MODERN FASHION

TRADITIONS
 Dress and Fashion Research
SERIES EDITOR: JOANNE B. EICHER, REGENTS’ PROFESSOR,
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, USA

Advisory Board:
Vandana Bhandari, National Institute of Fashion Technology, India
Steeve Buckridge, Grand Valley State University, USA
Hazel Clark, Parsons The New School of Design New York, USA
Peter McNeil, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Toby Slade, University of Tokyo, Japan
Bobbie Sumberg, International Museum of Folk Art Santa Fe, USA
Emma Tarlo, Goldsmiths University of London, UK
Lou Taylor, University of Brighton, UK
Karen Tranberg Hansen, Northwestern University, USA
Feng Zhao, The Silk Museum Hangzhou, China

The bold Dress and Fashion Research series is an outlet for high-
quality, in-depth scholarly research on previously overlooked topics
and new approaches. Showcasing challenging and courageous work
on fashion and dress, each book in this interdisciplinary series focuses
on a specific theme or area of the world that has been hitherto under-
researched, instigating new debates and bringing new information and
analysis to the fore. Dedicated to publishing the best research from
leading scholars and innovative rising stars, the works will be grounded
in fashion studies, history, anthropology, sociology, and gender studies.

ISSN: 2053-3926

Previously published in the Series

Paul Jobling, Advertising Menswear

Angela M. Jansen, Moroccan Fashion
Heike Jenss, Fashioning Memory
MODERN FASHION
TRADITIONS
Negotiating Tradition and
Modernity through Fashion

EDITED BY
M. ANGELA JANSEN AND
JENNIFER CRAIK

Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
 Bloomsbury Academic
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BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published 2016

Paperback edition first published 2018

© M. Angela Jansen and Jennifer Craik and Contributors, 2016

M. Angela Jansen and Jennifer Craik have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-2949-4

PB: 978-1-3500-5849-1
ePDF: 978-1-4742-2951-7
ePub: 978-1-4742-2950-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jansen, M. Angela, editor. | Craik, Jennifer, editor.
Title: Modern fashion traditions : negotiating tradition and modernity
through fashion / edited by M. Angela Jansen, London College of Fashion,
University of the Arts London, UK and Jennifer Craik, Queensland
University of Technology, Australia.
Description: London ; New York, NY : Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of
Bloomsbury Publishing, Plc., [2016] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016003922| ISBN 9781474229494 (hardback) | ISBN
9781474229500 (epub) | ISBN 9781474229517 (ePDF)
Subjects: LCSH: Clothing and dress--Asia. | Fashion--Asia. | Fashion
design--Asia. | Fashion--Social aspects--Asia.
Classification: LCC GT1370 .M64 2016 | DDC 391.0095--dc23 LC record available at https://
lccn.loc.gov/2016003922

Series: Dress and Fashion Research, 20533926

Cover image: © Hassan Hajjaj

Wamuhu, photograph by Hassan Hajjaj
Metallic Lambda on Dibond
2014/1435
Edition of 5
Courtesy of Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York, U.S.A.

Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk, NR21 8NN

 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations  vii

List of Contributors  x

1 Introduction 
1

M. Angela Jansen and Jennifer Craik

PART I:  FASHION HISTORY REVISED

2 Neither East nor West: Japanese fashion in modernity  25

Toby Slade

3 “Fashion” in the Chinese context  51

Christine Tsui

PART II:  THE COMMODIFICATION OF CULTURAL

HERITAGE

4 Being fashionable in the globalization era in India:

Holy writing on garments  73
Janaki Turaga

5 Exotic narratives in fashion: The impact of motifs of

exotica on fashion design and fashionable identities  97
Jennifer Craik
vi CONTENTs

PART III:  SELF-ORIENTALISM OR NATION

BRANDING?

6 Ottoman costume in the context of modern Turkish

fashion design  121
Şakir Özüdoğru

7 Beldi sells: The commodification of Moroccan fashion  143

M. Angela Jansen

PART IV:  LOCAL CONSTRUCTS OF THE GLOBAL

8 History, art, and plastic bags: Viewing South Africa

through fashion  165
Victoria L. Rovine

9 Constructing fashionable dress and identity in Bhutan  185

Emma Dick

PART V:  CONCLUSION

10 Afterword: Fashion’s fallacy  209

Sandra Niessen

Index  219
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Chapter 2
Figure 2.1  Concert of European Music, 1889, Toyohara Chikanobu (1838–
1912). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 28

Figure 2.2  A Garden Refreshed by the Passing Rain, 1888, Toyohara

Chikanobu (1838–1912). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 30

Figure 2.3  Nobility in the Evening Cool, 1887, Toyohara Chikanobu (1838–
1912). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 40

Figure 2.4  A Contest of Elegant Ladies among the Cherry Blossoms, 1887,
Toyohara Chikanobu (1838–1912). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
46

Chapter 4
Figure 4.1  Sari with holy writing. Sari with Om, Shiva, Hare Rama Hare
Krishna mantras and other illegible mantras in 2013, being sold at Dilli Haat, INA,
New Delhi. Photograph by the author. 80

Figure 4.2  Salwar-kameez dupatta sets with holy writing. Salwar-kameez

dupatta sets with different legible and illegible mantras being sold in a handloom
stall at Dilli Haat INA, New Delhi in 2013. Photograph by the author. 81

Figure 4.3  Touristy casual trousers. These trousers, popular with foreign
tourists, are inscribed with partly legible mantras. Photograph by the author. 82

Chapter 5
Figure 5.1  AKIN Collection 2012 collaborative fashion project: Top designed
by Shea Cameron; pants designed by Georgia Grainger; textiles designed by
viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Napoleon Oui; photography by Michael Greves. Courtesy of QUT Creative

Enterprise Australia. 107

Figure 5.2  AKIN Collection 2012 collaborative fashion project: Top and
pants designed by Shea Cameron, and textiles by Tommy Pau; coat and visor
designed by Monique White, and textiles by Arone Meeks; photography by
Michael Greves. Courtesy of QUT Creative Enterprise Australia. 109

Figure 5.3  AKIN Collection 2012 collaborative fashion project: Shirt, shorts,
and scarf designed by Hayley Elsaesser; textiles designed by Sharon Phineasa;
photography by Michael Greves. Courtesy of QUT Creative Enterprise Australia.
110

Chapter 6
Figure 6.1  A piece from Atıl Kutoğlu’s more recent fashion show, held on
March 24, 2014, in İstanbul, Turkey. In this collection, he used printed abstract
Ottoman floral motifs on long dresses combined with boleros and jackets.
Photograph: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images. 132

Figure 6.2  A piece from Dilek Hanif’s Haute Couture Show held on January
23, 2012, in Paris, as a part of the Paris Haute Couture Week. In this piece,
tinsel floral motifs were applied to a dress that seems to be an intensively stylized
caftan. Photograph: Victor Virgile/Getty Images. 133

Chapter 7
Figure 7.1  A so-called “traditional” tailor in the old Arab city center of Fes,
Morocco. Photograph by the author. 145

Figure 7.2  Cover of the Moroccan fashion magazine Ousra. Photograph by

the author. 148

Figure 7.3  The first Zara store on Massira El Khedra in the center of
Casablanca, Morocco. Photograph by the author. 150

Figure 7.4  A boutique selling Moroccan fashion in the shopping mall Twin
Centre in Casablanca, Morocco. Photograph by the author. 151

Figure 7.5  Modern Moroccan fashion used in a billboard advertisement of a

telephone provider. Photograph by the author. 158
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix

Chapter 8
Figure 8.1  Strangelove (Carlo Gibson, Ziemek Pater), in collaboration with
Nelisiwe Xaba, They Look at Me and That’s All They Think, 2007–8. Courtesy of
Carlo Gibson. 168

Figure 8.2  Strangelove (Carlo Gibson, Ziemek Pater), in collaboration with

Hannelie Coetzee, from the series Soweto Walkabout, 2005–6. Courtesy of
Carlo Gibson. 171

Figure 8.3  China Bags and other products for sale, Bamako, Mali, 2008.
Photograph by the author. 175

