Ms Jinna Tay
Faculty of Creative Industries
Q.U.T
j.tay@qut.edu.au
Jinna is currently working on her PhD dissertation on fashion magazines and modernity in Asia looking specifically at Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Her Honours dissertation was on the topic of multiculturalism and national identity in the Australian Republican Referendum. Besides conforming to the academic rites of tutoring and occasional lecturing, she actively participates in retail therapy. Her research interests include: fashion, modernity, identity, media, Asia, consumption and cities.
Slave 4 U: Fashion Magazines and the Asian Fashion-Sphere
The 'new Asia' is seen to be a result of recent economic success, political
stability and the development of material affluence. It is a term that Asian
academics (see C.J.W.-L.Wee, 2002) have used to point out that parts of Asia
are understood to have caught up with Western modernity. As part of an on-going
catchphrase to 'progress and develop', attention has turned in recent times
to activities of creativity and cultural industries within particular Asian
cities. Fashion is now being understood as one of these activities. Research
for my PhD aims to examine the fashion magazines in the cities of Singapore,
Shanghai and Hong Kong, as a means of linking creativity, fashion and identities
to the changes that are taking place in these particular cities.
This paper aims to explore the term 'fashion-sphere' as an extension of the
idea of 'media-sphere' (Hartley, 1996) to ascertain whether it is useful in
conceptualising a local fashion microcosm within a given social system. The
term will be applied to one of these Asian cities with analysis undertaken to
understand the functions and effects of the fashion media process in one of
these Asian cities.
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