Can the IT Idea of Fashion Take Over Asia?
If there is anything that visually identifies a Japanese adult, and especially a female adult, it is the sense of fashion. People in Japan's major cities are absolutely meticulous about how they dress in public, even in the most casual of situations. Countless magazines advise both males and females on proper coordination of shirts, coats, and pants, while various TV programs show how to properly apply makeup and introduce shops that help those with subpar sense of fashion. Even those who do not care too much about visual presentation inevitably have to conform to the fashion sense just to feel socially acceptable.
The phenomenon is by no means exclusively Japanese. As more and more people across this part of the Asian continent becomes affluent, the idea of putting in efforts at better visual presentation becomes a social, and particularly corporate, norm, often as a result of the soft power propagated by Korean and Japanese popular culture. In imitating fashion- and makeup-obsessed Japanese and Koreans, much of East and Southeast Asia is moving toward a direction where affluence is becoming associated with having to look pretty in public spaces.
In the meantime, it often feels other parts of the world is moving in exactly the opposite direction. The tech industry, the new and future generator of global wealth and innovation, is an epitome of what the Japanese and Koreans would call "bad" fashion. The likes of Mark Zuckerberg have deliberately chosen not to care about what to wear in order to convey the sheer pointlessness of visual presentation to self-improvement and individual productivity. Indeed, some of the industry's most brilliant people are almost permanently clothed in no-brand T-shirts and jeans.
In the traditional mindset of affluent Asia, dressing badly and being rich were supposed to be incongruent. The rich corporate warriors of finance and trade wore their brand-name suits with pride. For them, the expensive suits, along with obligatory accompaniments of expensive watches, handbags, ties, and fountain pens, were the symbols of individual wealth attained from hard work in a productive industry. The fact that a bunch of tech companies run by a bunch of geeks in T-shirts and jeans are now the world's most valuable and profitable companies turned the logic of "high fashion = great wealth" on its head.
And gradually, the burgeoning Asian tech industry is following suit on the casual Silicon Valley tech "fashion." Plenty of rich entrepreneurs in Japan, some of whom the author knows personally, openly speaks of their disdain for the rigidity of the suit. Surely many employees of the past, as well, felt uncomfortable in their suits, but only in the recent years, with the newfound wealth and respect of tech startups, has T-shirt and jeans became a viable option. People can and do now criticize the suit with a sense of pride, while those in the past were simply forced to wear the suit to conform.
As the social status of the T-shirt and jeans tech people ascends along with their economic wealth, it remains unclear whether their too-casual-for-Asia sense of fashion will become more mainstream. After all, it is perfectly possible that the tech world is assimilated into the Asian fashion obsession rather than the other way around. As many tech firms stop becoming up-and-coming innovators and end up being a new crop of "traditional" corporate giants, they may have to conform to the traditional corporate dress code, driven by the needs to acquire new personnel and clients from the traditional, non-tech sectors.
Yet it is also perfectly possible that the most meticulous of Japanese fashionistas start looking to the sloppy dress code of the tech industry for inspirations. The tech sector represents creativity, youth, energy, worldliness, and even cosmopolitanism. These are all values that the fashion industry wants its clients, the nitpicky consumers of trendy clothes and accessories, to have. If the tech sector already have those values in play, why not just join the people in the tech sector, at least visually? The "coolness" of the tech industry may simply be translated into the "coolness" of its fashion sense.
If there is anything constant about the fashion industry, it is the speed at which things go out of fashion. What is considered "good" fashion may not be so in a few years, and certainly will not be in a few decades. Certainly, if one day, T-shirts and jeans worn by tech entrepreneurs become the new hot, trendy items, it is not inconceivable that they will also be accepted as such by the fashion-conscious Asian public. When that day comes, perhaps the visual representation of still-fashionable Japan will be quite different from its current one. It is rather comical to imagine it today, but in the not-so-distant future, the meticulously dressed will think about which plain T-shirt to wear.
The phenomenon is by no means exclusively Japanese. As more and more people across this part of the Asian continent becomes affluent, the idea of putting in efforts at better visual presentation becomes a social, and particularly corporate, norm, often as a result of the soft power propagated by Korean and Japanese popular culture. In imitating fashion- and makeup-obsessed Japanese and Koreans, much of East and Southeast Asia is moving toward a direction where affluence is becoming associated with having to look pretty in public spaces.
In the meantime, it often feels other parts of the world is moving in exactly the opposite direction. The tech industry, the new and future generator of global wealth and innovation, is an epitome of what the Japanese and Koreans would call "bad" fashion. The likes of Mark Zuckerberg have deliberately chosen not to care about what to wear in order to convey the sheer pointlessness of visual presentation to self-improvement and individual productivity. Indeed, some of the industry's most brilliant people are almost permanently clothed in no-brand T-shirts and jeans.
In the traditional mindset of affluent Asia, dressing badly and being rich were supposed to be incongruent. The rich corporate warriors of finance and trade wore their brand-name suits with pride. For them, the expensive suits, along with obligatory accompaniments of expensive watches, handbags, ties, and fountain pens, were the symbols of individual wealth attained from hard work in a productive industry. The fact that a bunch of tech companies run by a bunch of geeks in T-shirts and jeans are now the world's most valuable and profitable companies turned the logic of "high fashion = great wealth" on its head.
And gradually, the burgeoning Asian tech industry is following suit on the casual Silicon Valley tech "fashion." Plenty of rich entrepreneurs in Japan, some of whom the author knows personally, openly speaks of their disdain for the rigidity of the suit. Surely many employees of the past, as well, felt uncomfortable in their suits, but only in the recent years, with the newfound wealth and respect of tech startups, has T-shirt and jeans became a viable option. People can and do now criticize the suit with a sense of pride, while those in the past were simply forced to wear the suit to conform.
As the social status of the T-shirt and jeans tech people ascends along with their economic wealth, it remains unclear whether their too-casual-for-Asia sense of fashion will become more mainstream. After all, it is perfectly possible that the tech world is assimilated into the Asian fashion obsession rather than the other way around. As many tech firms stop becoming up-and-coming innovators and end up being a new crop of "traditional" corporate giants, they may have to conform to the traditional corporate dress code, driven by the needs to acquire new personnel and clients from the traditional, non-tech sectors.
Yet it is also perfectly possible that the most meticulous of Japanese fashionistas start looking to the sloppy dress code of the tech industry for inspirations. The tech sector represents creativity, youth, energy, worldliness, and even cosmopolitanism. These are all values that the fashion industry wants its clients, the nitpicky consumers of trendy clothes and accessories, to have. If the tech sector already have those values in play, why not just join the people in the tech sector, at least visually? The "coolness" of the tech industry may simply be translated into the "coolness" of its fashion sense.
If there is anything constant about the fashion industry, it is the speed at which things go out of fashion. What is considered "good" fashion may not be so in a few years, and certainly will not be in a few decades. Certainly, if one day, T-shirts and jeans worn by tech entrepreneurs become the new hot, trendy items, it is not inconceivable that they will also be accepted as such by the fashion-conscious Asian public. When that day comes, perhaps the visual representation of still-fashionable Japan will be quite different from its current one. It is rather comical to imagine it today, but in the not-so-distant future, the meticulously dressed will think about which plain T-shirt to wear.
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