Chapter 9
Figure 9.1  Mount Everest’s summit seen from above the clouds through the
window of a Drukair flight to Bhutan, June 2009. Photograph by the author. 187

Figure 9.2  Emma Dick and Peck Leng Tan with Staff and Trainees on Tailoring
Curriculum at Chumey Vocational Training Institute, Bhutan, September 2009.
Photograph by Peck Hoon Tam. 193

Figure 9.3  Bhutan Street Fashion Facebook group example page from July
2010. Image with permission from BSF. 198
 LIST OF
CONTRIBUTORS

M. Angela Jansen obtained her PhD in 2010 from Leiden University, the
Netherlands, for a dissertation on the Moroccan fashion industry. Her monograph,
Moroccan Fashion: Design, Tradition and Modernity, was published in 2014
by Bloomsbury. She is currently an independent scholar based in Brussels, as
well as a Visiting Scholar at the Research Department at the Victoria and Albert
Museum in London, and an Associate Researcher at the Centre Jacques Berque
in Rabat, Morocco. Her research interests are fashion anthropology, Eurocentricity
in academic practice, globalization, and modernity. In 2012, she initiated the
NWFashionConference (NWFC), which is in its fourth edition (Rabat 2012, London
2013, Hong Kong 2014). In addition to publishing and lecturing on the Moroccan
fashion industry, she is involved in fashion events and museum exhibitions.

Jennifer Craik is Professor and Head of Fashion at Queensland University of

Technology in Brisbane, Australia. Her research interests include interdisciplinary
approaches to the study of fashion and dress. She has also researched aspects
of cultural studies, cultural policy, and arts funding. Her publications include: The
Face of  Fashion (Routledge, 1993),  Uniforms Exposed:  From Conformity
to Transgression (Berg Publishers, 2005), and Fashion: The Key Concepts (Berg
Publishers, 2009).

Toby Slade is Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo, researching Asian

modernity and the history and theory of fashion. His previous research focused
on Asian responses to modernity, seen through art objects of the everyday like
fashion, the suit, and its role in modernity, the ideas of style and the classic,
and the governing dynamics of systems of fashion. His doctoral research at the
University of Sydney, Australia, examined the Modernity of Japanese clothing
and the implications of that unique sartorial history for contemporary theories
of fashion. His book Japanese Fashion: A Cultural History, published by Berg,
covers the entire sweep of fashion and clothing in Japan from the earliest times
to today.
List of CONTRIBUTORS xi

Christine Tsui was a 2013–14 Fulbright Scholar at Parsons the New School
for Design. At Parsons she taught “China Fashion/Nation” along with Professor
Hazel Clark. She obtained her Master’s degree in Fashion Marketing and
Management from the London College of Fashion in 2003. She was Visiting
Associate Professor of the Shanghai Design Institute of China Academy of Arts
from 2004 to 2010. Her publications include: China Fashion: Conversation
with Designers (Chinese edition, 2013); Workbook for Fashion Buyers (Chinese
edition, 2009).

Janaki Turaga is an independent researcher based in New Delhi. She

finished her doctoral research at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her
PhD dissertation, “Ecological Movements as People’s Response to Alternative
Development: A Study in Westerns Ghats in Karnataka”, deals with ecological
movements and the emerging development paradigm. She is engaged in areas
of environment and development, textiles, handicrafts, microfinance, sustainable
livelihoods, and sustainable appropriate development paradigms. She has
presented her research work in both the academic and development world, at
conferences and seminars, and has published independent research work, as
articles in scholarly journals, such as Security and Society, and development
sector magazines.

Şakir Özüdoğru is Research Assistant at the Department of Fashion Design

Anadolu University, Eskişehir, Turkey, from which he graduated in 2008. He did
his Master’s degree in the field of industrial arts at Anadolu University on the
“Interaction between Fashion and Art from 19th Century until Today.” His publi-
cations in various journals include poems, criticisms, and short stories. His book
of poems, Garipsemeler, was published in 2005. His current research interests
include: experimental, visual, phonetic poetry and design, postmodernisms,
queer theory, sociology of perception and drug culture, subcultures, contem-
porary art theory, and cultural studies on fashion and art.

Victoria L. Rovine is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of

North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. Her research focuses on clothing and textiles
in Africa, with particular attention to innovations in forms and meanings across
cultures. Her first book, Bogolan: Shaping Culture through Cloth in Contemporary
Mali (Smithsonian Press, 2001 and Indiana University Press, 2008), examined
the recent transformations of a richly symbolic textile. Her second book, African
Fashion, Global Style: Histories, Innovations, and Ideas You Can Wear (Indiana
University Press, 2015), explores the innovations of designers from Africa, past
and present, as well as Africa’s presence in the Westerns fashion imaginary.
Rovine is also Research Associate with the Visual Identities in Art and Design
Research Centre (VIAD) at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
xii List of CONTRIBUTORS

Emma Dick is Lecturer in Visual Culture Fashion at Middlesex University

London and Director of Projects & Training for SPINNA Circle (www.spinna.org)
a non-profit organisation working to empower women in fashion and textiles
globally. She read Turkish with Islamic Art & Archaeology at the University of
Oxford and holds a Masters degree in Design Practice (Textiles as Fashion) from
Glasgow School of Art. Emma has lived and worked in Turkey and Singapore,
where she was Head of Fashion at LASALLE College of the Arts (2007–2010)
and collaborated on the vocational curriculum in Tailoring project for the
Royal Government of Bhutan with UNDP Bhutan and Singapore International
Foundation, about which her chapter in this volume is based. Emma travels
frequently throughout Central Asia and is currently working on development
projects in the region, linking textile artisans to global markets. During 2014
SPINNA Circle managed and implemented a USAID-funded grant in Kazakhstan
and Uzbekistan, ‘Empowering women in Central Asia by building capacity and
linking markets through setting up SPINNA Circle hubs’ working with over 100
women from the region. This work is continuing in 2016 with further research
and project implementation in the Central Asian region.

Sandra Niessen is an independent scholar based in The Netherlands. In

1979, she began to study, lecture, and write about the Batak cultures of North
Sumatra, Indonesia. In 1985, she obtained her PhD in anthropology from
Leiden University in The Netherlands, and subsequently taught until 2001 at
the University of Alberta in Canada. Her book publication, Legacy in Cloth:
Batak Textiles of Indonesia (2009) documents the full repertory of textile types
of the Toba, Karo, and Simalungun Batak of North Sumatra, including design
history and techniques of production. In 2013, she produced a film about
Batak weaving techniques entitled Rangsa ni Tonun. Sandra is co-editor of
Re-Orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress (2003), and Consuming
Fashion: Adorning the Transnational Body (1998).
 1
INTRODUCTION
M. ANGELA JANSEN AND
JENNIFER CRAIK

The aim of this volume, Modern Fashion Traditions, is to disrupt a persistent

euro- and ethnocentricity in fashion discourse by bringing together research by
authors who are engaged in creative and critical thinking concerning fashion, in
a wide scope of geographical areas, from a wide variety of disciplines, and from
a cross-cultural perspective. The key premise is that fashion in a non-Western
context is not a mere adoption of a European phenomenon or a recent outcome
of globalization. Non-Western fashion has its own historical and socio-cultural
relevance. To this end, the objectives of this volume are:

MM to disrupt persistent euro- and ethnocentric academic practice in fashion

studies by challenging simple, linear, oppositional, and essentialist
thinking, resulting in false dichotomies like tradition versus modernity,
dress versus fashion, West versus Non-West, local versus global, etc.
MM to contest the idea that fashion outside of Europe and North America is
a recent phenomenon and/or a result of globalization.
MM to acknowledge that different fashion systems have been, and are,
located all around the world, and that these have been developing in
conjunction, competition, collaboration, and independently from the
European fashion system.
MM to not only dispute misassumptions concerning non-European fashion
as being static, authentic and symbolic, but also concerning European
fashion as being arbitrary, innovative, and, most importantly, detached
from its cultural context.
MM to provide a platform for developing alternative, inclusive theoretical
frameworks to analyze fashion from a global perspective, and to
establish new terminology that surpasses current Eurocentric discourse
in relation to fashion.
2 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

