This is not an LV bag : the simulacra of fashion in and beyond the media business in Hong Kong and mainland China

Abstract

Fashion is ubiquitous, and it plays a significant role in the contemporary global market, in the creative industries and in urban social space. In the realms of art, history, philosophy and cultural studies, however, fashion is often regarded as a subaltern, peripheral or even unorthodox topic. Hence, this study aimed at remapping the relationships among the interdisciplinary and conflicting notions of fashion, determining which and how fashion theories are applicable to the real fashion industry in a specific place at a particular time, apprehending the nuanced mechanisms involved, and seeking to create a substantial case for the social construction of fashion.

In general, the research investigated how the global fashion industry and the print media in Hong Kong appropriate, negotiate and re-create ideas of fashion. The research questioned how and why fashion media personnel represent certain luxury brands as fashionable through textual and visual signs, how they learn and improvise their ideas of fashion at the outset, and how they adapt and negotiate fashion’s meanings.

The presentation will be in three parts. First, the literature on interdisciplinary fashion theories, the fashion business and case studies will be reviewed to explain the delicate and unobserved process of fashion communication. An empirical study of fashion marketers’ and media personnel’s perceptions, and their creation and negotiation of fashion meanings will be presented. This involved participant observation and in-depth interviews in two different but highly connected fields: as a fashion reporter in the editorial team of a Hong Kong fashion magazine; and as a marketing assistant in the PR and marketing team of a British luxury accessory brand. The rapport built through the fieldwork facilitated thirty-six in-depth interviews with Hong Kong and mainland Chinese fashion media personnel, including the editors, copywriters, advertising sales managers, graphic designers and photographers of twelve publications; Asian fashion bloggers, marketing personnel from global fashion conglomerates, fashion distributors and consultants from across the Asia-Pacific region. The results demonstrate the complex construction and negotiation of fashion culture(s) in Hong Kong and mainland China (in relation to the West) on the personal, organizational, industry and national levels. Whether and how far Western fashion theories can be applied to Asia’s fashion industry and media business is discussed. The results of this interdisciplinary study elucidate the evolution of the fashion media and fashion meanings in Hong Kong and mainland China since the 1980s, unveiling the unique and little-understood apparatus of Asia’s fashion industry in the global context. The “four myths of fashion” theorized by the researcher explain the conflicting imaginaries and hybridized patterns of fashion—It is at once mainstream and niche; is manifested officially and personally; is preset yet negotiable; is at once commercial and creative; comprises both Western and Asian elements; is communicated both top-down and bottom-up; is uprising or decaying at the same time; goes premium and mass in chorus. They also lead readers to look through the simultaneously constraining and enabling nature of fashion—the fashion simulacra—in the postmodern capitalist world in realistic social setting.