An in-depth study analysing the relationship between the Italian ready-to-wear fashion industry and the Chinese fast fashion industry, focussing on the 2000s and 2010s.
In this in-depth study, author Gaoheng Zhang analyses the relationship between the Italian ready-to-wear fashion industry and the Chinese fast fashion industry, focussing on the 2000s and 2010s.
Looking first at the communication of Italian fashion in China before examining the impact of Chinese migrants and Chinese fashion on the Italian fashion industry, the author unpacks perceived tensions between “made in China” fast fashion and “made in Italy” ready-to-wear that is viewed as “slow” fashion. In doing so, Zhang exposes the nuances, controversies and ambivalences of Italy's and China's intertwined fashion systems, revealing not only the competition between these two countries, but also their collaboration.
Applying the lenses of communication, cultural and fashion studies to this analysis, Fashion Communications Between Italy and China reflects on global fashion industries more generally and related topics such as globalized fashion-making, fashion-facilitated transcultural identity construction, and fashion-led negotiation of national economic issues.
Arvustused
A groundbreaking exploration of the cultural and industrial entanglements between Italy and China, this book deftly unpacks the symbolic and material dynamics of fashion from the 1980s to the 2010s. With clarity and insight, it reveals how ready-to-wear and fast fashion shape not just markets, but global imaginations. * - Simona Segre-Reinach, Associate Professor in Fashion Studies, University of Bologna, Italy *
Muu info
An in-depth study analysing the relationship between the Italian ready-to-wear fashion industry and the Chinese fast fashion industry, focussing on the 2000s and 2010s.
Introduction: Fashion Cultures on the Move
1. Italian Fashion Made For and Through China: Transcultural Fashion
Communications
2. Beyond Sprezzatura: Popular Culture Translates Italian Ready-to-Wear in
China
3. "Insulting China"?: Dolce & Gabbana's 2018 Advertising Campaign in
Shanghai
4. Fabricating Friction: Critiques of Prato's Chinese-Managed Fast Fashion
5. Conviviality in Sociality: Made in Italy by Chinese and Italian Hands,
Prato Style
Conclusion
Gaoheng Zhang is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is also the author of Migration and the Media: Debating Chinese Migration to Italy, 1992-2012 (2019) and Italian Dumplings and Chinese Pizzas: Transcultural Food Mobilities (2025).
