100 Years of Beauty Heads To Taiwan for Its Latest Episode

For its thirtieth episode, Cut Video’s 100 Years of Beauty series has taken a look at a century of beauty trends from Taiwan.

Even though the world may be experiencing some turmoil, it’s tough not to be drawn back to learning more about international fashion history by way of a one-minute video. (Let’s face it: we were probably going to spend that minute obsessively refreshing our Twitter feeds instead.) So, with its thirtieth episode, the 100 Years of Beauty series has chosen to take on the trends of Taiwan.

Check it out below:

It seems like it may be prudent to also link to 100 Years of Beauty‘s segment on China, since you’ll be able to see some similar trends in the first several decades.

Then, of course, things start changing. The political history of Taiwan is rather long and complicated, though it did make the news rather recently since the then president-elect took a phone call with the president of Taiwan, which generally isn’t done. (It hasn’t been done since 1979, actually.) To sum up, Taiwan has spent time as a Japanese territory, then part of China, now claims to be its own state, and has the Encyclopedia Britannica list it as a self-governing island. (For more reading, you may want to check out the Council on Foreign Relations’ breakdown.)

We say all this because the looks between the two videos are quite similar up until the 1950s or so. Then, though, you can see a pretty clear split for the next few decades. Technically speaking, Taiwan has governed itself since 1949, so that makes sense.

Then, though, from the ’60s and beyond, you can clearly see some Western and specifically American influences, down to the big curls of the ’80s. As of this writing, it appears that Cut Video hasn’t published a list of its research for the looks. However, a good place to start may be this University of York thesis by Ming-Chun Hong on Taiwanese fashion history.

Next: The 10 Best Dressed at the Grammys 2017

Where will 100 Years of Beauty go next?