SARAH LOHMANN WRITES — K-pop has always been rife with experimentation—throughout music, styling, and choreography. With their debut mini album Assemble, the South Korean girl group TripleS brings a fresh, trendy, Y2K-inspired sound. Making their mark in a saturated and ever-evolving market, they implore listeners to be their authentic selves…
Full Article MUSIC REVIEW: HOW TRIPLES IS MAKING THEIR MARK ON K-POP
ALI ZANE WRITES – With K-pop now a global presence, more and more luxury fashion brands have been collaborating with its idols. A pivotal moment: Chanel’s 2015 Paris fashion show, where K-pop idol and fashion trailblazer G-Dragon sat front row. He was the first Asian star to be invited. A…
Full Article SOUTH KOREA: K-POP TAKES CENTER STAGE IN FASHION
BOOK REVIEW EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ELLA KELLEHER WRITES – Kirsten Chen’s latest novel, Counterfeit (2022), follows Ava Wong – a straight-edge Chinese-American lawyer shackled to an agonizingly mundane routine of house chores and taking care of her maddening infant, Henri, who cannot seem to cease his daily tantrums. Married to a successful yet always…
Full Article BOOK REVIEW: COUNTERFEIT (2022) BY KIRSTEN CHEN – HOUSEWIFE TURNS CRIMINAL MASTERMIND
MARISA TORRE WRITES – Despite the flurry of major retailers halting business in Russia, the major Japanese clothing retailer Uniqlo, with its 49 stores in Russia, has no plans to follow the trend. Tadashi Yanai, the CEO of Uniqlo’s parent company, Fast Retailing, maintains an anti-war stance but described clothing…
Full Article JAPAN: IS THE COMPANY ‘FAST RETAILING’ SELLING OUT ON HUMAN RIGHTS?
SOPHIA JARAMILLO WRITES – Chinese American fashion designer Sandy Liang has designed the ‘quarantine collection’ of a lifetime for Spring-Summer 2021—overflowing with childhood and familial nostalgia and bringing the designer back to the not-so-basics of her signature styles. Sandy Liang was raised in Queens, New York, and graduated from Parsons…
Full Article FASHION: SANDY LIANG AND HER NOSTALGIC SS21 COLLECTION
SOPHIA JARAMILLO WRITES — As newly elected Vice President Kamala Harris will be endlessly discussed for her diplomatic relations and duties, her fashion will also be discussed, as it should be. It is necessary to bring light to the impact of all areas of her identity. Being of South Asian…
Full Article SOUTH ASIA: VICE-PRESIDENT ELECT KAMALA HARRIS CUTS A STRIKING FIGURE ON THE WORLD STAGE
NILE BROWN WRITES — Broad shoulders, billowy trousers and bold neon colors permeate AMBUSH’s recently released Spring/Summer 2020 lookbook. At first look, it may appear that the Tokyo based fashion label has recontextualized styling techniques popularized in the 80s, but head designers Verbal and Yoon Ahn take it a bit…
Full Article AMBUSH IN TOKYO: FASHION GETS CORNERED BY CULTURE … BUT BY HAPPY DESIGN
ANNALISA DEL VECCHIO WRITES – The future is now and — once again –and it has an Asian look. The gigantic conglomerate Alibaba, creator of Tmall, an online retail platform based in China, is refashioning fashion. Tmall uses an Al (Artificial Intelligence) clothing store that relies on “smart mirrors” to offer information to…
Full Article CHINA INNOVATION: A NEW WAY TO SEE FASHION, WITHOUT LEAVING HOME
NILE BROWN WRITES –In June, Kim Kardashian’s shapewear line of form-fitting, nude-colored undergarments, called “Skims,” made its debut. Finally. Back then Kardashian tweeted about her new shapewear line: “Kimono is my take on shapewear and solutions for women that actually work.” Kimono? Where did that come from? Critics, fans, and…
Full Article JAPAN FASHION: THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME?
YAWEN EVAN SUN WRITES – How do you interpret “vintage”? In China, in the metropolis of Jinan, the capital city of Shandong, in eastern China, Wuwu, the owner of a vintage clothing shop, believes that “old is new”. And so she and her friends named this marvelous little shop “Hakuna Matata”, which…
Full Article INSIDE THE REAL CHINA: A LITTLE VINTAGE SHOP WITH EXTRAORDINARY CLOTHES AND THE SURPRISING NAME OF ‘HAKUNA MATATA’
YAWEN EVAN SUN WRITES – ‘Street Snap’ was invented for the purpose of sharing the unique and creative fashion styles from the street. It is a tool of discovering beauty and a method of spreading diversity of style. Street Snap wonderfully reminds us that fashion has no limit. And so…
Full Article CHINA: TIK TOK, STREET SNAP – THE NEW BIG THING IN THE WORLD’S BIGGEST NATION
ANTONIA HORLICK WRITES—In the past decade, cosmetic surgery worldwide has become more popular than ever. With the rise of social media platforms such as Instagram, young people have become more self-conscious about their looks. They live in a self-obsessed world of Snapchat and Instagram, which both have selfie filters that…
Full Article China: Plastic Surgery Industry Booms as Millions of Gen Z’s Go Under the Knife
ANTONIA HORLICK WRITES — Zilingo is a Singapore-based e-commerce beauty and lifestyle marketplace that enables merchants from Southeast Asia without an online presence to sell products directly to consumers. The private company was founded in 2015 by Ankiti Bose and Dhruv Kapoor, who saw a unique opportunity to help small…
Full Article SINGAPORE: WITH THE TRADE WAR IN FASHION, ZILINGO BECOMES EVEN MORE THE FASHION
ANNALISA DEL VECCHIO WRITES – Rei Kawakubo is a fashion designer with a unique approach to men’s and women’s wear, as she advocates modest dressing. The Japan-born designer focuses on exploring and communicating underlying notions of sexuality, gender, and identity through her fashion designs. Kawakubo is the founder of Comme des Garçons,…
Full Article ASIAN FASHION: THE UNIQUE HEALING ALLURE OF REI KAWAKUBO – BUT WHO’S WEARING THE PANTS IN HER HOUSE! … BY ANNALISA DEL VECCHIO
ANNALISA DEL VECCHIO WRITES – During last year’s Pre-Fall 2019 show, creative director Kim Jones of Christian Dior collaborated with famed Japanese artist Hajime Sorayama to unveil a series of retro-futuristic fashion pieces featuring signature elements of both experts’ brands. Dior director Jones said in an interview that he was…
Full Article FASHION OF ASIA: Sorayama’s silver Mylar – erotic, hyperreal with displays of desire
CHELSEA SALAC WRITES– Bud Konheim, CEO of Nicole Miller (lifestyle brand) claims, “Fashion used to be focused solely on Paris, Milan, and London. Today, it’s China.” Indeed—Shanghai Fashion Week (SFW), which ran March 27 through April 3, has become a major international event. China has, in fact, become one…
Full Article China: Shanghai Fashion Week Highlights