Fashion and Beauty in the Time of Asia centralizes fashion and beauty in the shaping of Asian modernities and the formation of the so-called Asian Century. The authors assembled here train our eyes on sites as far-flung and varied and yet as intimate and intimately connected as Guangzhou and Los Angeles, Saigon and Seoul, New York and Toronto, in order to map the transnational and transregional connections that have made new worlds and life paths possible. By connecting individual stories to large-scale circuits, this interdisciplinary anthology moves beyond common characterizations of Asians ... More

Fashion and Beauty in the Time of Asia centralizes fashion and beauty in the shaping of Asian modernities and the formation of the so-called Asian Century. The authors assembled here train our eyes on sites as far-flung and varied and yet as intimate and intimately connected as Guangzhou and Los Angeles, Saigon and Seoul, New York and Toronto, in order to map the transnational and transregional connections that have made new worlds and life paths possible. By connecting individual stories to large-scale circuits, this interdisciplinary anthology moves beyond common characterizations of Asians and Asian diasporic subjects as simply abject laborers or frenzied consumers of fashion and beauty. Instead, this collection analyzes what modern subjects look like, what they wear, how they work, move, eat, and shop, helping us to see the forms of modernity taking shape in Asia—the aspirations it expresses and the sensibilities it endorses—and the ways they inform our understanding of race, nation, and the global.