Why Chinese films are integral to ASVOFF festival, a global celebration of fashion talent, and the power of 2023 winner about New York garment strike
- For 15 years US fashion blogger Diane Pernet has run the A Shaded View On Fashion Film festival, ASVOFF for short, which includes a Chinese film category
- ASVOFF’s 2023 Chinese fashion film winner pays homage to the Asian immigrant women working in the garment-making industry in the West
She’s appeared in The Simpsons, Emily in Paris and Zoolander 2, but diminutive American fashion blogger Diane Pernet – known for dressing head to toe in black and sporting cat eye sunglasses and a glamorous beehive – is most comfortable highlighting the film works of others.
For 15 years she has been director of A Shaded View On Fashion Film (ASVOFF), a multi-day annual festival she founded that celebrates global fashion talent on film. The most recent edition took place from November 9-12 at Dover Street Market Paris.
Chinese films have always been integral to the festival, Pernet says, and reflect many of her long-standing collaborations with key figures in the country’s arts scene: she showed photographer Wing Shya’s first fashion film at her inaugural fashion film festival, You Wear It Well, in 2006, and has a long-standing professional relationship with Tim Yip, an artist, director and costume designer who she first met in China in 2016. (Yip’s film Kitchen won the prize for best art direction at the 2015 edition of ASVOFF.)
In 2016, the festival held a satellite event in Shanghai, where it screened at prestigious venues such as the West Bund Art Space, Shanghai Himalayas Museum and Power Station of Art.
This year, ASVOFF’s Chinese fashion film category was judged by Tasha Liu, founder of Labelhood, a platform for emerging fashion designers in China, and Lucia Liu, a stylist and creative director.
