On Thursday night, I found myself outside the restaurant Chinese Tuxedo as a parade of glammed-up Asian and Asian-American actors, influencers, and designers walked into what was arguably the hottest party of New York Fashion Week. To my left, the doe-eyed Bridgerton star Yerin Ha was sharing her self-care rituals (gua sha and journaling) for a TikTok. To my right, a crew of bodyguards was shooing away paparazzi from Heated Rivalry hunk Hudson Williams. The vibe was very Asian creative mecca — a sensation embodied by the entire week, in ways that were both thrilling and surreal.
Originally, I had planned to come to New York to cover the week from a fashion industry perspective, with a general awareness that the coinciding Lunar New Year would also put the city’s Asian creative community in the spotlight. Since the ‘80s, there has always been a strong showing of Asian-American designers at NYFW; this season’s CFDA show calendar included brands such as Public School, Anna Sui, Prabal Gurung, Sandy Liang, Bac Mai, Private Policy, Bibhu Mohapatra, Kim Shui, and Veejay Floresca.
Aside from the slate of shows, two things felt different this year. First, there was a newly dominant slate of splashy Lunar New Year festivities. That part wasn’t entirely a surprise: “LNY” is celebrated by several Asian diasporas and often overlaps with fashion week in February, making for an organic opportunity for cross-celebratory events. But now there’s a new, or at least larger-than-ever, elephant in the room: the growing Asian and Asian-American gravitational pull that has moved the fashion (and beauty) industry eastward. Cue more brands aligning their budgets and collaborations with this new financial incentive, i.e. why we see more designers each February slap a zodiac animal on a red purse and call it a “LNY collection.”
Then, of course, there’s the internet’s current obsession with “being Chinese” as a lifestyle trend. For the purposes of this story, I (much like these memes) don’t mean “Chinese” in the literal ethnic sense, but in reference to the commodified parts of Chinese and East Asian culture that are going viral online as a reaction to the decline of Western soft power. Depending on who you ask (and who’s benefitting from it), this “trend” has become both a form of cultural currency and also new-wave Orientalism that affects the broader Asian community, even as it purports to elevate them.
And so, finding myself at the center of trend-setting and a particular concentration of Asian soft power — that is, New York Fashion Week — I plunged ahead into the festivities, curious if it was actually feeling like a particularly “Chinese time” for the community.
First stop: PAPER’s LNY Celebration on Wednesday night. I rolled up an hour after the start time at the entrance of the W New York Union Square. To my bewilderment, there was a crowd forming outside. The party was already at capacity; we were ushered out of the lobby and into the 27-degree cold, where I spotted popular creators Ashley Rous (@best.dressed) and Shuang Bright (@xiaolongbby). Once we finally made it inside, music thumped as actor Kevin Woo gave a welcome speech. I passed by a table of PAPER-branded red envelopes; a server offered me a strawberry Yan Yan on a silver tray. Snacks of the 99 Ranch assortment were strewn on every surface. It was a high-energy, stylish crowd with lots of Asians wearing contemporary riffs on traditional wear. I clocked at least three SAU LEE cheongsam minidresses, which evidently emerged as the de facto uniform for the modern LNY fete. (They’re easy to style with a STAUD Tommy bag and Reformation kitten heels, so hey, I get it!) Still, it was awesome to see little nods to cultural dress that night, like jade jewelry and ao dai.
I found a quiet corner to chat with Henry Wu, the editor in chief of Timid magazine, about the evolution of the Asian-American presence at fashion week. “What was once a handful of Asian designers navigating a predominantly white industry has evolved into a vibrant, multi-generational presence,” he said. Among the Asian designers showing on the calendar, he cited Robert Wun as one of the most impressive.
That was my cue to dive into the crowd and find Wun, who was one of the hosts. Dressed in all black, Wun told me that this was the first party he’d ever helped organize for fashion week, and his motivation was simple: “It’s Lunar New Year!” When I asked him whether it’s a positive thing that Asians are getting more visibility in fashion, he talked about the importance of not catering to the Western gaze. “I’m glad to see more people are willing to understand our culture, and now they want to share in it,” Wun said. “We are a very welcoming culture, but I don’t think we need to make it easy to understand for the West, in order for them to accept us.” I think Wun is imparting some wisdom here: While the West may be enamored with elements of “Chinese” or “Asian” culture that are legible to them (like TCM and tang jackets), Asian designers should continue to center their own creative vision — whatever that looks like. The people who get it, get it; never mind the ones who don’t.