This is an ambitious remit as it seeks to challenge deeply held assump-

tions about Western culture and its distinctiveness from, and superiority over
“Other” cultures and traditions. The authors in this volume are thinking outside
the box and testing new ideas and propositions in an effort to develop new
conceptual and analytic frameworks. As such, the intellectual understanding of
non-Western fashion is still a neophyte field that is developing, and this volume,
therefore, represents a work in progress.
First, there is an urgent need to problematize persisting dichotomies like
traditional versus fashionable, tradition versus modernity, local versus global,
and the West versus the Rest in fashions studies. For, as Sandra Niessen
(2003: 264) argues, the weaknesses and limitations in the dichotomous model
are evident from the complex way in which these oppositions are manipulated
and combined, such that binary distinctions are blurred and proliferate in new
forms. Ironically, however, by trying to transgress these dichotomies, there is a
real danger of reinforcing them and reproducing the very stereotypes we set out
to critique.
Second, it is imperative to redefine existing concepts and/or introduce
new ones, starting by searching for a synonym for the concept “non-Western
fashion” that escapes the implicit polarization of that term. Alternatives in use
are “ethnic fashion,” “world fashion,” “global fashion,” “postmodern fashion,”
and “fusion fashion,” but all are problematic in their own way. Ethnic fashion, for
example, as defined by Joanne Eicher and Barbara Sumberg (1995: 300), refers
to garments that are “worn by members of one group to distinguish themselves
from another by focusing on differentiation,” but many so-called “ethnic” people,
and especially fashion designers, feel stigmatized by the term, emphasizing a
distinction between “them” and “mainstream fashion” (e.g. Western fashion)
(Akou 2007: 403). World fashion, in its turn, generally refers to European fashion
(trends) like blue jeans, the business suit, T-shirts, etc. that have been adopted
by the rest of the world due to processes of globalization (Eicher and Sumberg
1995; Maynard 2004; Eicher et al. 2000; Lillethun et al. 2012), whereas we are
looking to acknowledge a large diversity of fashion systems within their own
right. World fashion research also usually insinuates that something is only
fashion if it has a global scale (Eicher and Sumber 1995; Hansen 2004; Akou
2007; Lillethun, Welters and Eicher 2012), whereas we believe fashions can
also be local. José Teunissen (2005: 11) defines “fusion fashion” as a mixture
of traditional dress with contemporary fashion trends that, to a certain extent, is
embedded in one’s own culture, and to a certain extent grounded in international
fashion, neglecting the force of fashion trends instigated by local developments.
Unfortunately, all these terms are, in one way or another, always in relation
to Western fashion. Until there is a consensus about a satisfying substitute
term, this volume reverts to the (equally problematic) use of “non-Western
fashion” as shorthand for a large diversity of fashion systems outside and
INTRODUCTION 3

beyond dominant fashion from Europe and North America. Simultaneously,

just as problematic as “non-Western fashion,” are terms like “Western fashion,”
“European fashion,” and “North American fashion,” which, too, are far from
homogenous categories. Although rarely produced in Europe and/or North
America and strongly influenced by fashion systems from other regions, these
terms are used in this volume to refer to fashion that is culturally associated with
these geographical areas.
Moreover, the chapters in this volume were not necessarily selected on their
specific geographical focus, but rather because of their significant contribution
to the discussion as well as their uniqueness as case studies to represent
non-Western fashion. Simultaneously, one of the ambitions of the volume is to
reach out to scholars who have remained invisible in the academic landscape
due to all sorts of barriers, be it financial, linguistic, or Eurocentric. Therefore, we
have favored to include a number of researchers who are unpublished (in English
and/or mainstream publications), as well as researchers who represent their own
culture as opposed to Western researchers representing non-Western cultures.
Although fashion globalization has become a well-established topic of
research since the 1990s (Skov 1996; Maynard 2004; Teunissen 2005;
Eicher et al. 2000; Rabine 2002; Niessen 2003; Monden 2008; Riello and
McNeil 2010), case studies from different geographical areas have rarely been
assembled in a single volume with the purpose of cross-cultural comparison.
Too often non-Western fashion systems are studied in comparison, or in relation
to the Western fashion system, and/or in the context of globalization, whereby
new economies, especially, have earned their right to join the fashion discourse,
based on their recent socio-economic achievements, their convergence with
the West, and/or their successful engagement with fashion as both consumers
and producers (Riello and McNeil 2010: 5). As Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil
(2010: 4) argue, if we wish to understand fashion beyond Europe, we must
refrain from thinking that this has suddenly emerged in the past few decades as
the result of globalization and the growth of new middle classes. The fact that
these historical traditions of fashion are not as well-known, they say, or adver-
tised as the European one, should not diminish their value. This volume aims to
take a clear stand by explicitly contesting that European fashion is at the origin
of all other fashion systems, or that non-Western fashions are a (recent) result
of globalization. Its contributors argue that fashion has been historically located
all around the world, but that it is the Eurocentric representations of hegemonic
fashion that have generally emphasized European bourgeois and upper-class
women’s attire as the site of newness and now-ness, while other nations/
cultures/spaces have been depicted as static and exotic; as fixed in earlier times
(Kaiser 2012: 173).
The case studies gathered in this volume set out to illustrate that non-Western
fashions are far from static, but rather powerful tools in an ongoing negotiation
4 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

of continuity and change, of tradition and modernity, of local developments

and global influences. Both Western and non-Western fashions are continu-
ously invented and reinvented following social, cultural, political, religious, and
economic developments, and are equally used to formulate and express unique
local cultural identities. Contemporary fashion designers are increasingly tapping
into their local cultural heritage (tradition) for inspiration to create distinctive
design identities, while simultaneously reinventing/modernizing it. On the one
hand, in a globalized world, this allows designers to differentiate themselves
in a highly competitive international fashion market, while on the other hand,
on a national level, it makes them successful as a result of a general revalu-
ation of local cultural heritage as a counter reaction to cultural globalization.
Consequently, the research cases in this volume contest the idea that globali-
zation would lead to cultural homogenization; on the contrary, they show how
it feeds into cultural heterogenization through the (re)invention of local cultural
heritage and vestimentary traditions as a powerful means of distinction.
Nevertheless, we argue that when non-Western designers are using their
cultural heritage as a source of inspiration, it is considered “traditional,” whereas
when Western fashion designers incorporate their cultural heritage, it is catego-
rized as “fashionable.” In the same way, when non-Western fashion designers
incorporate Western fashion aesthetics, it is often perceived as westernization
and a loss of local culture, whereas when Western fashion designers turn to
non-Western cultures for inspiration, it is seen as innovative and fashionable.
Think of designers like Yves Saint Laurent and John Galliano, who owe their
success, to a large extent, to their collections inspired by Eastern Europe,
North Africa, and Asia, while the actual designers from these regions have
rarely succeeded in truly penetrating the global fashion industry, apart from the
Japanese.
This volume aims to illustrate that despite so-called fashion globalization,
the epicenter of fashion is still very much concentrated in Europe. Despite
trends are coming from London, New Delhi, Milan, Shanghai, New York, São
Paolo, Casablanca, and Dakar, Western designers predominantly still have
the opportunity to put them on the global fashion map, while Indian, Chinese,
Hispanic, Latin American, Moroccan, and Sub-Sahara African fashion designers
continue to be categorically excluded from Western catwalks, and are catego-
rized as “ethnic fashion.” As Sandra Niessen argues in the concluding chapter
to this volume, despite so-called “fashion globalization,” the reins of fashion
economics have never been more tightly held in the West. Despite the fact
that fashion weeks are happening all over the world, she says, a handful of
holding companies are disproportionately huge players. She asserts that it is no
longer the styles that reveal the social ladder of fashion, but that the game is
about manipulating style to suck money upward. Niessen emphasizes that it is
important to demystify how style interacts with the global politics of fashion. As
INTRODUCTION 5

fashion is about economics, she argues that holding companies are dangling
the strings, whereby fashion designers are hired and fired and that fashion
producers no longer vie for the top independently. Fashion globalization is
hegemonic and no holds barred, with the fashion weeks outside of the West
still at the dispensable bottom rungs, while immense power is held in the hands
of a Western few. As such, this volume addresses an emerging agenda about
the role of new fashion cities and spaces of fashion consumption, as a counter-
balance to the global dominance of the “conventional” world fashion cities.

