BOOOO LAKERS!!!

I was just kidding about the title to this blog. (Or was I?) Anyhow…

I had the chance to spend some quality time with my cousin yesterday. When he arrived at my house to pick me up, the first thing that I noticed was that he was all decked out in new LA Lakers apparel as well as a Nike headband and shoes. I knew that game six between the Lakers and the Nuggets was going to be held later in the evening. So I had a feeling that was why he was dressed up. However, I decided to ask him anyways why he had new clothes on. I wanted to know why he was dressed up like a basketball player when all we had planned was to go help my aunt kill the weeds in her backyard. My cousin then confirmed to me that he was indeed in basketball clothing because of the game; he wanted to show support for the Lakers. In addition, he told me that he was going to go play basketball with some friends after we were done helping my aunt. "I am going to need the need the 'proper' attire," he said.

Overall, recalling my conversation with my cousin made me realize two things. First, it made realize that the sports industry is an institution. According to Yuniya Kawamura, "Fashion as an institution produce hierarchy among all makers of clothes by adding social, economic, cultural and symbolic capital to clothes, which are then transformed into luxury, elite clothes" (55). Looking at the sports industry, it can be seen that it does all of those things that fashion does. Take Nike, for instance. Nike sells sports products. In order for the company to sell its merchandise, professional athletes are usually hired in advertisements. When audiences see these ads, it makes them want to get the products that they see. To them, having those advertised items will help them play a sport better. In addition, it will help them have a "sense of superiority" because they have products that elite athletes have/use (55). The whole cycle then just repeats itself.

Here is a commercial that I found. It clearly exemplifies what I was trying to say above.

(The kid in the video knows that Lebron and Kobe are respectable basketball players. Because of that fact, he tries to inquire information about them. He wants to know how they became great basketball players. For instance, he states: Kobe, do you practice your dunks?" A statement such as this shows how fascinated he is with these players because they are perceived as some of the world's finest basketball players. In additon, by asking so many questions, it shows how he is trying to find a way to be like them. This includes knowing what type of shoes they have. Overall, this example shows how people on the top of the social ladder as well as the economic ladder are leaders of institutions. A trickle down effect will result, and then people will start to copy the fashion, for instance, of the elite.)

The second thing that my conversation with my cousin reminded me of is that there is a way to be green, fight consumerism, and still support one's favorite team at the same time. One doesn't need to have a jersey, headband, etc. that has one's favorite team's logo on it. Instead, one can simply reuse the clothes that one already has. For instance, one can wear clothes that are the same color as one's favorite sports team. A simple shirt will do. By reusing what one already has, one is fighting consumerism as well as showing some love for his/her favorite team.


Reference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxdbaJleol4
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Youth-soccer-indiana.jpg
Kawamura, Yuniya. Fashion-ology An Introduction to Fashion Studies (Dress, Body, Culture). New York: Berg, 2005.

Japanese Street Fashion and Influences

This week I wanted to talk about what we discussed last week. Last week we discussed alot about the Japanese fashion culture, such as "Kawaii" and the Lolita complex trend in Japan. However, in this blog, I want to focus on Japanese Street Fashion.

As we all know, Japan has been one of the rising nations in the world when it comes to fashion. In Yuniya Kawamura's piece of "Japanese Teens as Producers of Street Fashion", she discussed the idea of Japan having a lot of influences in the fashion industry. Japan has been making it's mark in the fashion industry for a few decades now, but has been more so in the past few years.

The question we raised in class was "How did Japanese Street Fashion Emerge?" Did it emerge from mimicking Western fashion, or was it their own style? I believe that Japanese street fashion was highly influenced from Western ideals. However, in my opinion, Japanese street fashion is much more unique than American's street wear. Kawamura explained that Japanese Street fashion is so unique and different even though they took their ideas from the West, is due to the fact of the influences in Japan.

Kawamura states that it is the teenagers of Japan that was revolutionized Japan's street fashion. They dictate where the trend comes and goes. Even countries nearby, know that teenagers (high school girls) are "designers" and know what are the newest styles. Many Japanese adults and kids mimic these highschool teenagers and that's how this Japanese street fashion trend starts. Kawamura's idea that teenagers are producers of fashion holds true also in our society.

When you look at our society, it is mostly the young generation (us), that starts many mainstream fashion trends. A common trend in today's society is the "hypebeast" look, that many young teens and children today are wearing as their style. What started out as a type of style from the streets from teenagers, has become a everyday style wear. Wikipedia defines hypebeast as "It originally refers to a streetwear enthusiast who is only interested in having the latest trends." If you think about it, it's very similar to how Japan's street fashion as evolve.

