Fashion and Modernity in Taiwan

Fashion in Taiwan: From Colonial Memory to Global Runways offers a vivid, multi-layered portrait of fashion in motion, tracing how Taiwan's sartorial landscape has been shaped by colonial modernity, Cold War diplomacy, global fashion circuits, and the everyday creativity of its people. This interdisciplinary collection brings together dress historians, designers, photographers, enthusiast collectors, and cultural theorists to showcase how clothing practices reflect and demonstrate the agency of individuals and communities in creating meaning through dress.From Japanese designers transforming women’s wardrobes in the 1930s and the intertwined visual histories of Tn̂g‑sann and modern dress, to the rise of vintage fashion consumption and the self‑fashioning of contemporary Taiwanese designers and creatives on the international stage, each chapter reveals fashion as a site of negotiation, aspiration, and identity. Richly researched and visually attuned, this book illuminates Taiwan not as a peripheral fashion story but as a dynamic crossroads of influence and innovation. Fashion and Modernity in Taiwan invites readers to rethink Taiwan’s cultural histories through the garments, visualities, and aesthetic choices that continue to shape its place in the world.The chapters in this book were previously published as a special issue in Fashion Theory.

Alexander Chih-wei Su is an independent scholar whose current research interests include fashion and visual histories of Taiwan and other East Asian cultures and diasporas. He collaborates regularly with other researchers, institutions, artists, and communities on furthering understandings of the production and consumption of cultural memory narratives and image-making in present-day society.