A legacy of Eurocentric fashion discourse

Abby Lillethun, Linda Welters, and Joanne Eicher (2012: 76) argue in their article
(Re)Defining Fashion that Social Darwinism, in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, is at the origin of the embedding of perceived ownership of fashion
in Western culture. Social Darwinism’s paradigm, they argue, included a hierar-
chical construct of human typologies shaped by Westerners, which, therefore,
positioned their own cultures at the top of the hierarchy. The definition of fashion
that came into use was shaped to fit the perspective of the people defining it.
They state:

For them fashion occurred in a capitalist production system of innovation,

distribution, and consumption wherein the social structure enabled, even
fostered, emulation of adjacent status groups. (Lillethun, Welters, and Eicher
2012: 76)

Fashionable behaviors, they continue, particularly the adoption of rapidly

changing styles, were assigned to European urban culture, while dress practices
that appeared to them to be unchanging—that is, those dress practices in
cultures registering below European urban culture in the Social Darwinist
hierarchy—were not fashion. Qualifying them initially as primitive, savage and
exotic and later as traditional, folkloric and ethnic, mainly allowed Western
researchers to initially dehumanize and later depower these fashions as well as
differentiate themselves from them (Baizerman, Eicher and Cerny (2008: 126).
According to Suzanne Baizerman, Joanne Eicher and Catherine Cerny (2008:
126) in their article “Eurocentrism in the Study of Ethnic Dress,” terminology
has been used to establish boundaries between Euroamerican society and the
rest of the world, and to validate a hierarchical relationship between a powerful
Euroamerican elite and a less powerful Other. It aims to deny a complexity and
elegance, they say, that otherwise exemplifies dress among, for example, the
nobility of the Han Dynasty, or of the ancient Maya, both of which developed
independent of European influence.
6 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Baizerman, Eicher, and Cerny (2008: 127) argue that the non-historical
reputation of “primitive” societies is a construction of Western cultural biases
and the limitations of traditional Western modes of scholarship. As Eicher
(2005: 17) formulates it, in her introduction to National Geographic Fashion,
from a Eurocentric point of view, people whose past does not include written
history, paintings, or drawings, are easily categorized as coming from static
worlds. Even though documenting change represents a challenge, she says, it
is mandatory to find out how change occurred and accept evidence of it, for
example through the oral histories of elders that relate to dressing the body. She
explains that these fashions may seem not to change over the years to untrained
outsiders, but the insiders who wear these garments know very well what is in
fashion and what is not (2005: 21).
Gertrud Lehnert and Gabriele Mentges (2013: 10) in their book Fusion
Fashion: Culture beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism, argue that Orientalism
as an important part of Eurocentric perspectives on culture and history implicitly
suggests that global history is organized around Western history. Simultaneously,
they say, it presupposes the Western modernization process to be a generalized
or generalizable schema. They argue there is an urge to rewrite the history of
material culture in another perspective than the “orientalized and Euro-centered”
ones in order to discover the different voices of a multiple Other. Western fashion,
they say, has long claimed an aesthetic, technical, as well as moral/ethical
superiority over the non-Western sartorial otherness, even though it has always
adopted “oriental” practices, yet in different ways and with different goals (2013:
11). The development of European fashion, they point out, is due substantially
to the cultural transfer of techniques, materials, tastes, and aesthetics.
The first critiques of the conceptualization of fashion as the product and
domain of Western capitalism began appearing in the 1980s, reflecting global
social changes of the twentieth century, whereby the movements for native
independence from colonialism were nearly complete, and the era of multicultur-
alism thrust ethnic identity to the forefront (Lillethun, Welters, and Eicher 2012:
76). According to Lillethun, Welters, and Eicher (2012: 76–7), the current era of
globalization is also one of contestation and challenges for inclusion, whereby
the increased pace of globalism and the inclusion of voices of the marginalized in
postmodern and globalization theory furthered awareness of the so-called “others”
in the world. As a result, the concept of fashion as purely Western has been
challenging, and many scholars have been advocating reframing the concepts of
fashion within broader and more diverse parameters by detailing other possible
fashion systems (Niessen 2003; Eicher 2005; Akou 2007; Baizerman, Eicher,
and Cerny 2008; Craik 2009; Lillethun, Welters, and Eicher 2012; Lehnert and
Mentges 2013). While the fundamental urge to decorate the self was considered
“primitive,” rather than a key concept of fashion, Jennifer Craik (2009) emphati-
cally places this trait in the foreground in conceptualizing fashion.
INTRODUCTION 7

Heather Akou (2007: 408), in her article “Building a New World Fashion,”
proposes a framework to conceptualize fashion consisting of three levels of
cultural systems: microcultures, cultures, and macrocultures. Each level, she
argues, is accompanied by a different kind of aesthetic system, respectively
street styles and local dress practices, ethnic dress and national dress, and
world fashions. This framework, she says, allows us to recognize multiple “world
fashion” systems associated with different macrocultures—Western, Islamic,
African, Asian, Latino, etc.
Emma Dick in her chapter on Bhutanese fashion in this volume, critiques
Joanne Entwistle’s (2000) definition of fashion formulated as “a system of
dress found in societies where social mobility is possible,” and argues that this
concept does not correlate with Bhutanese ideas of state sovereignty, which are
fundamentally different to those espoused by European history. Fashion from a
Eurocentric point of view, she argues, is overwhelmingly construed as a materi-
alistic and superficial field of practice, which seems difficult to reconcile with the
non-materialistic philosophy of Buddhist culture:

Changes in style may happen more subtly and at a slower rate in Bhutan
than in a highly developed economy, but an alternative system of social
identification through dress and appearance, governed by its own logic of
temporality and location is visible in the traditional dress practices of people
throughout Bhutan.

Therefore, Dick asserts that there are multiple fashion systems in the world,
operating under different logics and notions of temporality. Key to the problem,
however, is that there is no consensus on what fashion is exactly. Different disci-
plines use different definitions of fashion which add considerably to the amalgam
of misunderstandings (Welters and Lillethun 2011: xxvii). In general, fashion is
characterized by both its ephemerality and also its rapid and incessant stylistic
changes (Wilson 1985; Davis 1992; Purdy 2004; Barnard 2007). However, as
Niessen argues in this volume, in today’s fast-changing world, (rapid) change
has become empty of definitional value.
In a search for an all-inclusive, non-Eurocentric definition and analytical
framework for fashion, the emerging sub-discipline of fashion anthropology
offers some important tools. Particularities of the anthropological perspective
are cross-cultural, inclusive, holistic and relativistic, whereby a cross-cultural
perspective implies that human behavior is studied in a wide and inclusive
sense, embracing many or potentially all human ways of being (Eller 2015:
12). Only through cross-cultural perspectives can both the commonalities/
universals across cultures be discovered, as well as the full range of variations
between cultures. Holism, in its turn, means that each particular culture is, and
must be, approached as a whole, not just as a single trait (e.g. fashion) or as a
8 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

