Can West Wear East?

Why it works

Faye Dunaway, in an Issey Miyake satin robe and headdress, spreads her arms around two small Japanese girls dressed in red, a band of red pigment masking their eyes; the only words are a question, "Can West Wear East?". The 1979 poster was made for Parco, a youth-oriented Japanese chain of specialty stores, by Eiko Ishioka, who had forced her way into a male-dominated profession at Shiseido and became Parco's chief art director in 1971. Her Parco work rarely showed anything the stores sold. It sold a way of life instead, through sensual, self-possessed women and images that questioned gender, race and national borders. It is studied as a landmark of lifestyle advertising, the idea that a retailer can sell a point of view rather than merchandise, and the ADC Hall of Fame credits Ishioka with revolutionising the Japanese poster. M+ in Hong Kong holds the poster, and Tokyo's Museum of Contemporary Art put her Parco campaigns at the centre of a 2020 retrospective.