One Fashion, Two Nations. Italian_Chinese Collaborations

The chapter interrogates “Italian fashion” as simultaneously a discourse, a product, and a national brand. She examines the evolution of the relations between Italians and Chinese in fashion production through three forms of collaboration: sourcing, in which Italians procured both raw materials and labor in China; fashion production, in both its material (manufacturing) and immaterial aspects; and branding, the distribution of fashion products through the signifier of the brand. The essay elaborates on the changing tensions in their relations as Italians and Chinese negotiate the transformations in both China’s economy and Italy’s global fashion industry.