disconnected list of traits. A culture is a system containing multiple parts that are
in some kind of integrated relationship with each other. Every part of a culture
relates in some way to every other part and each part has its unique function
and each contributes to the function of the whole (Eller 2015: 12). Therefore,
each specific fashion system can only be analyzed in relation to the historical,
cultural, social, political, religious, and economic context within which it exists.
Different fashion forms have different origins, are set in different geographies,
and have different ways of evolving. For example, when a curator tried to identify
fashionable garments in an ethnographic museum collection, those deemed
“fashionable” all showed traces of Western fashion influences. Due to prevalent
Eurocentric perceptions of fashion, even in an ethnographic museum, people
fail to comprehend that fashion is not inherent to an object, but rather that its
socio-cultural-historical context renders it fashionable. It is only through intensive
field research that fashion as a specific part of culture can be studied as well
as its interconnectedness to the whole. Most importantly, cultural relativism
asserts that an observer cannot apply the standards of its own culture to
another culture. Rather, a phenomenon in a culture must be understood and
evaluated in relation to, relative to, that culture. Ethnocentrism, therefore, is the
attitude or practice of assuming that one’s own cultural point of view is the best,
the right, or even the only point of view. Each judgment about another culture
is made from one’s own cultural point of view in relation to some standard of
“right/normal,” and a culture is precizely a set of standards for such judgment
(Eller 2015: 12).
As such, fashion can be conceptualized as a universal phenomenon with
a full range of local variations, in the same way that political or economic
systems are universal systems with local variations. Central to fashion is
dress, defined as everything that one does to or puts on one’s body as a
material embodiment of one’s culture (Barnes and Eicher 1992: 15). The most
important difference between dress and fashion, as formulated by Yuniya
Kawamura (2005: 2–4), is that while dress refers to tangible objects, fashion is
intangible and provides added value to dress that only exists in people’s imagi-
nations and beliefs. An all-inclusive definition of fashion then, is desirable dress
at a given moment and place (Entwistle 2000: 1), whereby its desirability can
be based on a wide-range of values, be it social, political, nostalgic, exclusivity,
modernity, innovation, nationalism, etc. As soon as a person (consciously or
unconsciously) prefers one body adornment over another, one can speak of
fashion. Only in very rare and extreme circumstances, such as poverty, refugee
status, or being party to religious doctrines, might people not have a choice
and fashion be absent. The simplicity or complexity of a fashion system should
not be based on the simplicity or complexity of the bodily adornment, but
rather on the simplicity or complexity of the wearer’s motivations behind his or
her choices.
INTRODUCTION 9

Due to a hegemonic Eurocentric fashion discourse, non-Western countries have

come to believe that fashion is a Western phenomenon (just like modernity) and
that it has only recently been introduced through globalization. On the one hand
there is a lack of elaborate research on non-European fashion histories while
on the other hand, as Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil (2010: 4–5) formulate
it, European fashion history already comes packaged with strong “stories” or
“narratives,” and even its set areas of debate—these might be the consumer
revolution of the “long” eighteenth century; the birth of couture in the last third
of the nineteenth century; or the importance of subcultural style in the mid- to
late twentieth century. Such narratives, they say, form the basic ways in which
histories of fashion are written and taught and are underpinned by chronolo­gies,
facts and a cast of characters straight from European history. This then becomes
the framework with which non-Western fashion histories are studied.
Consequently, European fashion has been the ultimate reference for
many contemporary non-Western fashions, often resulting in bad copies of
European fashion. Juanjuan Wu (2009: xi), for example, explains how the
“chinoizerie” collections by European designers were at first a more important
source of inspiration for Chinese designers than their own rich indigenous
fashion history. While European fashion was considered fashionable, she
says, their own fashion was considered “traditional.” Therefore, Chinese
designers initially started by distorting French haute couture in an attempt
to create “Chinese” haute couture and it was only at a much later stage that
they started turning to their own clothing traditions as a source of inspiration
(Tsui 2009). From a Eurocentric perspective, it is often asserted that only
through a formal training in (European fashion) design, people are taught to
isolate elements from (either their own or other) culture and to turn them into
elements of a visual language to create a certain aesthetic that is no longer
bound by its cultural restrictions. But not only have (non-Western) craftsmen
for a long time been isolating and appropriating elements from a wide variety
of cultural influences, the other way around, Western fashion is not completely
free from its cultural restrictions.
At this point, It is important to note that contesting Eurocentricity in fashion
discourse does not mean denying altogether the significant influence that
European fashion has had, and continues to have, on a wide range of fashions
around the world. French fashion, in particular, has been, and still is, an
important influence on many fashions, including various European ones, and
stands predominantly at the origin of what is referred to as European/Western
fashion today. In the course of the nineteenth century, for example, French
fashion, which had come to represent cosmopolitanism and (Euro)modernity,
overshadowed many other European fashions, which had come to be considered
provincial, coarse, and old-fashioned. This resulted in a stagnation and reduction
to what is now referred to as Dutch, Belgian, German, etc. traditional dress. This
10 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

nomination, in the same way as many non-Western fashions, ignores the once
vivid and transnational dynamics of these fashions (Feitsma 2014).
Interestingly, the introduction of European fashion in many non-Western
countries has not threatened the continuity of local fashions, but rather
increased processes of selection, appropriation, hybridization, reinvention,
and redefinition. As Jansen illustrates in her contribution to this volume, for
example, the introduction of foreign fashion brands on a large scale at the
turn of the twenty-first century, did not threaten Moroccan fashion, but on the
contrary, boosted its development through the introduction of new consumption
patterns and marketing strategies. Simultaneously, adopting European fashion
aesthetics in many case studies is an important way to engage with a global
(cultural) discourse, but without the willingness to give up one’s cultural distinc-
tiveness. As Niessen (2003: 259) explains it, appropriately modern styles are
cued by Western trends, but the Western look is not adopted wholesale. To be
fit to represent the non-Western-but-developing state, she says, they must be
modified by elements of traditional heritage:

The resulting blend of modernity and tradition is colored by both, but not too
much by either one. Their modern-dress performance is as much in process
as their performance of traditional dress. (Niessen 2003: 260)

Tradition and modernity in fashion

Just as there are many misconceptions about fashion as a result of Eurocentric
analyzes, there are persistent misapprehensions about the concepts of tradition
and modernity. As Leslie Rabine (2002: 10) puts it, tradition is probably the
most problematic of terms inherited from colonial discourse. In her research on
the globalization of African fashion, she criticizes the static tradition/modernity
binary, as it was used by missionaries, colonialists and anthropologists to
“oppose an Africa deemed traditional in the sense of primitive and static to
a modern Europe as transmitter of enlightened values” (Rabine 2002: 10).
Although local fashions mostly are encoded as traditional by their consumers,
they are far from embodying the timeless, closed societies evoked by the
colonial notions of tradition (Rabine 2002: 11). On the contrary, they result
from centuries-old histories of the weaving together of local development and
foreign influence. Today, local fashions have become the focal point for anxieties,
attachments, and criticisms that attend the ever-changing status of tradition in
societies that are subject to increasing influences of industrialization, modern­
ization, and globalization. Rather than tradition being an unchanging trope of the
past, it is a dynamic encapsulation of the fusion of global trends and successive
INTRODUCTION 11

innovations. The more foreign influence there is, the more need is felt to create,
define, and categorize indigenous fashions.
The concept of tradition is a construct rather than a given that is constantly
redefined and reinvented and that has more to do with ideological thinking than
with a faithful representation of historical facts. As Eric Hobsbawm and Terence
Ranger (1983) argue in The Invention of Tradition, although traditions can be
ancient, they are often quite new and sometimes even literally invented in a
single event or over a short period of time. The authors define tradition as:

a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and

of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seeks to inculcate certain values and
norms of behaviour by repetition and to imply a continuity with a suitable
historic past. (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983: 1)

This continuity with a historic past, however, they emphasize, is often largely
fictitious, whereby invented traditions are most often a response to new situa-
tions (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983: 4). Foreign influences are continuously
appropriated through what Joanne Eicher and Tonye Erekosima (1995: 145)
describe as a process called “cultural authentication,” whereby foreign elements
become authentic by being assimilated into an already existing system, and
foreign influences come to symbolize what they call ethnic identity:

The construct of cultural authentication applies to specific articles and

ensembles of dress identified as ethnic and considered indigenous when
the users are not the makers or when the material used is not indigenous in
origin. (Eicher and Erekosima 1995: 140)

