About Face by Dorinne Kondo

In July we'll read chapters 3 & 4 from "About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theater" by anthropologist and USC professor Dorinne Kondo.

These chapters examine how avant-garde Japanese designers unsettled Western fashion's assumptions about the female body while also analyzing how far avant-garde can really go in disrupting gender and race.

Chapter 3: "Orientalizing: Fashioning 'Japan'"

Chapter 4: "The Limits of the Avant-Garde? Gender and Race on the Runway"

PDF of full text here.