"Mandarin Moment: Fashion's gone steamier than a Szechuan noodle shop. Update your wardrobe with spring's new Oriental-inspired pieces for a mix that's modern mandarin.<"--Cosmopolitan, April 1997
This spring, fashion doyennes at magazines in the United States and Europe have trumpeted the revival of chinoiserie, the ornate style based on Chinese design. The spring shows of the major haute couture houses this year showcased cheong-sams, traditional Chinese dresses, embroidered dragons, mandarin-collared jackets, and brightly colored, embroidered silk handbags. Furthermore, the important colors of this season have been declared red, "the color of good fortune in China" according to the February issue of Vogue , "buddha-blue" according to British Vogue , and dragon-lady fuschia. Peruse magazines such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, or Elle and you will find entire fashion spreads dedicated to chinoiserie. In discussing fashion, spring of 1997 is truly the moment for mandarin-style.
Ironically, as the Western fashion world produces "Oriental-inspired pieces," Western-style fashion has strengthened its presence in Asian countries. On the streets of Asian cities, one is more likely to observe blue jeans and English-language T-shirts than cheong-sams or kimonos. Vogue , Elle , Marie Claire , and other American magazines have spawned Singaporean editions featuring Western fashion. Due to popular demand in many Asian countries and the exponential growth of Asian buying power, American and European designers have recently opened boutiques in cities like Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo. Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Gianni Versace, Chanel, Missoni, and Giorgio Armani are among the many who have planted their flags, so to speak, in Asian soil. These designers have seized upon an authoritative, colonial role.
Western fashion is "the fetishized colonial culture" in Asia, to borrow a phrase from critic Homi Bhabha in his essay, "Of Mimicry and Man." In many ways, the proliferation of Western designer boutiques and fashion magazines in Asia parallels the more formal cultural and political colonialism of an earlier age. As self-described "fashion gods," Western designers trying to reach an Asian mass market are reminiscent of Christian missionaries attempting to convert 'heathen' Asians and imperialist governments teaching the colonial language. Asian consumers, in this framework the colonized "Other," are encouraged to mimic Westerners through their dress, makeup, and beauty standards. However, inherent in colonial mimicry, Bhabha explains, "is the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite."
Necessary for the colonizer, paradoxically, is the failure of the colonial model to truly convert colonial subjects. Only then can the colonial hierarchy be assured stability and the boundary that separates the colonizer and the colonized remain clearly defined. It is this irony that gives rise to the phenomenon of chinoiserie. Instead of the mimicry of the colonizer by the colonized, what of the mimicry of the colonized by the colonizer?
By examining the numerous magazine pages devoted to chinoiserie, and their photographs and magazine copy, one can glean a sense of the irony that Bhabha implies as inherent in colonial mimicry. Not without reason, Bhabha amends his words "almost the same but not quite " to "[a ]lmost the same but not white ." The most salient quality about the chinoiserie fashion spreads is that all the models used in the photographs are white, as are almost all the fashion designers. The racial homogeneity of the designers and models dressed in "Oriental"-inflected clothing and photographic backgrounds and props, appears deliberate and self-conscious. Apparent in the absence of Asian faces is the colonizing (read: white) fashion industry's appropriation and mimicry of "Orientalness." Some of the models used, like Kate Moss and Jodie Kidd, are blonde, locating them even further from "Oriental."
The fashion spreads emphasize that these white models, though wearing "Oriental" clothing, are almost the same, but not Oriental . To use Asian models, or black models for that matter, would not accomplish the reification of the boundary between "Western" and "Oriental" that occurs when exclusively presenting white models. "[H]ow can you avoid looking like an extra from The Last Emperor ," a British Vogue article on chinoiserie asks, using a film by the Italian Bernardo Bertolucci to metonymically represent the Western conception of "Oriental." Inherent in the posing of this question is the Sinophobic colonial fear of being mistaken for an "Oriental." Appropriating Chinese dress is made possible precisely because a distinct line is drawn by the West between it and the "Orient." There is a concerted effort on the part of the Western fashion industry to insure the objectification of the "Oriental." The Orient safely remains the object of study rather than vice versa.
Indeed, the objectification of the "Oriental" corresponds to the emasculation of all that is Asian. The language employed by fashion editors when discussing chinoiserie is decidedly feminizing. For example, Vogue links "femininity" with a "scarlet print cheongsam [sic] top" in comparison with 'utilitarian' khaki pants. Other magazines use key words and phrases such as "filmy," "delicate," "daintily beaded," and "a little prettiness and luxury," emphasis on "little." Furthermore, the absence of Asian male fashions reduces the representation of the "Oriental" to a feminine other. Several times, the concept of "Oriental" is couched in gastronomic terms: "Eastern flavor," "Fashion's gone steamier than a Szechuan noodle shop," "Chinese takeouts," "Spring rolled," and "One potent cocktail, this pink lady is more than a combo of gin, brandy, and grenadine." By aligning "Oriental" with food and drink, these magazines render their vision of "Oriental" as objects for consumption and sustenance.
The Orient exists, and is created, to be used and consumed in order to sustain the dominant position of the West. The West endows "the East" or the "Orient" with femininity so that it can assume the stereotypic role of male, imperialist aggressor. It is important to also note here that the words "steamier" and "more than" speak to the Western desire to outdo Orientals in their "Orientalness." A sense of competition with the "Orient" is also couched in the description of Miuccia Prada's chinoiserie textile patterns as elegant "as any on a Chinese red-lacquer screen." Similarly, Harper's Bazaar describes European designer Delphine Kohler as "a collector of antique Japanese shoes, [who] is making her own [Japanese-derived] thongs." Besides the significance of the desire to "collect" things Japanese, the fact that Kohler is assuming the role of producer of Japanese objects displaces the role of the Japanese, thus removing them from the discourse. These Western interpretations of Asia are more than the actual Asian objects; there is the suggestion of paternalistic transcendence of Asia and more than that, the need to feel transcendent.
