Viscose is the world’s most exciting journal for fashion criticism. Through specially edited thematic issues, each of which re-imagines the format of the journal entirely, Viscose gives space to genre-defying thinking that challenges and expands the possibilities of research, practice, and critique in/of fashion. In record time, the journal has cultivated a niche audience around the globe with stockists in over 15 countries, addressing intellectual fashion communities anywhere while rejecting ghettoization in any discipline, industry, or location. By collaborating with institutions and museums to cultivate research, Viscose is and remains proudly advertising-free. Viscose 3: Asias coincides with the exhibition “Endless Garment” co-curated by Poppy Wu and Jeppe Ugelvig at X Museum in 2021-2. X Museum is proud co-publisher of the issue, which is further supported by Nordic Culture Fund, Danish Arts Foundation, S.C. Van Fonden, and Design Trust Hong Kong. This special third issue, co-edited with London-based writer and director Cheuk NG, and designed by Shanghai-based echocatcher, sets out to deconstruct the notion of “Asias” through fashion. With an emphasis on the term’s plural possibilities, the issue seeks out stories deep within fashion’s global supply chain, and reflects on the porous communities of fashion producers and consumers around the world that may self-identify as “Asian.” Focusing on the regions bordering the South China Sea, with contributors from over 10 countries as well as their global diasporas, the issue contests the idea of Asia as a singular idea, image, and even place, instead engendering an array of “Asias” that are employed symbolically, economically, socially, and politically across fashion’s frenzied systems. Based on two years of research, the issue pays special attention to how Asian fashion producers have fashioned Asia in the past and in the present, and how tactics of symbolic stylisation and self-orientalization develop and respond to the contemporary zeitgeist. From Vivienne Tam’s controversial Mao dress from 1995 to today’s heritage-hacking by designers in China, Philippines, and the UK, the issue charts an unexplored history of stylization of origin that is enormously ambiguous and often ambivalent, particularly as it plays out as fashion consumption. The issue is produced with a determined and self-conscious pluralism, offering no one direction but rather accounting for the breadth of ingenious responses to ever-fickle questions such as origin, community, ownership, symbolism, appropriation, and diaspora, and the treacherous yet thrilling ways these overlap in and as style. Fashion, for better and for worse, perpetually “produces” Asia, both as an imagined space and as the most important manufacturing network in the world. In the issue, readers may explore Joni Zhu’s unraveling of the historical Silk Road and its resonances in a geopolitical present; Cheuk NG’s derive through Hong Kong’s self-renewing mall landscape; Alice Sarmiento’s analysis of the class politics of Bryanboy and other Filipino fashion bloggers who have emerged in his wake; Keke Tumbuan’s heralding of Indonesian alay subculture; and the definitive roundtable on the critical potentiality of Shanzhai fashion featuring leading scholars from around the world. Enjoy newly commissioned projects by brands and artists such as Yat Pit, VeniceW, and PZtoday. FEATURING Yat Pit, Joni Zhu, Thuy Pham/United Bamboo, Hu Yinping, Troi Oi, Sung Tieu, Joyce NG, Asai, Cheuk NG, Xiaopeng Yuan, Feyfey Worldwide, Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu, Strong The, PZ World, Bruno Zhu, Carl Jan Cruz, Ma Hailun, Luke Sylvester Quismundo, Alice Sarmiento, Elaine Wing-Ah Ho, Toton, CFGNY, Philip Huang, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Poppy Wu, Fan Yang, Shanzhai Lyric, Zairong Xiang, Sara Liao, Samuel Gui Yang, VeniceW, Keke Tumbuan, Baby Reni, Ican Harem, Mandy PinkyGurl, Arlette Quynh Anh Tran, Giang.it, Julie Chen, Rui Zhou, Simon Wu, Mara Coson, Syna Chen, Seth Shapiro/American Manufacturing, Evelyn Taocheng Wang.

PUBLICATION INFORMATION

 

About The Artists

About The Curators