Wearing modern democracy in Taiwan: Women’s hegemonic ideal body and ready-to-wear clothes

Abstract

Abstract Gilles Lipovestsky claims that the mass production of ready-to-wear clothing was initially expected to create a democratic dynamic of fashion. These democratic aspirations were anticipated by scholars foreseeing a universality of access due to the availability of ready-to-wear clothing styles. However, we now acknowledge that this belief that fashion can be equally accessible to all is outdated. When fashion began to appear approachable for all, various styles, pluralistic aesthetics and new expressions of individuality came immediately into existence, brought about as if by the threat of such a democratic dynamic. Paradoxically, however, there has emerged an overarching aesthetic ideal of slimness and youth that encompasses the entire array of bodily performances today’s fashion world allows, pushing aside anyone whose physical shape does not match this ideal. Fashion’s quest for democratic utopia seems to have led consumers directly into a new predicament. However, my fieldwork on Taiwanese female fashion producers and consumers indicates that Taiwanese female consumers, rather than being enslaved to the hegemony of ideals governing this fashion system, negotiate within the system by dressing to articulate their own preferences of fashion and the ideal body.