This theme of supersedence is most obvious in the magazine commentary that accompanies the chinoiserie photographs. The West is equivalent to modernization and action whereas the "Orient" is characterized by timelessness, and thus static, primitiveness. In an eerily monolithic description of this spring's chinoiserie, every magazine posed the European or American designer as "new," "modern," "avant-garde," "cutting-edge," or "edgy." In contrast, the Orient is "traditional," "unoriginal," and "soft." Western designers, furthermore, "transform tradition" and "reinterpret" aspects of Oriental dress. The magazine copy is careful to emphasize that the Western designers are reworking "traditional Asian dress" and presenting something fresh, and more importantly, modern. The February issue of Elle states, "While the prints take a leaf from traditional chinoiserie, the bold ways they're designed and worn are clearly modern." In other words, while the prints take only "a leaf" from the primitive Orient, the bold ways they're designed and worn are clearly not Oriental, but white .
The mention of taking only one leaf is particularly significant, especially in the context of the Western proclivity for assuming the dominant position. Asian influence is reduced to one leaf. Western fashion, in its role as the colonizer, even assumes the authority to decide when chinoiserie will be fashionable. Since the peak of chinoiserie 's popularity in the 18th century, Orientalia has gone in and out of fashion at the whim of white designers and fashion editors. This spring, Harper's explains, "Asian footwear is all the rage" and "everyone wants to get in on the trend." The fashion industry has clearly demonstrated its condescension towards the "Other" by trivializing and reducing Asian influence to a fad or trend.
Further descriptions of chinoiserie stress that the Orient merely provides "inspiration" or "flavor," as if the fashion industry refuses to acknowledge that the "Orient" could provide a tangible and substantial model for mimicry. "In Milan this season the designers were united: it's time to look east for inspiration," British Vogue declares, suppressing the subjectivity of Asia by rendering it the object of the Western gaze. Interestingly, the writer opens her article with a united front of Italian designers, as if strength in unity and numbers is necessary when directing the gaze at "the east." A hint of fear (and perhaps paranoia) is evident. Within this structure of Western fashion based in fear, the Italian designer Miuccia Prada is "always original" even as her entire line mimics "Oriental" dress, and Calvin Klein is established firmly as "the master of clean" even as he appropriates the stark, Japanese-Zen aesthetic of the subaltern Oriental. There is a pride in the articulation that chinoiserie is almost the same but not quite , but also implicit is the fearful need to further reify the West's dominant position.
The West takes the role of the aggressor, and chinoiserie is one way in which it can attempt to maintain its dominance. As Edward Said, the author of Orientalism, writes, "as a cultural apparatus Orientalism is all aggression, activity, judgment, will-to-truth, and knowledge." Orientalism inheres in chinoiserie . The Western fashion industry is aggressive, posits itself as active, and more knowledgeable than Asia. Most importantly, the West wills its version of the "truth" about Orientals into being. Chinoiserie is more than a "transformation" and "reinterpretation" of the Orient, it is the creation of an "Orient" that is amenable to the imperialist mentality. "[O]nly an Occidental could speak of Orientals," Said writes, implying that in speaking of Orientals, Occidentals utter the idea of them into existence; in effect, they create "Orientals." To paraphrase Said, only an Occidental could create and wear Orientals; fashion designers sketch and sew "Orientals" while magazine editors write their concept of "Orientals" into being. The "Oriental" is the creation of the West, and the West has fashioned, so to speak, an "Oriental" that is emasculated, primitive in its timelessness, colonized.
Herein lies the limitation and irony. The term chinoiserie is a French term created to label the colonizer's "interpretations" of the Orient. Yet, this spring's fashions feature "re interpretations of chinoiserie" and supposed improvements upon "Oriental" dress. The need for reinterpretation of chinoiserie which was the initial colonial incarnation of "the Orient" points to a flaw in its original conception. Why the desire to mimic a concept that it not only created as separate from itself, but created as weak and primitive? The answer perhaps lies in the inherent irony of colonial mimicry itself.
Bhabha writes of the irony that exists in the "ever-present possibility of slippage --from mimicry to mockery, from performativity into parody" in which Western objects become the "objets trouves " to be scrutinized precisely because the West offers only a partial or incomplete model to be mimicked. The West attempts to "look to the east" and objectify "the Orient." However, the fact that "the Orient" is the creation of the West, and a flawed one at that, only points the gaze back at the West.
In looking at its creation, the West is looking at itself; and, in mimicking the East, the West is attempting to re-establish its dominance by becoming "more truly other than the Other." Ironically, the formation of "the Orient" or the "Other" by the West results in a competition with its creator. Furthermore, the competition can never be won by the West because the West does not want to be Oriental (which would be the only way to completely erase Orientals from the colonial discourse). Even as the Western fashion world appropriates and mimics "Oriental" dress, it continuously attempts to distance itself from its concept of "the Orient." The Western fashion world has not only threatened its authority by creating a rival that it will never usurp because of its sinophobia but has also undermined its influence, partial as it may be, on the Asian mass market. One cannot help but wonder what will the Asian female consumer say, and more importantly, buy, when she walks into the Christian Dior boutique in Hong Kong and finds "reinterpretations of chinoiserie."