If you look at these photos, this is typically how a hypebeast style would look like. The hypebeast look usually consist of skinny jeans, a pair of nikes, a fitted hat, and flannel. This is the look that is what's in right in our society, and kids today are looking up to it and are mimicing it as well.

This is a kid having been influenced by the hypebeast culture and mimicking the older teenage generation. The point of all this is, that we can see how fashion has been so dominated by teenagers of our generation. Is this influence a good thing for the Fashion Industry, or a bad thing? In my opinion it can be a good thing, in a sense that fashion can be controlled by the non-elites. We don't have to follow what the elites say and what they tell us is "fashionable". We can control what we want to be and is trendy, and call it a style. However, this teen dominating the fashion industry can be a bad thing. When I say this, sometimes these fashion experts and "real" designers actually know what they are doing, and know what is nice and what isn't. Maybe these teens influence on the fashion industry is a mockery and all jibberish. In the end, it's up to our own individual self to gather what is fashion and what and where our influences comes from.

BLOG #4
TUNG VO

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypebeast
Yuniya Kawamura. “Japanese Teens as Producers of Street Fashion.” Class Reader.


images
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i97/icecutie2g/party%20crew/JapaneseStreetFashion1.jpg

Old Tires to New Shoes

Old tires, coconut, carpet padding, and cork. These are things that you would just use and then throw away once they get old or worn out. But that is not the case when it comes to this shoe company, Simple. Instead of wasting things that still can still be used in a somewhat non-conventional form, this company has found a great way to create shoes and other products that are environmentally friendly. They state on their website, “With all the over-built, over-hyped products out there, it's pretty hard to find sustainable shoes that you can live with. So we started Simple, your stereotypical, anti-stereotype brand offering good shoes and a big dose of reality.” In addition, they said, “The important thing is we're committed to making our product 100% sustainable. Finding materials and processes that make our products sustainable is a method we call Green Toe. It isn't a magic formula, or a cure. It is a compass that, we hope, points to a bright green future.” They Old car tires are used for the soles of shoes, and the coconut for buttons and accents. The carpet padding and cork are used for padding within their shoes. These are just four of the many items this company uses for their shoes.

Also what was surprising was that this company even creates shoes with college logos on them such as Cal, Stanford and Duke.

This company is taking notice of the fact that many people are now going “green” and trying to buy environmentally friendly products and clothes. This is related to the idea of “fashion as a cultural symbol,” (Kawamura, 39). In this case, the new fashion style shows how there is a new green culture. And therefore producers of fashion and designers are trying to create things in response to the new culture that is being created. Kawamura also brings up fashion in terms of it being “… an institutionalized system in which individuals related to fashion, including designers… engage in activities collectively, share the same belief in fashion and participate together in producing and perpetuating the not only the ideology but also fashion culture which is sustained by the continuous production of fashion,” (Kawamura, 39). In relation to green fashion, this shows how numerous designers and companies create products that are environmentally friendly. This particular company uses things that are re-used or organic materials in order to make shoes that more sustainable for the environment.

In relation to the compact challenge, these shoes show that the uses for things that could have been thrown away are quite great. And I do own a pair of these shoes, the green ones pictured above. (But I bought them way before the challenge began.)

-Jasmine Lim (Blog #5)

Sources:
“Fashion as a Institutionalized System” by Yuniya Kawamura in Fashion-ology
Simple Shoes Website: http://www.simpleshoes.com/info/index.aspx?g=info
Image of Simple Logo: http://www.simpleshoes.com/images/Misc/sgw/sgw_simpleLogo.gif
Image of Green Polka Dot Shoes: http://www.thegreenloop.com/Simple_Carousel_Polka_Eco_Sneaks_p/simple-ss08-ecosneak-carousel.htm
Image of Flip-Flops: http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Womens-Toe-Foo-cal/dp/B001G0WP88

Giving New Life to Old Clothes

I think it’s interesting how anti-consumerism seems to exist to spite the institution of fashion. In our class we learn all about the fashion system and how much a part of our lives it is. Then we are asked to turn around and basically remove it from our lives. As a bunch of students that decided to take an Asian American Fashion class, you would imagine that most of us are fashion-followers. Novelty is a major component of fashion, so how could we possibly stay fashionable if we aren’t allowed to buy anything new? However, the definition of “novelty” includes not only newness, but originality and innovation. Kawamura writes:

“The fashion industry is not simply concerned with the production of adequate or pleasant clothing but is concerned with the production of new stylistic innovations that satisfy the image of fashion… Fashion--ology suggests that any item of clothing is capable of being appreciated and turned into fashion” (Kawamura 45).