In general, authenticity does not apply well to fashion because it is always

a product of cultural encounters as well as processes of hybridization (Kaiser
2012: 59) and authenticity is a slippery concept (Jansen 2014: 118). Most of
all, as Charles Lindholm (2008: 1) argues, authenticity gathers people together
in collectives that are felt to be real, essential and vital, providing participants
with meaning, unity and a surpassing sense of belonging. Marilyn Halter (2000:
17), in her book Shopping for Identity: The Marketing of Ethnicity, argues that
the increasing popularity of authenticity in the past few decades is related
to nostalgia for an idealized and fixed point in time when folk culture was
supposedly untouched by the corruption that is automatically associated with
commercial development. Hence, she says, the more artificiality, anonymity, and
uncertainty apparent in a postmodern world, the more driven is the quest for
authentic experiences and the more people long to feel connected to localized
traditions seeking out timeless and pure culture (Halter 2000: 17). As such,
modernity is a catalyzer for tradition.
12 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Simultaneously, notions of modernity are just as much misinterpreted and mainly

narrowed down to euromodernity. As Jonathan Inda and Renato Rosaldo (2002: 3)
formulate it, ideologies related to modernity are mainly made up of elements of
the (European) Enlightenment worldview such as freedom, welfare, human rights,
democracy, and sovereignty, initiated in the West. According to them:

many developing nations adhere to policies which at least ostensibly aim to

modernize their politics, infrastructures and economies, but often their own
prevailing ideologies do not correspond with those proposed by the West.
(Inda and Rosaldo 2002: 3)

Dick argues in this volume that it is not meaningful to impose such values of
European enlightenment on Bhutanese culture that independently developed its
own entirely different logic of enlightenment. In Buddhist terms, she says, to be
enlightened means to have woken up and to understand the world, so that the
mind and the body are not separated but are in perfect harmony with one another.
Binary systems inherent to Western thinking, she concludes, which exist to impose
“rational” order on the world, are deeply unenlightened from this perspective.
Over time, concepts like “alternative” or “multiple” modernities have been
introduced in the context of non-Western societies, but as Rovine demon-
strates in her chapter on the South-African case study, the alternative-modernity
formulation misses what may be most important about the current mutation in
the meaning of “modernity” for Africans. Theoretically, she explains, modernity
replaces tradition and it is marked by cultural practices that share more with
other “modern” societies than with long-standing local practices. But this is
not the lived expectation of modernity in much of Africa, she says. Instead,
modernity means economic and personal security, access to funds, goods and
services that ensure a good life. For people whose standard of living is declining,
she argues, who are denied access to the trappings of modernity, aware of yet
experiencing only vicariously its comforts and privileges, the modern may be a
remembered past rather than a promised future.
The Japanese anthropologist Chie Nakane (1967 in Iwabuchi 1994: 23)
argues that other societies should not be measured with a Western yardstick,
but rather with an indigenous one. Her call for cultural specificity is a challenge
to Eurocentric definitions of modernity and suggests an alternative way of
theorizing modernization without regarding the Western experience as the
model path to the modern stage. Modernity has been monopolized by the West
and, as Longxi Zhang (1988) proposes:

it is time to recognize the Other as truly Other, that is, the Other in its own
Otherness […] The Other that does not just serve the purpose of being a foil
or contrast to the Western self. (Zhang 1988 in Iwabuchi 1994: 18)
INTRODUCTION 13

Toby Slade (2009: 4), in his book on Japanese fashion, also calls for alternative
analyzes of modernity based on the fact that Eurocentric models of modernity do
not fit the Japanese experience. The use of theoretical constructs from Western
philosophy, he explains, when related to the Japanese context, bring up many
potential difficulties in applying what should be considered culturally specific
tools to a different cultural context. According to him, essential to modernity
is the idea of reflexivity—the continual re-examination and re-evaluation of
knowledge in every sphere—and, therefore, its central precept of progress is the
end of certainty. Unchallenged sources of authority, whether political, religious or
scholastic, he explains, are all overthrown by modernity, whereby scientific and
technological advances and social and economic reforms create anxiety since
the reassurance of traditional sources of knowledge are continuously questioned
(Slade 2009: 4). The result, he continues, is continually changing practices
and fads—fashions—in ideas and things that become repositories for those
ideas, like clothing, which is, before almost everything else, the repository for
conceptions of individual and collective identity. In modernity, he adds, progress
is constantly sought, yet constantly questioned, undermined and remodelled
(Slade 2009: 4). Simultaneously, he adds, the perceived unstoppable trajectory
of modem progress results in nostalgia and, if not an overt longing for the past,
then at least a formless melancholy and regret that some essence or intangible
element has been lost. Modernity everywhere, he says, repeatedly clothes itself
in reconstructions of the past, recreating national fashions and inventing tradi-
tions to authenticate this past and to authenticate the very idea of a nation itself
(Slade 2009: 5).
Tradition is most often emphasized when discussing non-Western fashion,
while hardly referred to in the context of Western fashion which is argued to be
synonymous for modernity (Wilson 1985; Purdy 2004; Barnard 2007). According
to José Teunissen (2005: 9), contrary to traditional dress, fashion is never
based on fixed principles (traditions) that are transmitted. Fashion, she says,
is attached to nothing, but creates every season a complete new atmosphere
with new meanings that are loosely inspired by and taken from fashion history,
art, or exotic cultures that are used in its own favor. After only one season, she
continues, a certain element, representing a certain desirability in society, can
be discarded and replaced by another symbol. As Craik (2009: 234) formulates
it, however, fashion is a relentless cycle of anticipating the future, yet drawing
on resonances of the past and this involves balancing the now with the future
and the past. Consumers, she says, may be frightened by trends that are too
different from what they wear now, but reject anything that looks old fashioned
or out of fashion, so a careful balancing act is needed to predict a newness that
is exciting, but that still has some familiarity.
Formulated by Sarah Cheang who references Georg Simmel and Roland
Barthes, fashion is predicated on a “liberation from tradition,” on a “refusal to
14 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

inherit,” while simultaneously being obsessed with the past as a measure of how
far it has traveled in a theological project of modernity. The past, she says, is
a source of inspiration for the recycling of styles that make fashion’s newness
paradoxical in its content. Trends, she continues, are nourished by repetition
and deconstruction and in a constant drive to leave the present behind, fashion
is blind to a constantly changing modernity.1 As Rovine asserts in this volume,
because fashion is defined by change from what has come before, it is inextri-
cably connected to chronology. Referring to Walter Benjamin (1999: 252),
she argues that even when clothing trends reach into the past for sources of
inspiration, their focus on innovation gives the past “the scent of the modern.”
Teunissen (2005: 19) arguably contradicts herself by explaining modernity in
fashion as a reinterpretation of existing things with current influences and as a
translation into contemporary fabrics and technologies.
According to Teunissen, (2005: 17) what differentiates European from
non-European fashion is that the first always aimed to move away from local
distinctiveness based on tradition in a search for modern cosmopolitanism
while the second would be characterized by local distinctiveness based on
local cultural heritage, but this again is a very Eurocentric interpretation. Susan
Kaiser (2012: 54) argues that European nations view and represent themselves
as “being too complex” to have national fashions. To be modern, after all, she
says, means continual change and progress. This urge for local distinctiveness,
however, is only a relatively recent development as a counter reaction to cultural
globalization and is not limited to the non-West. Since the success of Japanese
fashion designers in the 1980s, and that of the Belgian Six right after, national
identity has become a powerful marketing tool for European fashion designers,
and one’s own local cultural heritage has become a growing source of inspiration
on which to build distinct characteristic national design identities. As Teunissen
(2005: 17–19) explains, this revaluation of one’s own cultural heritage represents
a general melancholy based on a general fear for the loss of local traditions and
craftsmanship due to industrialization and globalization. She argues that the link
with the past becomes more and more direct and the urge for “authenticity” is
remarkably strong.
The contribution by Angela Jansen to this volume clearly illustrates how the
unprecedented success of contemporary Moroccan fashion is due to a revalu-
ation of local cultural heritage following increasing external cultural influences
through processes of globalization. Moroccan culture materialized through
Moroccan fashion has become a brand under the name beldi—meaning
“traditional/local/authentic” in Moroccan Arabic—and has come to represent
everything that is “good” about Morocco. Moroccan fashion plays on people’s
nostalgic longing for nationalism, tradition and authenticity, while simultane-
ously representing promises of change, progress and participation in global
(cultural) discourse. Where beldi only a few years ago was still associated with
INTRODUCTION 15

