The Chanel Pre-Fall 2010 Shanghai show released at the beginning of this month a short film called ‘Paris-Shanghai: Metiers d’Art.’ The film features a fantasy day-dreaming trip Coco Chanel would have made to Shanghai in the 60′s.
Controversy raised as instead of hiring Chinese models – or even Asians, Karl Lagerfeld chose European model’s faces painted as “Yellow Faces” to look Chinese – the racial make-up seems to be the latest trend in the fashion industry as recently seen with black painted models in French Vogue, V Magazine and America’s next Top Model.
According to Lagerfeld “It is an homage to Europeans trying to look Chinese… It is about the idea of China, not the reality…It has the spirit of, and is inspired by, but is unrelated to China. It is not authentic like a Peking Opera or something.”
No matter how many times I read that quote, I still don’t get the homage part. Isn’t a Chinese person the idea of China?
I wonder what is the Chinese reaction…Could Chinese people genuinely connect with Chanel beyond the labeled pretty clothes ?
Feel free to comment ..
Keep posting stuff like this. I really like it.
I think that this could polarise Chinese people.
In one sense this can be interpreted as contrived and potentially belittling or compound stereotypes. In the same way that Movies in the 1950’s had white people playing Asian or African roles. Please refer to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotypes_of_East_Asians_in_the_Western_world
On the other hand it is high fashion, the essence of beauty and style which could be seen as glamorising the Chinese people but not seen as “representing” them.
“The film features a fantasy day-dreaming trip Coco Chanel would have made to Shanghai in the 60’s. ”
Is it culturally insensitive, homage, racial, or simply a day dream? After all the DNA of Chanel is NOT Chinese.
I assume Coco would not have been able to visit China after the Communist Party take over in 1949. Therefore, her perception of China would indeed by a day-dream as reinterpreted by Lagerfeld. So, it was a fictional 2009 script of what someone 60 years ago might have day dreamed about a country they have never been to by a capitalist fashion brand of a then already Communist and starving country.
I imagine for someone who probably has very little concept of China, the characters in her day dream would have take on a fusion mixture representation like an alice in wonderland sequence. Mr. Rabbit and big hats.
DNA, Race and Cultural upbringing.
Russel Peters mentioned a simple but enlightening fact. Racially, he is Indian. Culturally, he is Canadian. Just like, racially, I am Chinese, culturally, I have a mixture of Taiwan, SF/Silcon Valley California, and China. If you want to throw in the online culture, that would further segment my identity. When I put on a suit, does that mean, I have tried to become white?
And with the infusion of Hollywood and Western culture, Asian woman have craved looking more western. The perception of beauty was a western one. Many Asian put on makeup for the whiteface. The double eyelids, more prominent nose, jawline and chin, were taught by the makeup companies, so that Asians can seem more international.
If anything, the homage is that the idea of beauty has changed to match geopolitical and economic trends. Sense of beauty always sway to the strong. Usually because the economically viable tend to have more money to spend, but also an evolutionary instinct to blind from a survival and prospering prospective.
Is it offensive? and I am no judge of beauty, but I think really depends on if the makeup was theatrical, caricature, camouflage or just a fusion of what looks good?
That is completely different from casting a white person as Ganghis Kanh or Confucius.
But then, the majority of crosses on Earth have a white Jesus, which is racially historically false. but plenty of Asians are Christians anyways.
I totally agree with you, it’s not an homage. Lagerfeld just did this movie to be liked by his Western clients…
I was speaking about it there http://www.vuesdechine.com/2009/12/07/paris-shanghai-une-drole-de-fantaisie-by-chanel/