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In an interview<\/a> published in the November 2011 issue of PRESTIGE <\/em>magazine (Hong Kong), Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana were in China, and revealed that they had visited China for the first time in 2010<\/strong>. A few short months later, the Dolce & Gabbana\u00a0FW 2012\/13 menswear runway show on 14 January 2012 showed the striking effects of that trip’s influence. Not in the clothes, which were molto Italiano<\/em>, baroque and a\u00a0touch costume-y, with Pavarotti-inspired curled hair (matching Pavarotti on the soundtrack)\u00a0and lots of brocade and velvet, <\/strong><\/em>but rather with the models themselves. Out of 74 outfits shown,\u00a09 were\u00a0worn by Chinese-looking models<\/strong>. Meanwhile, there was\u00a0just\u00a0a single\u00a0black model in the show, given the next-to-last outfit in the presentation. (After the jump:\u00a0See pictures from the show)<\/em><\/p>\n At\u00a0other\u00a0luxury menswear\u00a0designer runway presentations the trend continued….<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0Anyone who has watched the runways for more than a couple of seasons will know that model-selection is largely\u00a0fad-driven, and somewhat cyclical (as with most of fashion, these days) – remember the all-Asian model lineup at\u00a0Riccardo Tisci’s\u00a0haute couture<\/em> presentation for Givenchy last season<\/a>? Or the\u00a0somewhat bizarre\u00a0applause given the group of black\u00a0girls that closed the Lanvin\u00a0womenswear show last Fall\/Winter (an incident that\u00a0drew ire from Robin Givhan<\/a>\u00a0at New York Magazine<\/em>)? But menswear is usually less capricious<\/strong> about these things. For the last decade or so, you could relaibly expect to spot Philip Huang, and maybe Simon Tham or some other half-Asian model on just about every runway, along with 2-3 other “ethnic” models.\u00a0The number of Asian male models would be equal to, or less than the number of black male models. Some, if not many,\u00a0runways would have no visible Asian presence at all.<\/p>\n Lately, however, it has become more common to see the Asian male models\u00a0outnumber the black ones in a show<\/strong>, which is an interesting reversal from the last few years.<\/p>\n Dolce & Gabbana, FW2012:<\/em> It’s usually felt to me that menswear runways are a little about tokenism, a little about global ideals of male beauty, and a little about what sells and where it’s selling to<\/strong>. When\u00a0Ermenegildo Zegna commemorated their 20th\u00a0China anniversary <\/a>last year, they put on a do-over of their FW2011\/12 menswear show, but with grander staging, and many more\u00a0Asian models than the original show. But if the rise of the Asian\u00a0luxury fashion consumer\u00a0were the main driver, then there should have been many more Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese male models on the runways when those markets established themselves as the #1 markets for luxury goods in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. So it’s probably not just about pandering to customers. (Although sometimes it is definitely<\/em> about pandering to Asian customers<\/strong>, like the unlovingly photographed Godfrey Gao fronting last year’s Louis Vuitton ad campaign, or the various hideous dragon-emblazoned “special edition” bags and t-shirts\u00a0released by the likes of Gucci, Prada, Coach\u00a0and others.)<\/p>\n So maybe it goes deeper than commercial considerations, and more fundamentally to whether\u00a0Asian male beauty\u00a0is considered comparably desireable, universalized and acceptable<\/strong> in “core” markets in Europe and\u00a0the US, and just as importantly in Asian markets as well. After all, it wasn’t very long ago that fashion magazines in Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and elsewhere in Asia had barely any Asian models (or at least not as many as might be expected). Again, recall the controversy when Vogue India<\/em>\u00a0 launched in 2007 with blonde, blue-eyed Australian Gemma Ward front and centre on the inaugural cover<\/a> (even though she shared the main cover with two Bollywood actresses and the inside expanded cover with another 3 Indian women).<\/p>\n Furthermore, we are already in a\u00a0world\u00a0where the\u00a0cliches and archetypes\u00a0of Asian female beauty<\/strong> (the doe eyes, the porcelain or olive or tan skin, the dark hair) have already long been exoticised, established and accepted<\/strong>. And then\u00a0naturally these\u00a0cliches and archetypes\u00a0have been\u00a0rejected, subverted, and sublimated<\/strong> to become more universal and trope-less.\u00a0For evidence, see i-D Magazine<\/em>‘s China issue this month, with 12 different Chinese cover models – I was half expecting them to all look sort of similar, with porcelain skin and doe-eyes, but was pleasantly surprised to see what I thought was a great variety of looks. (To be fair, at least one blogger <\/a>has complained bitterly that the covers are “absolutely appalling, one after another succeeded in portraying Chinese women as backwards, tribal, cavewoman, prehistoric, rural, squinty eye aliens”).\u00a0 Look and judge for yourself here<\/a>.<\/p>\n In contrast, what exactly are the\u00a0cliches and\u00a0archetypes\u00a0of Asian male beauty?<\/strong> Ask me a few years ago and I’m not sure I could have told you. In some ways we seem to have skipped that step entirely, which feels enlightened and preferable. I thought one of the important achievements of the Dolce & Gabbana show was the variety of the Asian models, in terms of build and overall look. This was also something that could be seen in the Dolce & Gabbana\u00a0PRESTIGE <\/em>magazine cover and spread. If this is a sign that the\u00a0average fashion-conscious person is\u00a0moving successfully towards a diversified view of Asian male beauty<\/strong>, that’s something to celebrate.<\/p>\n
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