The Development Of China Fashion Design From1990-2010

Fashion is not only a pop cultural phenomenon or personal aesthetic products, buta social product that determined by the field’s power relationships. Fashion design isthe social practice oriented to such product. Using Bourdieu’s field theory andanalytical framework, this paper verifies and develops Bourdieu’s analysis on artisticproduction system under the institution background of fashion design in China.The time span of this study is from China’s reform and opening up to the presentday, and the main cases occurred in the1990s and in the first decade of21stcentury.By analyzing these fashion productions from the aspects of system, policy, cultural,economic and other structural factors, this paper tries to reveal the practical logic offashion design in field. Fashion design is examined in the context of contemporarycultural production, and the fuzzy boundaries within art, design and culture areemphasized. This study is not a static structural analysis. The practical subject(fashion designer) is put in the field structure. By examining the practice of thesubject, their action of overstepping the existing specific structure is found, as well asstretching, breaking and expanding the system boundary, and formulating a methodof fashion production with Chinese characteristics. And the power relationships andproduction logic of the fashion field are indicated. On this basis, the paper formed ananalysis structure corresponding to the fashion production field under the condition ofinnovative economy, which develops on the basis of Bourdieu’s analytical frameworkof binary oppositions, produces a gray area of sub-field between limited productionand mass production, and expands the sub-field of production. Analyzing thedifferent power relationships and their changes of economic capital, social capital,cultural capital and symbolic capital, the paper reveals the construction methods andpower principles of fashion design as a fashion production in field, and introspectsthe current Chinese fashion design and education.This study uses qualitative sociological research methods, and the researcherhimself works as the research tool. The interaction between the researcher and theobject of the research as well as specific cases and field surveys are the mainresources of this paper.