As a Taiwanese immigrant growing up in the suburbs of Vancouver, Canada, I adopted what I refer to as a "white wardrobe." My efforts to cultivate a new Canadian identity, distinct from my Taiwanese ancestry, entailed wearing brands associated with North America.

Upon reflection, my childhood dress practices illuminate how clothing can help one assimilate and exercise a form of resistance. Clothing has the ability to allow an individual to pass and belong. It can also exclude and make one stand out.

My research aims to examine the ways Taiwanese immigrants in Canada and the United States from the 1990s to the present day negotiate their identities through fashion. And how clothing facilitates storytelling about immigrant experience, including stories that are often overlooked or deemed unimportant.

My research takes on autoethnographic and critical insider ethnographic approaches, relying on my own experiences as a Taiwanese immigrant in Canada and the United States. My project employs qualitative interviews, participant observation, and wardrobe study along with an analysis of personal and family photographs to reveal the fashion-based strategies that Taiwanese immigrants in Canada and the United States use to make sense of their own transnational immigrant identities.