BY GIULIA LIU

Everyone has probably seen Adidas’ Tang Suit at least once: a jacket that combines the classic design of an Adidas tracksuit with elements inspired by traditional Chinese clothing, particularly the tángzhuāng. The jacket was officially presented during Shanghai Fashion Week towards the end of 2025 as a piece dedicated to Chinese Lunar New Year, and from there it began to gain popularity, mostly through social media.

The jacket was noticed, shared and worn by influencers and content creators. Within just a few months of the Adidas Tang Suit’s launch, enthusiastic reactions and growing attention towards the jacket led it to become a genuine fashion phenomenon and an object of desire. Its aesthetic was perceived as new, interesting, different, even “exotic”.

Emerging brands and, inevitably, fast fashion, have picked up on its distinctive features. 

Today, walking through stores, we can find standing collars (lìlǐng), diagonal closures (dàjīn), and knotted buttons (pánkòu) reinterpreted in tops, shirts, cardigans, blazers and contemporary dresses. These pieces are presented to consumers under labels such as “Asian style”, “Oriental style”, or simply “blouse”. Moreover, elements associated with Chinese clothing are sometimes attributed to entirely different cultures. A particularly paradoxical example is that of qípáo-inspired pieces presented as Japanese “Geisha style”: two distinct traditions reduced to the same vague and undifferentiated image of the “Orient”.

But what do we mean by “the Orient”? The term is historically Eurocentric, grouping vastly different realities under a single category constructed from a Western perspective. 

Trends, by their very nature, are temporary. And when this one is over, what will remain?

It is a question we rarely ask ourselves when something becomes fashionable. We are accustomed to thinking of trends as a harmless and temporary phenomenon that suddenly appear, only to be replaced just as quickly. A garment such as the qípáo exists independently of contemporary Western fashion. It has a history and cultural significance; it was already there long before it became a trend. If, once this trend has passed, it is simply remembered as “that Asian style that was fashionable in 2026”, then it means that the culture will have been consumed without being understood, and perhaps without being remembered.

The solution is not to ask fashion to stop looking to other cultures, because drawing inspiration from them is not, in itself, a problem. Fashion and art have always been shaped by cultural exchanges, influences and reinterpretations. Expecting every designer to work exclusively within the boundaries of their own culture would be contrary to the very nature of creativity.

Wearing a qípáo does not automatically make someone a cultural appropriator, just as an artist can draw inspiration from a tradition that does not belong to their own culture. The question, rather, is how that inspiration is approached.

The problem arises when, in the attempt to turn a cultural element into a trend, its history, meaning and even its name are erased. When a tradition is presented as a generic aesthetic and, above all, when culture is used as a resource to sell a product.

Perhaps the simplest solution is also the most obvious one: when we take something from another culture, we should not erase where it came from.