Sunday, June 9, 2013

Asian Fashion


Asian Fashion Definition

Source(Google.com.pk) Fashion design is the application of art, creativity, design, and beauty to apparel and accessories.
Asian fashion design is largely categorized by Japanese, Korean and Chinese.  Leading the pack in world-wide recognition is Japanese fashion whose style largely influences all of Asia, especially Korean, Taiwan and China.
Japanese fashion started in the Edo period with the famous Japanese kimono (1600-1868).  Japanese street fashion design started in the 19th century by adapting Western fashion designs in Japan.  Through centuries of development and evolvement, as well as contributions from talented Japanese fashion designers, Japanese fashion design emerged to be a unique force of its own, and is one of the five countries to have established [an] international reputation.
Japanese street fashion has both local and western influences and there is no[t one] style that dominates all age groups.  The prominent fashion styles are:
Lolita – An exaggeration of girlie and cuteness in ladies’ fashion.  The Lolita style is largely influenced by fairy tale themes, cute baby animals (Hello Kitty), and involve the use of short dresses, skirts, laces, cute head-bows, purses and other accessories
Visual Kei – similar to Western style of glam rock, Visual Kei is a style consisting of striking makeup, unusual hairstyles and loud costumes.
Dolly Kei – Middle Age European fairy tale vintage style
Fairy Kei – The Lolita style with an added sweetness using elements from Western toy lines of the 1980s such as My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake.
The style that is most adopted in other Asian countries is Lolita.  Asian women are generally petite in size and retain young complexions well into their 30s.  The Lolita style not only fits the physical attributes of Asian women, it helps to perpetuate a youthful perception.
Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcon are often said to be the three cornerstone brands of Japan’s vibrant fashion industry.  Other popular brands include Uniqlo, Evisu, and A Bathing Ape.
Korean fashion does not have a distinct style that identifies it in the international fashion scene, nor are there as many famous Korean fashion designers as Japan but I would like to talk about Korean fashion as it has been increasing in influence in Asia since the year 2000, especially in China.
Korean fashion can be defined as a mix between Japanese and New Yorker styles.  Given the cultural and physical affinities of the Japanese and Koreans, most Japanese fashion styles are adapted in Korea.  However, Koreans add western influences (eg. Layering), as a result, their “hybrid” versions have been increasing in popularity throughout Asia.
Whilst Chinese fashion had enjoy[ed] a long and colourful history, much of it is [was] erased during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and is [now] hardly ever seen in street and high fashion.  Aside from the Mao suit that is still worn by government officials at certain high level meetings, the only traditional Chinese outfits still seen are the cheongsam (ladies) and tangzhuang (men). The revival of the cheongsam was partly brought about by the famous Hong Kong movie, In the Mood for Love, which featured international movie star, Maggie Cheung, in a variety of retro style cheongsams on her svelte figure.
High-end fashion brands like Shanghai Tang rode on this revival by combining the oriental styles of the cheongsam and tangzhuang with European fashion styles using quality silk and cashmere fabrics to create a new kind of oriental chic for the modern world.
Currently, China’s street fashion is largely influenced by Japanese and Korean fashion styles, as well as American and European designs.  There is no distinct characteristic of Chinese street fashion as the Chinese economy opened to the world only about 30 years ago.  Since then, international fashion houses and brands have rushed to enter into this country and through the means of branding and advertising, attempt to influence the Chinese consumers.
In general, fashion in Asia is largely influenced by the West.  Traditional Asian costumes like the kimono, cheongsam and tangzhuang are now worn on special occasions and for professional, casual and formal purposes, western styles of suits, casual wear, tuxedos and gowns are preferred.
My experience with Fashion design is mainly in the form of tailor made apparel for myself.  As I live in Shanghai, the cost of tailor making an outfit is very affordable and designing every piece of clothing and having it constructed by a tailor is a highly enjoyable process for me.  I’ve had work pants, blouses, summer dresses, evening gowns, coats and work suits made.  My fashion style can be described as American urban classic as I prefer simple cuts and classic designs.
The most significant fashion design project I’ve undertaken was for my wedding.  I personally designed my wedding gown and 2 evening gowns and worked with 2 separate groups of tailors to have [these] made.  The sense of achievement I gather from all my successful projects encourages my passion in fashion design and makes me want to share my knowledge!Yamamoto enjoys inserting adjustable straps into the sleeves, neckline, and even body of many of his garments. Often placed conveniently to draw in expanses of widely cut fabric, these straps manipulate the dimensionality of the piece and reference early methods of clothes binding. This coat, with its demure turned-down collar and large circular cut, recalls the simple shapes of 1960s Western-tailored garments. The inherently graceful shape is offset by buckled straps at wrist and collar, themselves comparable to the bodice or jodhpur closures in historic sport or traveling costume.
Yamamoto enlivens the black canvas of this somber black felted wool with reflective brass rectangles and abstract strokes of gilded paint. Though ornamentation of the collar and center front bodice is traditionally found in the brocaded silks of the Japanese kimono and its obi and the silk floss embroidery of various Chinese cheongsam designs, Yamamoto here seems to be referencing ideologies of twentieth-century Western art. The broken application of these gilded shapes creates a Cubist planar composition, which, conflated with the modular shape, fosters a succinct aesthetic. The addition of bas-relief brass plates juxtaposed with flat paint provides a Surrealist element, enhanced by a morbid cracked-mirror allusion used repeatedly by Salvador Dalí and manipulated by Elsa Schiaparelli in a late 1930s evening jacket design.
