We’re witnessing a remarkable shift in China’s relationship to global fashion: once “the world’s factory,” in Asian American fashion scholar Thuy Linh N. Tu’s words, China is now poised to be the world’s mall. While China remains a poor country with an average annual per capita consumption of $2,500 (in contrast, the U.S. per capita average is $30,000), China’s rising number of millionaires and the Internet-enabled diffusion of Western fashion consumer culture are quickly transforming the communist nation into what The New York Times has called “The Shoppers’ Republic of China.” Today, young Chinese—like Lu Jing, a 22-year-old Beijing resident who told the China Dailythat she earns $943 a month and saved up for a $3,200 Louis Vuitton handbag by surviving on instant noodles and taking public transportation—make up an new consumer class. Fashionistas between 20 and 30 years old are buying luxury fashion and micro-blogging about it on Sina Weibo (China’s version of Twitter) where fashion tips are one of the most popular trending topics.
China may be saving the Western fashion industry but not everyone is especially gracious. Unfavorable portrayals of the Chinese luxury consumer as having more money than taste are increasingly commonplace in fashion media. In
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