Content warning: This article references racial and sexual violence.
The fashion industry plays a key role in recent violence toward the Asian American and Pacific Islander community, but it goes far beyond the latest controversy over Alexi McCammond, who was set to be the next Teen Vogue editor in chief. Asians have faced an onslaught of racism and violence over the past year of the pandemic. Just last week, eight people — six of whom were Asian and seven of whom were women — were shot and killed at three massage parlors in Atlanta. In response to the ongoing violence, brands such as Valentino, Nike, Adidas, Converse, Tommy Hilfiger, Benefit Cosmetics and U Beauty have expressed condolences and declared their support of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community over the past few months. However, the controversy over McCammond alone seems to have received as much coverage as each of the brand solidarity announcements put together.
Soon after Condé Nast announced McCammond's hiring as editor in chief of Teen Vogue at the beginning of March, racist tweets that McCammond posted in 2011 resurfaced, such as “Outdone by Asian #whatisnew” and “now googling how not to wake up with swollen, asian eyes…” Just days after her hire, more than 20 members of the Teen Vogue staff expressed concern to management in a joint letter. Despite McCammond’s repeated apologies, disapproval of her position increased until she finally relinquished the role last week. This came just two days after the Atlanta shootings and before she had officially started the job.
While it is good that companies are trying to combat racism, their steps seem largely performative considering the Asian stereotypes perpetuated by the fashion industry as a whole. The Atlantashooter, Robert Aaron Long, admitted that he was motivated by “sexual addiction” and “temptation … that he wanted to eliminate.” This reflects a larger dehumanizing effect of Orientalism upon Asian women, who are seen as both appealing and threatening, exotic and sexually submissive.
“The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity ‘a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes,[']" a pioneering theorist of Orientalism, Edward Said, explained in his book, "Orientalism" (1978). "The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also … one of its deepest and most recurring images of the other.”
In the United States, Asian women face dual stereotypes as both a fetishized “other” as described by Said and a submissive model minority. For several who work in spa services, this leads to assumptions that they are involved in sex work and creates a constant danger of harassment and assault.
Far from just being incidentally involved through McCammond’s individual racism, the fashion industry actively furthers these stereotypes. It frequently hypersexualizes models and appropriates cultural clothing, while depicting female garment workers as impoverished yet industrious laborers. Designers and brands have long appropriated styles such as the Chinese qipao,Vietnamese Áo Dài and Japanese kimono to represent a sexual, undifferentiated Asia. This phenomenon traces back to the first travels of Europeans to Asia, and to the resurgence of “Asian chic” in the 1990s and early 2000s — see Sandra Niessen, "Re-Orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress" (2003) — as well as the embroidered qipao dresses of Urban Outfitters and other fast-fashion retailers today.
This matters because fashion is key to how we see ourselves and others. A recent study suggests that even accessories as simple and necessary as face masks make it easier to see each other as threats and harder to recognize shared humanity. With racist assumptions connecting Asians to Donald Trump’s dubbed “Kung flu” and “Chinese virus,”Asian Americans are made even more susceptible to violence. And while some Asians feel so embarrassed by monolids that they opt for double eyelid surgery, other non-Asians see no problem following the recent “fox eye” makeup trend which gives a more slanted eye appearance.
As the Thaicelebrity makeup artistNick Baroseexplains, “People’s eye shapes are not trends. We're not handbags of the season.” Both the fashion and beauty industries thus have extensive histories that persist today of capitalizing on Orientalism for economic profit and commodifying Asian people in an extremely harmful way.
Brands posting about standing in solidarity with the Asian American and Pacific Islander community without mentioning this context come off as shallowly attempting to maintain face. Indeed, according to the firms McKinsey & Co. and Bain & Co., China has been the world’s largest fashion market for the past two years and will be responsible for nearly half of luxury goods purchases by 2025. As increasingly important consumers, consumers provide a financial incentive for brands to at least appear to be aligned with Asian communities.
By contrast, Asian American designers, editors and business people speaking up about Asian hate are much more genuine. Renowned designerPhillip Lim recently moved his studio to New York’s Chinatown and began raising funds and awareness for grassroots American Asian and Pacific Islander organizations. “I can't separate a world of fashion with the reality of what's happening to our people,” Lim explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
Sister designersJessica and Emily Leung similarly explained their commitment by stating, “Fashion is the front lines of raising awareness; it’s the first thing others see when forming their impressions.” While there were only two Asian women on Allure’s cover of the more than 300 issues before Michelle Leebecame editor in chief in 2015, she has since used her position to feature Asian people more prominently.
Moreover, in conversation with Instagram’s director of fashion partnerships, Eva Chen,civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen argued, “If there are structures that have systematically locked the Asian American Pacific Islander community out, we will turn to other platforms like social media in order to democratize our voices … We have choices now. No one is invisible when we demand to be seen.”
As just one example, the Instagram account @chinatownPrettyposts photographs and stories of various elderly Chinatown residents in their everyday outfits, showcasing not only their incredible style but also their complex humanity and defiance of simplistic stereotypes.
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These efforts are inspiring, but the comparatively minimal commitments of most non-Asian industry leaders reveal that fashion still has a long way to go. McCammond’s racist comments deserved to be interrogated no matter how long ago they were made, but spending too much time sensationalizing the Teen Vogue drama glosses over deeper issues at hand. McCammond’s exit was not a solution to fashion’s complicity in violence against Asians and, beyond silencing racist voices, we need to recenter Asian voices challenging stereotypes.
In addition to voicing their support, non-Asians with power in the industry can open their platforms to help others be heard. As consumers, we need to think twice when buying clothing that may be appropriated or when relying on Asian workers at salons for our own beautification.Asian garment workers are just as integral to clothing production as designers who are normally credited with all the creative genius — see Thuy Linh N. Tu’s "The Beautiful Generation" (2010) — and Asian beauty includes everyday Chinatown residents as much as the occasional runway model. Above all, Asian people are more than just a subservient model minority to serve the West or an exotic, sexual plaything to entertain its fantasies.
David Yi, co-founder of Very Good Light, is one of many more voices expressing these sentiments, and I’d like to leave you with his poignant words here: "Silence is violence … Are you going to stand up for us? Are you going to see us? Or are you going to further make us invisible like we've always been in this country? You love our K beauty, our J beauty. You love our ancient healing practices, but you don't love us. You can't have it both ways … You can't love the innovation that comes out of Asia without loving us."
