Liu Wen, the first female Asian model to walk the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. Photo: Getty
by AUDRIE TAN
There’s been a recent upstart in all things Asian-inspired on the catwalk–from teasing cheongsams at Louis Vuitton to Japanese silk drapery at Kenzo.
But it wasn’t just the clothes that caught the attention of the mod crowd at this year’s New York Fashion Week. Many of the models lent an exoticism to the catwalk this season, with their delicate features and demure legginess.
For the last few years, the industry has orchestrated a gradual introduction of the Asian model in several major fashion shows and ad campaigns, including Calvin Klein, DKNY, Victoria’s Secret, and Ralph Lauren–which featured six Asian models at New York Fashion Week.
This recent onslaught of Asian models–mostly Chinese, Korean and Japanese–has been seen as ”redefining the traditional concepts of beauty” (Vogue). But what are the traditional concepts of beauty–if any–in the world of high fashion, which has found aesthetic value in the strange, otherworldly, and androgynous? And if this statement by Vogue suggests that Asian women are any less appealing than unconventional beauty, why have so many designers jumped on this foreign–Asian, no less–bandwagon?
The answer lies not only in the face value of these models. China is fast becoming the world’s second largest luxury-goods market, second only to the U.S. Luxury fashion houses in the likes of Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Chloé, and Diane Von Furstenberg have sprung up across China in the last few years, and are quickly expanding their presence there in the tailwind of predictions that China will soon surpass Japan as the world’s second largest consumer of luxury goods.
As designers flock to open boutiques in China, they are also evolving their marketing schemes in a bid to reach out to the Chinese market. Asian faces and prints on the catwalk are just the icing on the cake that will draw more Chinese consumers to buy these luxury brands and keep them afloat in tough times.
In the Western economic recession, China may be the new superpower–and the Asian model may be here to stay.
