Decolonizing Luxury Fashion in Japan. (18th September 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Slade, Toby
• Is Part Of: Fashion theory. Volume 24:Number 6(2020)
• Page Start: 837
• Page End: 857
• Publication Date: 2020-09-18
• Subjects: decoloniality -- fashion -- Japan -- luxury -- surōraifu -- slow-life; Fashion -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Fashion -- History -- Periodicals; Costume -- History -- Periodicals; Costume -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 391.001
• DOI: 10.1080/1362704X.2020.1802101
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1362-704X

Abstract

Abstract: Japan went from consuming more foreign luxury fashion brands than the rest of the world combined in the late 1980s to a complete rethinking of both the concept and practice of luxury after the bursting of its economic bubble. One key sensibility that arose was that of surōraifu, a Japanese word after the English "slow life." This esthetic, expressing the slowing down of time, was part of rising cultural nationalism but also represented a delinking of Japanese fashion from modernity/coloniality's horizon of expectations which positioned Europe as the font of desirable luxury consumption and European luxury fashion as a central symbol of civilization. This paper argues that in consumer culture Japan's modernity was colonial in defining the most valuable things as the goods from a foreign culture and that perspective changing crises are able to question the values and change the tastes of consumers in line with a decolonial delinking.