Migrating across cultures: Generation Z’s path to self-discovery through fashion

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Jo’s and Francis’ stories are important in analysing how gender expectations or norms change between countries, and how the differences in fashion allow individuals to explore their sexuality or identity. A person who migrates from a conservative country to a less conservative country may experience culture shock, and someone who migrates from a liberal country to a conservative country may feel judged for the different ways they dress.

 

In the third case study, we examine Tilda, who spent his adolescence in Japan, which made him ‘extremely conscious’ of his clothing choices when he returned to the Philippines. We often see the freedom of Japanese people in dressing up on social media through their Lolita fashion, streetwear and costumes, and Tilda took style cues from Japanese people and Japanese publications like Popeye and Cluel Homme. 

 

Tilda mentioned a famous Japanese saying: ‘the nail that sticks out will be hammered’, and explained that ‘as a foreigner living there, I am already a nail sticking out, so in an effort to at least blend in, dressing the part helped’. Aligning his fashion sense to the Japanese context, when Tilda returned to the Philippines in 2017, he felt overdressed in outfits that would have been normal back in Tokyo.

 

Francis reported a similar reaction when he returned from the US to the Philippines. While in the US, Francis admits to following Western fashion trends like swagger, snapback, and hypebeast clothing because he thought it was cool. But what surprised him when he returned to his home country was that, while Filipinos follow the same trends, those outfits are typically criticised by the Filipino elites for not fitting in with Western streetwear standards, even though this had been Francis’ own experience in the US.

 

These reflections ultimately tell the story of trying to fit in another culture, which is common to migrant youth. According to Erving Goffman’s concept of impression management, people tend to manage their image and control others’ impressions towards them – migrant youth like Tilda, Francis, and Jo strive to do this through fashion, and encounter challenges when adapting to different cultures. Fashion is an explicit communication of the self and the culture they represent. Migrant youth may play the part and conform to the standard clothing of the majority in order not to feel excluded. Impression management, while it might censor migrants’ self-expression, can also be a way to protect and strengthen cultural traditions. Conversely, a country’s social and cultural norms may limit the discovery of one’s personal style. 

 

These case studies demonstrate that migration plays a crucial role in self-discovery through fashion because individuals may sustain, change, or incorporate various cultures in developing their own style. In Jo’s case, she is still in the process of discovering her style outside the realm of her conservative relatives and countries. For Francis, what sets him apart from his family is his openness to mix and match his fashion by intersecting US and Filipino fashion. Finally, Tilda observes how living in two different cultures cultivated his current fashion sense because, as he puts it, ‘I feel like I have a unique sense that mashes both cultures into one’. Whatever the case may be, fashion, like migration, is a shared process that is constantly evolving, with migrant youth around the world using fashion to contribute to the spread of their country’s culture.

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