Issey Miyake's 1977 exhibition A Piece of Cloth at the Seibu Museum of Art signified more than a single design concept; APOC, an acronym of the exhibition title, would come to represent Miyake's innovative artistic ideology. While many late twentieth-century creators were initiating postmodern trends toward nostalgic recollection, Miyake looked to the future of adornment. The Okinawa-born artist reduced clothing to its most minimal form, creating movement and dimensionality from a single piece of cloth. Manifested mostly from tube knits to reduce waste, Miyake's APOC designs attempted to enhance tactile exploration, providing a strong material foundation to clothe the body naturally. The Nuno Company, and most prominently textile designer Junichi Arai, share Miyake's environmentally conscious vision in creating highly textured smart fabrics as vehicles for a progressive "new genre" of fashion.
This knit dress, the creation of which coincided with Miyake's 1989 "Cicada Pleats" pieces, features triangular structures divergent from an otherwise natural torso line. These structures provided permanence in form within a fluid and otherwise organic entity. Often compared to the padded dresses or projectile shapes of Rei Kawakubo's collections, Miyake's triangular protrusions were interpreted by many fashion critics as the designer's confrontation of traditional Western body ideals.
In keeping with the practicality of the APOC (A Piece of Cloth) ethos, intended to limit waste and excess in fashion and provide a minimalist template for design, many of Miyake's pleated pieces can be folded into easily stored flat objects. At the 1990 Energieen exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, garments were featured on hangers and as flat entities, set in recessed cutouts in the exhibit's floor. Miyake professed his interest in the transitions of clothing design as an art form, championing simple geometrics as the future of fashion and transforming three-dimensional garments into two-dimensional cloth canvases.
The pleating process is perhaps the most significant applied design of Miyake's career: taking cues from the success of classically inspired pleat designer Mariano Fortuny, Miyake has used pleats both as an aesthetic complexity and a means for movement within his designs. In 1996, he began a series of "Pleats Please" collaborations that transformed the pleated garment via surface application or distress, or sculptural manipulation.
Spurring controversy in the fashion press and consumer public, and inspiration among design peers, the bulbous gingham dresses of Rei Kawakubo's 1997 women's line literally challenged the form of fashion. While Kawakubo has clearly demonstrated an interest in challenging various social, sexual, and economic stereotypes with her garments, this dress confronted one of the oldest taboos of fashionable and wealthy society: the shapes of the feminine ideal. Said to have been exploring the boundaries of malleable form in movement with padded bumps at bust, rear, and midriff combined with a stretchy synthetic gingham, Kawakubo has never verbally confirmed a frustration with fashion's passion for fit, even emaciated models and mannequins.
The gingham, commissioned from the Orimono Kenkyu Sha Fabric Company and its designer, Hiroshi Matsushita, fit so tautly over the projectile padding that it denoted a second skin. This rather disturbing imagery prompted many to view the pieces as a twisted tribute to deformity or disfiguration. Kawakubo, who has been labeled melancholic for her early use of black, has declined comment on these criticisms and allegations. Much like Issey Miyake, she believes that a company should have its own theory and persona, separate and different from that of its patriarch or matriarch, and thereby unfailingly allows her work to speak for itself.
Part of the "Beyond Taboo" collection, this ensemble by Rei Kawakubo references a brassiere from the 1950s, the period of the bust's most highly eroticized focus. However, Kawakubo cites its least provocative form, the long-line, and she fashions her design in a cotton voided velvet fabric that situates it as outerwear. The long-line was originally intended to provide greater support for women with larger breasts, the ostensible period ideal. But the detailing was more orthopedic than sexy, and Kawakubo stresses this practicality in her version. When she transposes the brassiere to the rear, however, her critique of the sexist equivalence of the cleavage of breasts to that of the buttocks flirts dangerously with a reinvestment of the erotic to the garment.
Even as a pioneer of a distinctly Japanese aesthetic, Miyake has gained worldwide recognition for expert constructive innovations in cloth that recall the formalistic art of French couture. Consistently professing an admiration for the prolific draping techniques of early twentieth-century couturière Madeleine Vionnet, Miyake has marketed himself as one of the new generation of global couturiers. Evident as much in his contemporary work as in his early 1980s manifestations, Miyake's derivations reflect a love for Western fashion historicism. This ensemble is particularly reminiscent of Paul Poiret's harem and lampshade ensembles, which reflected both the elegance of French fashion and the regionally inspired folksiness of Léon Bakst's designs for the Ballets Russes. Poiret's harem pant became a symbol of the 1910s liberated fashionista, just as Miyake's interpretation signified a new modernism for the late twentieth-century client.
Issey Miyake petitioned a conflation of Eastern and Western aesthetic ideals early on in his career, incorporating the imagery of African and Middle Eastern textile decoration into his tailored ensembles. Emblematic of Miyake's cross-cultural confluence, this ensemble exhibits the raw color and craftsmanship of African mud cloth, yet champions the Turkish trousers, sash belt, and sleeveless bodice of Eastern European regional costume.
As a designer for Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe excelled by fusing Kawakubo's confrontational approach to traditional form with his own love of hyperbole and ironic historicism. Impressed by his interest in tactile manipulation, Rei Kawakubo helped Watanabe found his own fashion house, which currently offers some of the most avant-garde constructions in Japanese fashion.
The ruff's accelerated inflation to shoulder-wide dimension in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not anticipate Junya Watanabe's torso-encompassing rendering of the style. To accomplish the extraordinary scale of his ruff, Watanabe required a polyester chiffon that could hold its shape. No silk organza was able to do so. Despite all its reliance on technological innovation for the fabric, this design, from Watanabe's "Techno Couture" collection, was stitched together by hand.

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

Asian Fashion

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