Following fashion has always been thought of as getting rid of what’s old and buying what’s new, but clothing doesn’t have to be brand new in order to be fashionable. So, how can we have fashionable clothing without buying new clothes? By making them. Or rather – by reworking what clothes we already have. If you’re like me, you probably have tons of clothes lying around that you don’t wear anymore because they’re “out of style.” With a few snips and stitches those clothing items can become something new and exciting – something fashionable.


BEFORE


AFTER


I think it’s interesting how anti-consumerism seems to exist to spite the institution of fashion. In our class we learn all about the fashion system and how much a part of our lives it is. Then we are asked to turn around and basically remove it from our lives. As a bunch of students that decided to take an Asian American Fashion class, you would imagine that most of us are fashion-followers. Novelty is a major component of fashion, so how could we possibly stay fashionable if we aren’t allowed to buy anything new? However, the definition of “novelty” includes not only newness, but originality and innovation. Kawamura writes:
Your boyfriend’s old shirt can become a mini-dress, a pair of jeans can become a bag, or some lace and buttons can turn an old skirt into something right off the pages of the latest fashion magazine. Designers like http://www.cherylfudge.com/ have based a whole business on reworking clothes. There are a lot of videos online that can show you how to do this, and even more web sites such as Threadbanger and CraftStylish that have tons of ideas and step by step instructions on reworking clothing.



It can be fun for those of you who like arts and crafts, and if you don’t know how to sew you can always take a few lessons. Sewing is always a useful skill to have. Plus, you get the chance to be a designer and create something that matches your own style. And you’ll have an item you can be sure no one else has. Your old clothes can have a new life, and you can have your own couture without maxing out your credit card.

- Carmel Crisologo
[blog #5]

WORKS CITED
Kawamura, Yuniya. Fashion-ology An Introduction to Fashion Studies (Dress, Body, Culture). New York: Berg, 2005.

that's SO not in anymore...says who?

In one of this week’s article, "Fashion as an Institutionalized System," by Yuniya Kawamura, I realized something about how my compact challenge has been going. Every season we see the "in" styles, but who defines what is in style and what is out of style? The answer is simple: us. We define what is "in" style by the clothes we buy or the clothes other people buy. Fashion experts seek to be the first to create the next "in" thing but overall, there is not one specific person who decides what is fashionable or not. People, media, even magazines [image on right] tell us the way that we can keep "in fashion" and keep up with the latest trends. In Kawamura’s article, she discusses how we learn from the fashion system that there are certain ways we have to dress for certain occasions. If it’s a fancy thing, we have to dress up. If we’re just going to school, we can dress casual. Different clothes for different events. People, companies, and things have determined what specific things we need to wear for certain things we attend. However, is this really necessary? As a community, we spend so much money on clothes that we probably don’t need all because we feel we need them for a special occasion. If we buy a fancy dress for a special occasion, then suddenly, we wear it once and never again. All because of the special occasion we spent a ton of money on something that we’ll probably never wear again. WHAT A WASTE! There’s no law that states that we need to dress up for certain things, and yet we constantly are buying things for that one special occasion because the world around us makes us believe we need to. In the article, "The Aesthetics and Politics of Japanese Identity in the Fashion Industry," by Dorinne Kondo, she discusses how in the first at the Shirokiya Department store, fourteen people died because the kimono prevented them from making a quick escape. It just seems like these girls were probably wearing a kimono because at the time, that was the fashion and that’s what everyone was wearing. Because they felt that they needed to wear it too, they wore them and because of that, they ended up dying because of how bulky the kimono can be. If they hadn’t let the fashion world get to them, they might not have died because they might have been wearing whatever clothes they felt like wearing. Even though it isn’t one specific person telling us what is fashion and what is not, we still let the fashion world or others around us dictate what is "in" fashion and what is not, and because of that, sometimes it can be harmful.

Unique

I don’t know about everyone else. But the last two days have been hell for me. I spent the majority of Saturday and especially today working on the research paper. I am really glad to finally have the paper out of the way. On another hand, I am also glad that I am almost done with the challenge. It’s my fifth week into the challenge, which means that I only have one more week to go. Yay, me!

