The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion

271 Pages·2011·1.185 MB·English

by  Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu

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∫ 2011 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper $
Designed by Heather Hensley
Typeset in Scala by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on
the last printed page of this book.
To my mother

CONTENTS
acknowledgments ix
introduction
Fashion, Free Trade, and the ‘‘Rise of the Asian Designer’’ 1
Part I
1. Crossing the Assembly Line: Skills, Knowledge, and
the Borders of Fashion 31
2. All in the Family? Kin, Gifts, and the Networks of Fashion 63
Part II
3. The Cultural Economy of Asian Chic 99
4. ‘‘Material Mao’’: Fashioning Histories Out of Icons 133
5. Asia on My Mind: Transnational Intimacies and
Cultural Genealogies 169
epilogue 203
notes 209
bibliography 239
index 253

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the time, energy,
and imagination of many friends, colleagues, and kind strangers.
It is a pleasure to be able to acknowledge them here. I want to
begin by thanking all the designers who allowed me to talk with
them, hang around their shops, and learn from them. Knowing
what I now know about the demands of their work, I am even
more amazed that they could find so much time for me. Without
their generosity, I would not have this story to tell.
The seeds of this book were planted many years ago, but they
really grew in conversation with the wonderful colleagues, at di√er-
ent institutions, who have read, heard, or talked about these ideas
with me, including Christine Balance, Luz Calvo, Derek Chang,
Beth Coleman, Iftikhar Dadi, Maria Fernandez, Wen Jin, James
Kim, Nhi Lieu, Christina Moon, Viranjini Munsinghe, Mimi Ngu-
yen and Minh-Ha Pham (and their spot-on blog, Threadbared),
Je√rey Santa Anna, Barry Shank, Julie Sze, Elda Tsou, K. Scott
Wong, Shelley Wong, and Judy Wu. Thanks to all their insights,
this project became much more than I alone could have imagined.
I am indebted in particular to the faculty of the Department of
Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. I joined the
department just as I was completing this manuscript, and I can
think of few places where I could have learned from more dy-
namic scholars. Arlene Davila, Julie Elman, Jennifer Morgan,
Crystal Parikh, Anne Rademacher, Sukhdev Sandhu, Nikhil Pal
Singh, and Caitlin Zaloom all took time to read drafts, talk through
ideas, or to sneak o√ for a drink. Thank you for the direction and