Thuy Linh Tu, "The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion"

Summary: [Cross-posted from New Books in Asian American Studies] Thuy Linh Tu's The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion (Duke University Press, 2010) considers the recent rise of Asian Americans working in New York's fashion industry, and explores how Asian-inspired fashions speak to American anxieties concerning the growing economic and cultural power of Asian nation-states. Rather than see Asian American designers as either complicit or subversive to the growing trends of Asian chic, The Beautiful Generation investigates how these designers continue to change American perspectives of fashion by making relationships between the product and the manufacturing process more intimate.