Acknowledgments  ix

Introduction: Fashion, Free Trade, and the "Rise of the Asian Designer"  1

Part I  

1. Crossing the Assembly Line: Skills, Knowledge, and the Borders of Fashion  31

2. All in the Family? Kin, Gifts, and the Networks of Fashion  63

Part II  

3. The Cultural Economy of Asian Chic  99

4. "Material Mao": Fashioning Histories Out of Icons  133

5. Asia on My Mind: Transnational Intimacies and Cultural Genealogies  169

Epilogue  203

Notes  209

Bibliography  239

Index  253

“The Beautiful Generation, as much a fashion history as a cultural study, gracefully takes us . . . from Gaultier’s introduction of luxe Chinese coats in seventeenth century Paris, to American Vogue’s strategic establishment of ‘fashion designer as cultural anthropologist’ in the mid-‘90s, and finally to the curiously successfully rise of Asian American designers in the present decade. While it’s all a good read, the last is arguably the highlight of the book; Nguyen Tu’s compelling examination of Asian American designers, whose precarious positions in the industry are plainly defined by their historic exclusion from it, is clearly a point of personal connection for her.”—Catherine A. Traywick, Hyphen

“It should be said right at the start that this book is unusual among academic products in being very lucidly written, self-critical, and sympathetic to the subjects under survey in a way that doesn’t exclude expressions of doubt about, for example, interviewees’ motives and indeed truthfulness. . . . Above all, the author is writing about her own kind, and as an Asian-American herself she shows great insight into this particular social group, and into this now rather characteristic Asian-American occupation.”—Bradley Winterton, Taipei Times

“[An] ambitious exploration of the contemporary contemporary significance of Asian-American designers. . . . Using anecdotes and interviews to support her thesis of intimacy, she details a network of kinship and gifts that create ‘families’ out of ordinarily distant, detached sweatshop stitchers and the hardworking but nevertheless privileged creatives who employ them.” —Kimberly Chun, Bitch

“The Beautiful Generation exemplifies emerging cultural studies scholarship in that it theorizes the complex intersections of race, immigration, globalization, and culture's contributions to our current neoliberal economy. This highly original study demonstrates the author's strength in navigating interdisciplinarity. . . . Offering new ways to think about meanings of family, the production and consumption of Asianness, and the inequalities built in fashion as it relates to manufacturing and globalization, this book is ideal for teaching and serves as a model for future research.”—Nhi Lieu, Journal of Asian American Studies

“[A] book that brilliantly explores the ascent of fashion’s Asian/American young guns and anchors their success in how they’ve made resourceful use of their connections to the bottom of fashion’s pyramid—the cutters and sewers who assemble the clothes imagined in couture’s luxe halls.” —Jeff Yang, Wall Street Journal “Tao Jones” blog

“[Tu’s] project provides an alternative framework from which to not only critique the material and symbolic divisions that structure the fashion industry, but also emphasize the ways in which the act of cultural production can attempt to challenge them.”—Hee-Jung Serenity Joo, American Studies

“With the academic equivalent of military prowess, assistant professor
of Asian Pacific Studies at New York University Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu
flanks the topic of Asian Americans in fashion...Tu’s work illustrates interdisciplinary academia at its best, not only conquering the topic from all angles but also exploring it through multiple methodologies.”—E. P. Cutler, Women’s Studies Quarterly

“The Beautiful Generation, as much a fashion history as a cultural study, gracefully takes us . . . from Gaultier’s introduction of luxe Chinese coats in seventeenth century Paris, to American Vogue’s strategic establishment of ‘fashion designer as cultural anthropologist’ in the mid-‘90s, and finally to the curiously successfully rise of Asian American designers in the present decade. While it’s all a good read, the last is arguably the highlight of the book; Nguyen Tu’s compelling examination of Asian American designers, whose precarious positions in the industry are plainly defined by their historic exclusion from it, is clearly a point of personal connection for her.”—Catherine A. Traywick, Hyphen

“It should be said right at the start that this book is unusual among academic products in being very lucidly written, self-critical, and sympathetic to the subjects under survey in a way that doesn’t exclude expressions of doubt about, for example, interviewees’ motives and indeed truthfulness. . . . Above all, the author is writing about her own kind, and as an Asian-American herself she shows great insight into this particular social group, and into this now rather characteristic Asian-American occupation.”—Bradley Winterton, Taipei Times

“[An] ambitious exploration of the contemporary contemporary significance of Asian-American designers. . . . Using anecdotes and interviews to support her thesis of intimacy, she details a network of kinship and gifts that create ‘families’ out of ordinarily distant, detached sweatshop stitchers and the hardworking but nevertheless privileged creatives who employ them.” —Kimberly Chun, Bitch

“The Beautiful Generation exemplifies emerging cultural studies scholarship in that it theorizes the complex intersections of race, immigration, globalization, and culture's contributions to our current neoliberal economy. This highly original study demonstrates the author's strength in navigating interdisciplinarity. . . . Offering new ways to think about meanings of family, the production and consumption of Asianness, and the inequalities built in fashion as it relates to manufacturing and globalization, this book is ideal for teaching and serves as a model for future research.”—Nhi Lieu, Journal of Asian American Studies

“[A] book that brilliantly explores the ascent of fashion’s Asian/American young guns and anchors their success in how they’ve made resourceful use of their connections to the bottom of fashion’s pyramid—the cutters and sewers who assemble the clothes imagined in couture’s luxe halls.” —Jeff Yang, Wall Street Journal “Tao Jones” blog

“[Tu’s] project provides an alternative framework from which to not only critique the material and symbolic divisions that structure the fashion industry, but also emphasize the ways in which the act of cultural production can attempt to challenge them.”—Hee-Jung Serenity Joo, American Studies

“With the academic equivalent of military prowess, assistant professor
of Asian Pacific Studies at New York University Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu
flanks the topic of Asian Americans in fashion...Tu’s work illustrates interdisciplinary academia at its best, not only conquering the topic from all angles but also exploring it through multiple methodologies.”—E. P. Cutler, Women’s Studies Quarterly

“Exciting and original, The Beautiful Generation exemplifies the best work in the field of cultural studies. Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu reveals the material and ideological struggles behind the constructions of Asianness incorporated into the design, production, and marketing of fashion. She describes how the U.S. fashion industry has been built around racialized, gendered, and sexualized streams of migrants, as well as the complex transnational flows of capital, and she brilliantly argues that it is the ‘architecture and aesthetics of intimacy,’ the fictive and biological kin relations between designers and garment workers, that fuels Asian American fashion design.”—Martin F. Manalansan IV, author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora

“The Beautiful Generation is a pleasure to read and a model of how cultural studies ought to be done. Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu’s elegant, well-crafted account of the fashion industry demonstrates the impossibility of separating the aesthetic from the material, or the cultural from the economic. It shows how the changing roles of culture in the global economy can be luminously traced through a focused, interdisciplinary methodology.”—Kandice Chuh, author of Imagine Otherwise: On Asian Americanist Critique

“Exciting and original, The Beautiful Generation exemplifies the best work in the field of cultural studies. Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu reveals the material and ideological struggles behind the constructions of Asianness incorporated into the design, production, and marketing of fashion. She describes how the U.S. fashion industry has been built around racialized, gendered, and sexualized streams of migrants, as well as the complex transnational flows of capital, and she brilliantly argues that it is the ‘architecture and aesthetics of intimacy,’ the fictive and biological kin relations between designers and garment workers, that fuels Asian American fashion design.”—Martin F. Manalansan IV, author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora

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