The party’s best-dressed fashion girlies were also feeling mixed about the “China-maxxing” of it all. “I think Asians do it best,” Mean Girls actress Avantika Vandanapu said between bites of a scallion pancake. She was wearing a long silk floral dress and shimmery gold eyeshadow. “We have the best fashion all throughout the continent, and so it’s incredible to be in a room and see all of it at once.” Content creator Carolyn Chang was turning heads in a slinky white cutout dress by Brooklyn-based designer Grace Gui. Chang said the dress made her feel unironically like a sexy Disney princess. Meanwhile, Bright, the content creator I’d met in line, dismissed the memes as “a fad,” not a reflection of political reality. “I have Chinese friends here on a visa that are not sure if they can come back into this country,” she said.
The next night, at the Lunar New Year x NYFW party — the first of its kind hosted by Gold House — at Chinese Tuxedo deep in the heart of Manhattan’s Chinatown, I caught up with more of the Asian fashion crowd, many of whom could only spare a sliver of downtime before they had to return to their NYFW obligations (Kim Shui: “I’m going back to work in like, an hour after this party”). On the topic of major influences, the designer Bac Mai cited Peter Do as a Vietnamese designer who helped pave the way for him. Overall, though, there was one particular name that came up the most — Prabal Gurung. It became quickly apparent that the designer and the vice chair of the CFDA is widely considered to be a pillar of the Asian-American fashion crew in New York. Gold House CEO Bing Chen sang Gurung’s praises for being the “glue” of the community. I was hoping to talk to Gurung myself, but I missed him in the flurry of red carpet arrivals. Eventually, I caught a glimpse of Gurung dressed in a black blazer, plunge-neck tank, and tinted sunglasses, tossing his head back with laughter as he slipped into the night’s red-lanterned glow.
The more I spoke to people over the week, the more protean and nuanced the entire concept of an “Asian community” in the arts felt — which made it all the more un-memeable and as a result, more interesting. Earlier that Thursday, Dao-yi Chow, co-founder of Public School alongside Maxwell Osborne, told me about how he’d worked with Gurung and Phillip Lim during COVID to spread awareness around the rise in Asian hate. The way Chow — whose brand is also one of the big stories to come out of NYFW, returning after a seven-year hiatus — sees it, “All the Asian-American designers fuck with each other.” But even such a close-knit group resists becoming a monolith. “I think we all recognize what we’re doing to push the Asian-American face forward,” Chow said, “but I wouldn’t call it a community per se, and that’s not a bad thing. Joseph [Altuzarra], Jason [Wu], Phillip [Lim] — whenever I see those guys, it’s all love. But we don’t hang out. We’re not drinking milkshakes together.”
I was surprised that the designer Anna Sui’s name didn’t come up more often, given her 45-year-old label and position as one the most enduring Asian-American designers. But to Chow’s point, I realized that this was just proof of how many circles and eddies exist within the community, and how everyone didn’t always have to do everything together in order to have an impact.
I attended Sui’s show on Saturday afternoon, held in the hallowed halls of the National Arts Club in Gramercy Park. PR maven Gia Kuan greeted guests dressed in a brown fur coat and perfect microbangs. Unlike many of the festivities from earlier in the week, there were no overt “Asian” or “Chinese” motifs in the room. Instead of Yan Yan and red paper lanterns, the space was home to a collection of Impressionist paintings and marble statues.
However, Sui’s collection of “New Romantic” clothing was inherently subversive, bucking the expectation that there would ever be a singular or correct way to represent oneself and one’s art. The leopard-print coats Sui sent down the runway to The Dare’s “Perfume” were themselves an undeniable celebration of her legacy as a Chinese-American designer who’s spent close to half a century resisting all the usual conventions. The fashion industry will be the first to tell you that trends are fleeting —“China-maxxing” included — but when the lights turn on and the LNY party is over, the real artists and champions will always endure.