Up For An Asian Update

Lately, we have been hearing a lot of anti-Asian hate crimes but this does not really happening in fashion though, luckily.

Despite most of us are adjusting to the Covid-19 crisis, when we cannot have some travels, Asian trends keep travelling across geographies and to the West. With the help of social media apps, it is not a difficult thing to retrieve data or look for some trends 50,000 miles away.

In the 20th Century, there are 4 global fashion capitals as we all know; Paris, Milan, New York and London. The fashion happening in each of these four is different from one another although some might say only a slightly different. But when we travel to the East, yes we could see some major difference on the style.

Namely, Paris has been claimed as the world’s style capital back in the era of Louis XIV where it is famous for its minimalism with clean cut silhouettes. While in Tokyo it is a total different, they love playing with shapes and 3D designs.

Speaking about Asian fashion trends, we could not neglect the influences brought by the 2001’s Taiwanese drama ‘Meteor Garden’ that was remade to the 2018’s Chinese version and the rise of KPop in the early 2010s. They become the example of pop culture merging into real life, influencing a whole demographic whether in style, music, or even a glimpse of current issue. They managed to further outstretch the extensive use of fashion as a way to express everything; from a cultural divide to the roles’ personalities.

We could say though that the road goes both ways; from East to the West and from West to the East; trickle up or trickle down effect.

One example of Asian influence would be kimono from Japan or Hanbok from Korea.
Although western designers are not taking the full costume, but they sometimes take the intricate details on the fabric or focus on a certain segment to create a different piece of garment that would be acceptable on their market. The kimono sleeve or the wraparound technique of a hanbok can be seen in a lot of today’s designs; a sleek suit with kimono sleeves as in to have a loose wide sleeves or Dsquared2’s kimono playsuit with obi belt.

At the same time, the West has also been influencing the East a lot like the streetwear style. Streetwear style is originally happening in the West, they wear oversized jackets, hoodies, and sneakers. These days we can see millennials and previous generations would adapt this particular style into their daily wardrobe.

A Swedish retail company H&M is one example of fashion creators who are trying to fuse some Asian into the West through their collaboration with Asian Designer like Angel Chen. Together with H&M she aimed to raise the profile of Chinese designs and its culture through the pieces sold in China and Canada.