Fashion in Altermodern China, Feng Jie

Fashion in Altermodern China offers a richly textured reconsideration of the contemporary Chinese fashion landscape, illuminating how rapid urbanisation, digitalisation, and consumer plurality have forged a style climate that resists Western-centric models of modernity. Feng Jie adopts the term altermodern to describe the flux of aesthetics in China—tracing how fashion feels not postmodern or hybrid, but rhythmically neutral in ways rooted in Asian philosophical traditions. Through readings of Barthes and Jullien, the book argues that women’s sartorial choices are shaped by internal logics, emergent local trends, and novel global connections—creating an experience of style that escapes simple binaries.

Grounded in critical case studies ranging from urban streetwear to sartorial revival of the qipao, the text explores themes such as uniformity, gender, brand-neutrality, and fashion degree zero. It traces fashion’s role not only as a visual statement but also as cultural negotiation: a quiet defiance of globalised sameness and a reassertion of context, community, and identity. With a blend of theory, cultural critique, and visual insight—even amidst just five black-and-white illustrations—this is a timely, provocative look at how clothing shapes—and is shaped by—an altermodern China.

About the Author
Professor Feng Jie is a leading authority on Chinese dress and fashion systems, based at Hainan University. Her work combines cultural theory with deep contextual understanding of China’s social and aesthetic currents. In this volume she demonstrates a remarkable scholarly agility: weaving Western semiotic and philosophical frameworks into a distinctly Chinese narrative of dress, uncovering how fashion in China is less hybrid and more quietly radical—what she terms altermodern.

Publication date: 2023
Publisher:  Bloomsbury
Pages: 176
ISBN:  9781350200074