Maputo, Mozambique, 2024. Photographer: Dilayla Romeo.
Tommy Tse
Tommy Tse is Associate Professor in the Global Cross-Media Cultures program at the University of Amsterdam.
His research focuses on East Asia’s media and cultural industries, creative labor, consumer culture, and the sociology of fashion.
China Africa Fashion Power
Tommy Tse is currently the Principal Investigator of China Africa Fashion Power (CAFP), a 5-year ethnographic study funded by the European Research Council Consolidator Grant (2022).
CAFP investigates how, in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s global power is manifested, negotiated, and resisted in people’s daily life in a South-South setting using fashion as an exemplary case.
Nairobi, Kenya, 2024. Photographer: Kibe Nduni, CAFP.
Wardrobe Studies
Tommy Tse’s research on wardrobe studies examines how personal clothing archives reveal complex relationships between value, identity, and sustainability.
His recent article, published in the European Journal of Cultural Studies, on “inactive” wardrobe items theorises fashion competence to explain why certain garments remain unworn yet are never discarded.
Hong Kong, 2021. Photographer: Paul Cox
Question of Authenticity
Tommy Tse’s latest project investigates China’s counterfeit fashion ecosystem, revealing a hidden hierarchy of replicas that challenges Western ideas of originality and value. Through his fieldwork, he explores how “gāofǎng” fashion—high-quality replicas—redefines authenticity in global fashion culture.
Shanghai, China, 2025. Photographer: Matthew Yu