Anyhow, yesterday I went through the reader and looked at the different portrayals of Japanese fashion from pages 320-330. In my heart, I knew that if I wore anything similar to the styles seen on those pages, I would get some form of ridicule from people. More notably, if I were to wear an outfit and make-up of the Mamba fashion, I would really get a lot of heads up since Fairfield is not use to seeing such a thing nor do I believe a lot of people know that it is a type of fashion acceptable in Japan. Nonetheless, that did not stop me from becoming inspired to dress in my own “unique” way. (When I use the word “unique,” I mean something that goes against a norm in society. Here is a link to a dictionary’s meaning.) Originally, I wanted to dress like the Takenokozoku because their fashion was neither too “outrageous” nor too “normal” for me. However, I did not have anything in my closet that was similar to lady’s blouse and bottom on page 320. And because of the challenge, there was no way I was going to spend money in order to achieve the look. As a result, I decided to reuse articles of clothing and accessories that I already have. I came up with this:


As one can see, I did not achieve any of the styles seen in the reader. I want to point out that I did use different items from different styles to make my own style. For instance, I had a boom box like the Takenokozoku and boots like the Gonguro. (So what if they weren’t platform boots; they were still boots!)
After I had my attire on, I decided to test it out in the public. I went to a friend’s house. When she first saw what I was wearing, she asked me if I was serious, and I told her I was. I told her that the youths in Japan had a unique sense of fashion, and it was accepted there. “If that’s the case, then why can’t I have my own style,” I told her. I was greeted by my auntie, my friend’s mom. When she saw me, she also asked me why I was dressed the way I was and whether or not if I knew that it wasn’t Halloween. In addition, she gave me a look as if I was nuts. Before I left my friend’s house, I showed her and my auntie images in the reader. The both agreed that some of the fashion in there were “unbelievable” and “funny” if worn.

As a whole, my experience has given me a better understanding of diffusion as well as an insight on the dynamics of fashion. According to Yuniya Kawamura, “In dealing with fashion consumption, we have to consider the group mentality of those who adopt and wear fashion. Mass fashion diffusion and consumption can be explained as a process of collective behavior among large numbers of people.” I tried to sell my look by advertising. By the reactions I received, however, I could tell that there was no way that my style would make people want to buy articles of clothing so they could dress the way that I did. From the words I received, I could also see the mentality of the group I exposed my style to; they saw me as a stigma for not wearing the fashion seen in present society. Overall, I learned that location is an important factor to consider when speaking of fashion. American culture is not used to seeing looks such as the Gonguru look. In addition, unlike Japan’s street wear, those fashions have not “migrated” here. Overall, I am now left to wonder how people such as my auntie and friend would feel if looks such as the Gonguru were accepted. Would they change their opinions on unique fashion such as the ones that I had worn? What if people accepted my style? Would they do the same? If so, this would definitely be a fine example of how fashion “is not created by a single individual but by everyone involved.”

Resources:
Yuniya Kawamura's "Fashion-ology"
Yuniya Kawamura's "Japanese Teens as Producers of Street Fashion"
Macias's and Evers's "Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno" and Profile images
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unique

MAKEUP PACKAGING WASTE: how to MAKE-OVER wasteful habits!

Did you know that Women tend to have about about 12 cosmetic products in their
vanities? (according to an April 2008 survey commissioned by O.B. Tampons).

With 112,804,773 women over 20 years old living in the U.S., most of this packaging is being thrown away. According to the EPA, approximately 1/3 of landfill waste is from plastic packaging from items such as cosmetics. (for more info please click here.)

What many people aren't aware of, is that most cosmetic containers, specifically those used for makeup, are unidentifiable plastics, and therefore are rarely recycled. Makeup tend to be in disposable containers, and over the years these will pile up in our landfills.



In Kawamura's Fashionology, she explains that "fashion includes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services," (Kawamura, 2006). If makeup companies can design products with packaging that is bio-degradable and safe for the environment, it can be a widely adopted practice in consumer culture. Because production, consumption, and distribution is part of fashion, it is important to keep these socially responsible design aspects in mind, including the disposal of these cosmetics.




Until we can achieve biodegradable packaged cosmetics try these tips for recycling your makeup containers:

• reuse any old eyeshadow pots, compacts, etc. as travel mirrors or travel sized containers for creams, paints, liquids, or any other cosmetics.
  

recycle all products responsibly, and research a specialized cosmetic recycling program in your area: some drug stores have a lipstick recycling bin



*other major makeup retailers such as MAC have offered a take-back program where if you bring in any 6 empty containers you get 1 free lipstick! Origins also has a recycling program for all cosmetics.

• Be smart about your purchasing choices! Buy larger containers for items you use frequently and opt for more organic/natural makeup which won't harm the environment. Also try to choose products with less packaging if not recycle friendly!

Here is a video on more makeup recycling tips:


Hopefully these ideas will keep our environment and your face absolutely gorgeous!

- Elaine de Lara
Blog#5

Fashionology by Yuniya Kawamura

http://www.origins.com/about/index.tmpl?page=recfaq#A01

http://makeup.about.com/od/companyprofiles/a/Recycling.html