Couture Culture

This weekend, tall, leggy models strutted down a glamorized version of what is usually Quad Yard. A large tent complete with runway, lights and seating reminiscent of New York Fashion Week played host to Project East, a fashion show exhibiting exclusively Asian designer names.

Project East seeks to draw attention to Asian fashion designers who, according to the project’s mission statement, go “vastly unnoticed and underappreciated.” Combining the Harvard brand with a slew of pedestal names in fashion (the likes of Issey Miyake and Alexander Wang) the show also hoped to accomplish two other goals: to build a relationship between Harvard and the fashion industry so that aspiring undergraduates can enter careers in fashion and to raise money for the Confucius Foundation, which seeks to provide scholarships to children working in sweatshops making counterfeit designer goods .

There is no doubt that the flowing silks and chiffons that came down the runway represented a project stitched together with the best of intentions. In fostering name recognition for Asian designers, Project East sought to pave the way for new lines of clothing and artistic dialogue. However, a potential complication lies somewhere deep under the layers of glitter and creative expression, on the demand side of the economic equation. The high-fashion industry is a manifestation of a global culture of consumerism that is not in particular need of reinforcement.

Couture, it is true, is an art form—a channel for the transmission of culture. As is the case with aesthetics in general, its refined function is expression, a means by which an individual projects inner feeling and character. As such, fashion is a sensibility with which it is important to stay in tune. However, it seems that increasingly fewer individuals outside of the elite circles dictate or are even truly conscious of their tastes. In the practical, profit-driven implementation of retail and commercialization, fashion is becoming an increasingly supply-side phenomenon that creates its own inevitable demand, driven by the forces of marketing and brand management.

We need look no further than the luxury empire that is Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy. The French holding company encompasses such icons as Donna Karan, Fendi, and Givenchy, in addition to Louis Vuitton itself. Brands and other intangibles, as might be suspected, play a staggering role in their financial holdings, accounting for 8.2 billion euros, or 29 percent of total assets. And these billions of dollars of ad campaigning—those mile-long legs of Fendi’s Raquel Zimmermann from the summer billboards —are working. Last year, Louis Vuitton recorded 11 percent revenue growth in its fashion and leathers business segment. Market research expects global expenditure on retail luxury products to hit $450 billion annually by 2012, with growth rates projected as high as 70 percent.

As it relates to Asian designer labels and fashion in Asia more generally, the impact of marketing on consumerism is especially important. Asia is the land of the nouveau riche, an easy demographic to convince of the importance of symbols and status. As of the turn of the millennia, roughly half the world’s full-priced luxury purchases were made by Asians. And the industry is following the money: as of last year, Salvatore Ferragamo had 16 retailers in Singapore, a city-state of 4.5 million people; New York City, home to over 8.2 million and arguably the most developed of American consumer cities, offers only 10. Louis Vuitton has a similar expansion strategy, with 642 outlets in Asia Pacific, as compared to only 409 in North America.

It is questionable, however, whether or not such a use of money is healthy, especially for developing regions like Asia. High-end consumerism is at the root of a great many social and environmental concerns in Asia. For instance, consumer protection organizations have formed in South Korea to campaign against “overspending mania” that is sweeping the country. Native Asian wealth is being whisked abroad to support the economies of foreign nations, creating illiquidity for local investments. In China, factory employees work long hours in outsourced textile production, making the region a smoggy, grey-skied dumping ground for pollutants no motherland wishes to claim.

Of course, it is somewhat unfair to reference all of these problems in relation to a simple student fashion show with ultimately good intentions. Nevertheless, in its aspirations towards the designer stratosphere, Project East calls into question some of the complications that surround the high cultural valuation of elite brands and designer labels. As the self-designated spokesperson for Asian designers, perhaps it should seek awareness of fashion consumerism’s impact on the Asian region as well. After all, it is the priority of developed and developing economies worldwide to fulfill the needs of the societies they reflect. To determine what these needs are, each one of us has the social responsibility to decide the aspects of consumerism that arise from internal satisfaction versus external manipulation.

N. Kathy Lin ’08 is a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.