Navigating Chinaverse Futurism: Post-human aesthetics and cultural landscape in digital fashion showcases

Abstract

This article explores how contemporary Chinese designers engage with post-human aesthetics in order to introduce Chinaverse Futurism as a conceptual and aesthetic lens through which new modes of futurism may be understood in the digital age. Building on debates around futurism, post-humanism and digital fashion, the study argues that Chinese practices have been structurally under-theorized despite their centrality to pandemic-era innovation. Using design-centred longitudinal fieldwork, visual netnography and discourse analysis, the article analyses WINDOWSEN, ANNAKIKI and Victor Wong across physical runways, CGI shows, AI projects and digital fashion films. It shows how WINDOWSEN constructs a multi-species, queer post-human universe; how ANNAKIKI develops a techno-ecological and AI-critical model of the cyborg body; and how Victor Wong re-codes Chinese cultural landscapes through non-human digital protagonists. Together, these practices demonstrate that post-human aesthetics in fashion are no longer a primarily Euro-American project, but are being actively reauthored through Chinese digital infrastructures, cultural imaginaries and experimental modes of showcasing.