Fashion and Beauty in the Time of Asia

How transnational modernity is taking shape in and in relation to AsiaFashion and Beauty in the Time of Asia considers the role of bodily aesthetics in the shaping of Asian modernities and the formation of the so-called “Asian Century.” S. Heijin Lee, Christina H. Moon, and Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu train our eyes on sites as far-flung, varied, and intimate as Guangzhou and Los Angeles, Saigon and Seoul, New York and Toronto. They map the transregional connections, ever-evolving aspirations and sensibilities, and new worlds and life paths forged through engagements with fashion and beauty.Contributors consider American influence on plastic surgery in Korea, Vietnamese debates about “the fashionable,” and the costs and commitments demanded of those who make and wear fast fashion, from Chinese garment workers to Nepalese nail technicians in New York who are mandated to dress "fashionably." In doing so, this interdisciplinary anthology moves beyond common characterizations of Asians and the Asian diaspora as simply abject laborers or frenzied consumers, analyzing who the modern Asian subject is now: what they wear and how they work, move, eat, and shop.

As Asia becomes increasingly central to the global fashion system, books like Fashion and Beauty in the Time of Asia become ever more important., Fashion and Beauty in the Time of Asia is razor sharp in its framework and rigorous in its analysis. Eschewing tropes about the Asian continent and its oblique relationship to Western industries, the book maps new transnational circuits of exchange and offers readers fresh language to explain modernity, geopolitics, economics, and global taste cultures. It is so refreshing to read scholarship that takes fashion and beauty seriously.

S. Heijin Lee (Editor) S. Heijin Lee is Assistant Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Lee is co-editor of Other Pop Empires: Transnational and Diasporic Flows of India and Korea (2018) and the forthcoming The Geopolitics of Beauty: Transnational Circulations of Plastic Surgery, Pop and Pleasure.S. Heijin Lee is Assistant Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Lee is co-editor of Other Pop Empires: Transnational and Diasporic Flows of India and Korea (2018) and the forthcoming The Geopolitics of Beauty: Transnational Circulations of Plastic Surgery, Pop and Pleasure.Christina H. Moon (Editor) Christina H. Moon is Assistant Professor of Fashion Studies in the School of Art and Design History at the Parsons School of Design. She is a Social Science Research Council Transregional Research Junior Scholar Fellow and a fellow of the Graduate Institute of Design Ethnography Social Theory at The New School.Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu (Editor) Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu is Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. She is the author of The Beautiful Generation; Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion (2011) and of the forthcoming Experiments in Skin: Making Race and Beauty Across the Pacific.