the countryside, backwardness and old-fashionedness, today, in a rapidly devel-

oping urban society, it allows people to escape for a moment and dream about
Morocco’s glorious past.
Şakir Özüdoğru, however, accuses contemporary Turkish fashion designers
of self-Orientalism because, he argues, they look at their Ottoman cultural
heritage through Westerners’ eyes, presenting it as an exotic fantasy, detached
from its historical and socio-cultural context. Instead of reinterpreting and
modernizing their vestimentary heritage in order to adapt it to contemporary
Turkish society, they rather mystify it with the sole aim of appealing to the inter-
national fashion market. Contrary to many other non-Western fashions, these
designers are primarily aiming at a foreign clientele rather then a local one; this
might have to do with the fact that the “natural” development of Ottoman fashion
was disrupted by the establishment of the Turkish Republic and the subsequent
prohibition of Ottoman fashion in public life.
Furthermore, the use of cultural heritage by contemporary non-Western
fashion designers is not always without protest and controversy, as is well illus-
trated by Turaga Janaki’s contribution on Indian fashion. Consumers of “holy
writing” fashion, she says, cross traditional rules of engagement with the sacred
and take elements of it to the non-sacred domain, which ironically, proclaims
the fashionableness of the wearer, while at the same time proclaiming and
underscoring his or her underlying religious and spiritual beliefs. This concurrent
rediscovery of its rich and diverse heritage, on the one hand, and the ever
increasing exposure to global developments and worldviews, on the other, she
explains, has given rise to multiple frames of reconstruction of the self by objec-
tifying some elements of culture, reframing and appropriating them.

The book
This volume consists of five sections. Part 1 shows that fashion outside of
Europe should not be solemnly seen as a simple result of encounters with
Europe or as a consequence of recent processes of globalization. As Toby
Slade’s contribution demonstrates, in the beginning of the Meiji period (1868–
1912) in Japan and the opening up of the country after centuries of seclusion,
the primary shift in tastes that accompanied early economic and social embour-
geoisement, following the abolition of feudal sumptuary laws, was the adoption
of samurai tastes, previously inaccessible, financially and legally, to other
classes. The ascendancy of finer materials, such as cotton and silk, among the
greater populace and the very fact that choice for the lower classes now existed
(they had the opportunity to formulate new identities and express previously
dormant aesthetic impulses) created the wellspring of modernity in fashion in
16 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Japan. The installation of change as an acceptable and preferable value was,

in the context of Japan, the central formulation of modernity. European fashion
consisting of tailcoats and bustle dresses, at this time only interested a tiny elite
which was keen to demonstrate its nation’s equality with foreign powers. While
Japanese men rapidly adopted the suit—considered exemplary of modernism
because it balanced being true to the body and the clothing without empha-
sizing either one—Japanese women, in contrast, took much longer to adopt
European dress. According to Slade, this was mainly because “the imported
women’s fashions of the 1870s were a profound reaction against modernity
and were consequently immoderately ornamental, anatomically perfidious and
formally arbitrary.”
Christine Tsui uses textual analysis to explore Chinese characters and
vocabularies that are related to fashion to demonstrate that fashion dynamics
in China preceded any significant exchange with Europe. She argues that while
in Europe a “sense of style, fashion, manner of dress” was firstly recorded in
1300, the word “fashion” only came to signify “a popular style of clothes or way
of behaving” in the sixteenth-century. In Chinese, however, there are several
ancient terms that signify something similar, whereby the term Shishizhuang was
first introduced by a Chinese poet who lived between 772 and 846. Initially, it
referred to a particular makeup style for women that was in vogue at the time,
but eventually it evolved into meaning “the prevalent style fit for the time.” The
Chinese term Shiyang, she explains, first appeared in a poem between 1053
and 1102, and implied a similar meaning. This shows that China distinguished
between “prevalent” clothing styles from ordinary ones at a much earlier time
than Europe did and therefore is not a mere nor recent imported European
phenomenon. Unlike Japanese and Korean, which both directly adopted the
pronunciation and transliteration form of the English word “fashion,” Chinese has
its own term for it, shizhuang. The two Chinese characters used signify “clothing
(zhuang) that fits the time (shi).”
Next, the volume builds on Sandra Niessen’s (2003) idea that the classification
of dress as fashionable and traditional is retained by both sides of the divide in
the construction of a conceptual Other for self-definitional purposes. Part 2
focuses on the use of local cultural heritage in the construction of unique fashion
identities. The case studies in this section contribute in a refreshing way to the
discussion about cultural appropriation in fashion, whereby instead of focusing
on how foreign fashion designers tap into non-Western cultures for inspiration
without respecting historical or socio-cultural contexts, these two case studies
illustrate how local designers make use of their own cultural heritage without
necessarily retaining spiritual and/or religious connotations. Janaki Turaga, for
example, analyzes a recent trend of holy writing on fashion.  Although sacred
garments and textiles were initially the esoteric preserve of the initiated and
worn only in culturally prescribed sacred contexts, “secularized sacred” fashion
INTRODUCTION 17

items are now worn in non-sacred contexts to primarily make fashion and
lifestyle statements. Highly popular among the growing middle classes, she
argues that these garments are used to show a presumably perfect combination
of materialism and spiritualism with an aesthetic fashion sense. The simulta-
neous rediscovery of a rich and diverse heritage on the one hand, and the ever
increasing exposure to global developments and worldviews on the other, she
explains, has given rise to multiple frames of reconstruction of the self by objec-
tifying elements of culture.
Jennifer Craik, in her chapter, analyzes exotic narratives in Australian fashion,
in particular, and examines why Western cultures draw both on the exotica
of non-Western cultures as well as past (Western) cultures (e.g. folk cultures,
traditions, historical cultures) to add an element of frisson to everyday culture;
to imbue the everyday with a special—almost magical—quality. Alongside
diverse forms of exotica, she reflects on the ongoing fascination with Aboriginal
motifs in Australian fashion and textiles in a cyclical process of acclamation
followed by renunciation coinciding with periods of nationalistic fervour (Craik
in press). Through avant-garde fashion, she argues, Australian designers have
popularized the sophisticated blending of indigenous and Australiana inspira-
tions in colorful textiles, fashion and artwork. The underpinning of this trend
according to Craik, has been the desire to create a new sense of national culture
in order to reconcile the traditional myth of Australian identity as the bush and
the outback with the recognition of a modern urban culture fanned by the energy
of youth and popular culture. Simultaneously, there has been the politicization of
indigenous culture and the recognition of the sovereignty of Aboriginal people.
As a result, the use of Australiana motifs—especially indigenous ones—has
become increasingly tinged by the overt and implicit politics of inspiration and
appropriation.
In Part 3, the essays focus on discussions concerning self-Orientalism as a
means of establishing a characteristic and distinctive design identity, which in its
turn is used as a powerful marketing tool for nation branding. Self-Orientalism
is defined as a practice of adopting and absorbing a Western gaze to deliber-
ately turn oneself into the Other (Iwabuchi 1994). It can function in two ways:
on the one hand, the characteristics of the East are mythicized and transformed
into national symbols by elevating them to become agents for an international
audience while on the other hand, cultural heritages are transformed through
Western references whereby traces of the past are ignored/progressively erased.
A frequent critique of self-Orientalism is that non-Western designers are looking
at their own past and culture through Westerners’ eyes by mythicizing it and
as such, that they are reproducing the idea that the only way to modernize is
according to Western ideologies (Shih 2001 in Sakir Özüdoğru chapter). This way,
the East contributes just as much to an East–West binary. Sakir Özüdoğru, for
example, argues that Turkish designers are only incorporating Ottoman clothing
18 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

elements in their collections as a commercial strategy to get recognition from the

