Where fashion meets culture and power.

Introduction

Another way of reading fashion. An introduction to the critical perspective of this series.

Episode 1: Who Were the Japanese Designers Who Challenged Paris?

Examining strategic challenges and dynamics of acceptance through case studies and cultural theory.

Episode 2: Japonisme and the Allure of Japan

Exploring how fashion was influenced by Japonisme from the late nineteenth century onward.

Episode 3: Foucault and the Imperial Gaze

Visual politics and the reception of “Japan as spectacle” within the world of high fashion.

Episode 4: The Representation of Kimono by Western Designers

A critical examination of how kimono motifs were appropriated and reinterpreted in Western fashion.

Issue 5: Constructing “Japaneseness” in Fashion Media

How Western media in the 1980s framed Japanese designers as exotic others.