American Apparel Playing the Race Hat

Tiffany Wang | Aug 6, 2011 6:00 pm | 10 comments | 4249 reads

You know those rice paddy hats you see around town? Yeah, the ones usually atop the heads of wide-eyed tourists trying to “experience” Chinese culture. (In rural areas outside of Beijing, they’re worn by poor laborers for more functional purposes, i.e. shielding their faces from the sun.) Well, now American Apparel has dubbed them a “stylish accessory” and is selling them for USD 15 a pop.

It’s funny. Just this month, we featured Eastern-influenced fashion as our Get the Look trend (see p44 of our magazine, now viewable online, here). We get that “all-things-Asia” is the craze right now – we have the booming market and the fastest-developing fashion scene. Our models are getting exclusive coverage in major beauty magazines, as well as especial attention from powerful figures in the industry (see previous post on Anna Wintour).

Perhaps American Apparel is just trying to get in on the action. But is the brand – already rife with scandal, thanks to founder Dov Charney’s unscrupulous sexual antics – taking it too far? For one thing, this is not exactly an “inspired” design – it looks just like what you’d find in the likes of Yashow, only more expensive. Secondly, it’s called “Conical Asian Hat." As New York’s fashion blog The Cut points out, “They don't call the 'Nylon Spandex Stretch Lace Bra Bodysuit' the 'Is It or Isn't It Lingerie? Playsuit' or the 'Washed Long Sleeve Button Up' the 'White Man's Long Sleeve Button Up.'" A fair point.

No word yet on whether the Conical Asian Hat will be available in Beijing stores, though we’re guessing that won’t happen. Forbes made the point that while these hats "are exotic to Americans and Europeans,” they remain “decidedly unglamorous in their home countries.”

But we’re most amused by Huffington Post’s take on the whole debacle: “The person who buys this hat is a victim. A victim of fashion, of no SPF being high enough to protect their melanin-challenged skin, of Dov Charney and his twisted sense of everything, and, most likely, a victim of fetal alcohol syndrome and its attendant lifelong impairment of judgment.”

What do you think? Is American Apparel’s Conical Asian Hat racist? Share your views here.

Photo: Americanapparel.net

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Esmash's picture Esmash Submitted by Guest on Mon, 08/08/2011 - 10:03

I'm not a fan of the morphing of the word "racist" to mean offensive or distasteful. Racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another or that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics.

Don't see how a faux hipster company in LA selling these hats in any way implies that they are superior to Chinese or SE-Asians or anyone else who wears these hats. It might be in poor taste, but not racist.

Hipsters might claim to be superior to you because they "totally listened to that band before they got popular," but not because they think they're better than SE-Asians.

miclac1's picture miclac1 Submitted by Guest on Sun, 08/07/2011 - 16:04

By the way, why shouldn't they call it an "Asian Hat"? Asia is the region where this hat happens to come from. It is not like calling it a White hat, or black hat, etc. If the hat originated in Africa then they could call it an "African hat". They don't mean it in a racial way, but a regional one.

I would expect that in some places they might sell a European, or South American, etc. item. Is it only a problem when it refers to so called, "people of color"?

serrot's picture serrot Submitted by Guest on Sun, 08/07/2011 - 11:55

Count_zero wrote:
I don't understand what "playing the race hat" means.

> > > “They don't call the 'Nylon Spandex Stretch Lace Bra Bodysuit' the 'Is It or Isn't It Lingerie? Playsuit' or the 'Washed Long Sleeve Button Up' the 'White Man's Long Sleeve Button Up.'" A fair point.

Is it a fair point? I don't understand it at all.

Yeah, I'm also kind of missing the point of this piece. If one were to exactly describe this item it would be conical, worn on the head, and found in Asia.

What seems to go over the writer's head is not that using the words "Asian hat" is racist just because GUYS, IT HAZ THE WORD ASIANINIT, but that the fashion world consistently appropriates what it sees as "native" or exotic cultural items into cheapened, prejudiced products that can only be made "hip" and fashionable by white and/or privileged consumers because of their perceived irony. Conical hats have little function in Williamsburg or wherever AA customers will be able to purchase them, but they, and other misappropriated fashion trends (this shit ) seem to try to extract some sort of romanticized essence of "OTHER" cultures without really thinking too hard about what it means when a 20 something white kid wears it (Orientalism, colonial gaze or whatever you want to call it) -- all of these things are cool and hip because the wearer doesn't actually live in the reality from which it comes. It's a mask the wearer can take on or off -- beautiful because it's not real.

I hate to make this sound like a textbook but I get really incensed about this sort of thing so short version: AA sucks, but for years, the fashion industry has benefited from exporting cheapened culture for white folks to take on and off like nail polish. Don't hate AA, hate the game.

miclac1's picture miclac1 Submitted by Guest on Sun, 08/07/2011 - 11:46

How is that in any way racist? Give me a break. Overly sensitive are we Ms Wang?

Talk about ridiculous. So, if some Chinese company here sold something from some "white" culture in Europe would it be racist? If a Chinese company tried to sell people here lederhosen would it be racist or just a dumb idea? It would look just as stupid as someone in the west wearing that hat but it surely wouldn't be racist.

But I could be wrong....I am just an evil whitey....

shuwei's picture shuwei Submitted by Guest on Sun, 08/07/2011 - 10:45

American Apparel is basically a bankrupt (literally) company anyways, so we won't have to worry about them for too much longer.

http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2011/06/dov_charney_misses_shareholder.html

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/american-apparel-warns-of-bankruptcy/

The real question is, will there be any good replacement for them at Nali Patio with the insanely high rents there?

jameswa's picture jameswa Submitted by Guest on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 21:15

It is a conical asian hat. Wearing it is not racist. This entire article and all of the others you quote are more pointless than the 'fashion' than they deride. People who spend $15 on the hat may be victims of poor taste but you and the Huffington Post are the victim of American Apparel's extremely successful marketing due to the shocked and outraged coverage you give to a brand that prides itself on being edgy and controversial. Now Tiffany Wang, why don't you go off and check the definition of racist...

Count_zero's picture Count_zero Submitted by Guest on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 20:30

I don't understand what "playing the race hat" means.

> > > “They don't call the 'Nylon Spandex Stretch Lace Bra Bodysuit' the 'Is It or Isn't It Lingerie? Playsuit' or the 'Washed Long Sleeve Button Up' the 'White Man's Long Sleeve Button Up.'" A fair point.

Is it a fair point? I don't understand it at all.

admin's picture admin Submitted by Guest on Sat, 08/06/2011 - 18:46

i've never seen farmers in china wearing these hats. I thought they were from Vietnam or something. Do Chinese farmers really wear them?

Books by current and former Beijinger staffers

http://astore.amazon.com/truerunmedia-20

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