how many stereotypes of Chinese dress you can name in one sentence. Throwing in as many elements of Chinese design (not just garment: notice the reference to lacquer) as possible does not make you sound more educated. It just further serves to add an air of exoticism to the collection. For example, depending on who you ask, mentioning cheongsam and qipao separately is redundant in terms of actually describing the collection.

“Did Gabrielle Chanel ever set foot in the gambling parlors; opium dens; and shady, glamorous nightclubs of twenties and thirties Shanghai?”

Way to perpetuate film noir stereotypes of China as sordid, dangerous, and criminal (could the phrase “opium den” get any more stereotypical?). Finally:

“The point—other than a platform for the workmanship of the house’s specialist craftspeople in its Métiers d’Art, and an outlet for Lagerfeld’s interest in filmmaking? A giant social power play for the eminence of brand Chanel in China, of course.”

Here Mower posits a power relationship between Chanel and China, suggesting a colonial relationship between the “Chanel empire” and China as a colonized nation, in which Chanel stands in for a specifically white European standard of luxury and wealth.

The review reveals a complex relationship between fantasy—the mentions of glamorized versions of cheongsam and Mao suits—and the reality of Chanel, and other global fashion powerhouses based predominantly in Europe and the United States (not to ignore the rise of Japanese fashion houses like Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto, and Issey Miyake), as a dominant culture that creates normative standards in terms of race, gender, class, and the body. The casual appropriation of “exotic” cultures in brands like Chanel, then, follows in a long tradition of Orientalism (see the article at threadbared for more info). In other words, by exotifying Chinese design and culture, Lagerfeld perpetuates China as inherently foreign, and simultaneously commidifies that very foreignness.

I return to the argument that mainstream audiences tend to dismiss high fashion and haute couture. On the other hand, regardless of whether the average consumer necessarily buys into the fantasy of high fashion, these designers have significant influence over more mainstream fashion, and the images they produce can and do permeate the mainstream via knock-offs, magazines, ads, etc. For example, Gwen Stefani appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar wearing a gown from the aforementioned Dior Couture collection, proving that high fashion/haute couture does not exist in a bubble. The saleability of a collection is not an accurate measure of its influence.

The purpose in starting this blog is to explore those moments in fashion (design, advertisements, shows, etc) where images become problematic.