international fashion scene, without really investing in their socio-cultural values.
He argues that Ottoman clothing is merely used as a visual source of inspiration
by contemporary Turkish fashion designers and that their collections are an
embodiment of Western Orientalism. In the same way that Western designers
are picking from a wide range of cultural sources without referencing, he accuses
contemporary Turkish designers of making anachronistic selections based on
visual characteristics solely rather than conceptualizing their heritage as insiders.
The way he formulates it, “Ottoman clothing is transformed into either pastiche of
the past or ultra modern forms where the past is only an ornamentation.”
Angela Jansen’s chapter, in its turn, focuses on the commodification of
cultural heritage and the growing success of consumption driven by national
identity. In the last decade, Moroccan culture, as materialized through Moroccan
fashion, has become a successful brand under the name beldi, which meets
people’s longing for authenticity, craftsmanship, and national glory. Its unprec-
edented success is related to a general nostalgia for an idealized and fixed
point in time when culture was supposedly untouched by the corruption that
is automatically associated with commercial development. Referencing Marilyn
Halter (2000), the more artificiality, anonymity and uncertainty apparent in a
postmodern world, the more driven is the quest for authentic experiences and
the more people long to feel connected to localized traditions seeking out the
timeless and truth. The fact that these localized traditions are constructed and
invented by contemporary fashion designers does not devaluate the experience.
On the contrary, the fact that these fashion designer continuously modernize
Moroccan fashion by adapting it to continuously changing circumstances, adds
to their success.
Part 4 sets out to contest simple, oppositional and essentialist thinking by
problematizing persisting dichotomies like tradition versus fashion, and local
versus global. Both case studies presented testify in refreshing ways as to
how the global is constructed locally while the local is constructed globally
(Appadurai 1996). Victoria Rovine’s chapter focuses on the local interpretation of
a global commodity. Through the work of two South African fashion designers,
she explores the lives of the plastic containers often called “China bags.” The
life stories of these bags, she argues, illustrate how fashion can be used to
investigate local constructions of modernity that emerge out of global markets
and media, as these humble containers defy their rootlessness to become
deeply local. The work with China bags of the fashion collaborative Strangelove,
she explains, evokes the paradoxical experience of modernity in contemporary
Africa, where the modern is for many an absence and an aspiration. The
China bag is a distinctively modern product, yet it emerges out of a modernity
that might also be past, or just out of reach. Therefore she speaks of a failed
modernity.
INTRODUCTION 19

Emma Dick, in her chapter, analyzes how the development of a curriculum

for “Western-style” tailoring at a training institute in Bhutan in the early 2000s
has influenced the construction of Bhutanese fashion and identity. She
analyzes the relationship between international fashions and national dress
in the construction of a street-style identity in Bhutan. She shows how both
traditional media and new social network technology are playing an important
role in mediating and creating a fashionable Bhutanese identity. On the one
hand, the national press regulates and mediates local concerns about how
to interpret the ruling Buddhist monastic dress code correctly alongside
an emergent discourse of nostalgia for the loss of authentic national dress
practices as older styles of garments become superseded by modern hybrid
garments with stitched elements to emulate the appearance of wrapped and
folded cloth and modern closures and fastenings adopted for reasons of
practical wearability. On the other hand, the same newspapers are encour-
aging their readers to wear stiletto gladiator sandals with their kira, to adopt
Korean-style spectacles and tweed jackets that emulate characters in the
Twilight movie franchize, and advising how to style cardigans imported from
Bangladesh. She argues that the seeming contradictions of change and conti-
nuity, tradition and modernity, are encapsulated by the dual consciousness of
dress in Bhutan.
Finally, the volume concludes with an afterword by Sandra Niessen in which
she focuses on some of the major fallacies of the “global fashion system.” She
argues that the fashion/non-fashion dichotomy is a mystification and a buy-in.
Fashion, she explains, is only a particular case of a universal phenomenon,
a clothing adaptation to a particular economic situation. The Western fasci-
nation with its own clothing system, she says, is reified in the word “fashion”
itself and simply defining it as “change over time” conveys nothing. She
demonstrates that fashion studies have remained narcissistic and that the
fashion history trope is not adapted to accommodate a broader definition of
fashion; rather, she critiques, the Other is admitted in a cursory way without
any clear criteria of selection and no cross-cultural analysis. A serious history
of fashion, she adds, would need to include a self-reflexive and critical evalu-
ation of the development of the concept of fashion. It would need to explore
why definitions and descriptions of fashion have the stubbornness of a mantra
and what is at stake such that fashion’s conventional definition is retained. The
symptoms of the fashion syndrome, she says, increase as the terminology
and biases rooted in the West/rest dichotomy build upon one another. This
powerful conclusion encapsulates the themes and agendas of this volume as
well as being a clarion cry to shape new directions in the future scholarship
on challenges to the hegemony of Western fashion as modernity and tradition
as the past.
20 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Note
1 See also Sarah Cheang, 2013.

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 PART I

FASHION HISTORY
REVISED
 2
NEITHER EAST NOR WEST:
JAPANESE FASHION IN
MODERNITY
TOBY SLADE

Japan occupies a unique position in the study of non-Western fashion as

it was the first non-Western nation to fully engage with euromodernity, and
the first to develop ways to integrate the Western fashion system into its
own fashion system based on its indigenous clothing. The unique history of
Japanese clothing fashions has led to some particular lingering characteristics
in present fashions that do not exist in the same form elsewhere. This chapter
will examine the history of Japanese clothing styles from the end of isolation
of the Edo period, and the sudden influx of foreign clothing from 1868 and the
Meiji period, to the present, with particular attention to the ongoing negotiation
between the Western idea of fashion and the constantly changing native
fashion. While often clearly delineated into indigenous kimono, and foreign or
“Western” clothing, the full story is a much more complex process of negoti-
ating sartorial modernity via both modernizing Japanese traditional clothing
while, at the same time, localizing foreign influences and building a unique dual
structure or “double life,” with two fashion systems operating concurrently at
different levels.
In many ways, Japan is a somewhat artificial example of non-Western
fashion because of the extreme nature of its self-imposed isolation and then the
suddenness of its reopening. However, this artificiality gives a unique vantage
point from which to critique many of the assumptions within contemporary
fashion theory, and also shows that fashion was not a European invention,
and that despite the conceptualization of a monolithic Other threatening a
traditional, static cultural core, it was actually the indigenous kimono fashions
that underwent the largest changes and were the subject of the biggest trends.
Japan engaged with modernity on its own terms and found sartorial forms to
26 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

suit its particular needs, and did not simply replay a European fashion history.
The Japanese example shows clearly the existence of fashion systems in the
complete absence of foreign contact, and also the exponential growth in the
intensity of fashion that comes with modernity. Yet, modernity was an accel-
erant, not a cause of fashion.
Globalization too, always increases the variety of fashion, whether by globali-
zation is meant the trade on the Silk Road or the ubiquity of the Internet, but
it in itself does not create fashion. And, most crucially, the paths of modernity
and globalization are not one-way, from West to East, but rather a complex
network expanding in many directions. The Japanese example also demon-
strates that the distinction between a fashion which emanates from Western
Europe and a traditional, indigenous costume is a false one, as the trends in
Japanese kimono most often outpace the minority foreign fashions. Finally, the
Japanese encounter with foreign fashion helps to demonstrate the previous
gap between the academic discipline of fashion and the actual phenomenon
as lived by the peoples of the world. Academic conveniences, such as the
assumption of a clear hierarchical fashion relationship between an essentialized
West and an essentialized East is shown to be far more complex and difficult to
generalize in a modernizing Japan that defies this, and many other too simplistic
dichotomies.

The reopening of Japan

In the beginning of Meiji period and the sudden opening of Japan to the world
after centuries of seclusion, sartorial modernity was not initially the coveted
dress modality of the modernizing Japanese. In 1868, sartorial modernity
meant tail coats and bustle dresses, and, while this interested a tiny elite,
keen to demonstrate their nation’s equality to foreign powers, the vast majority
were more interested in demonstrating the changing class dynamic. With the
abolishing of feudal sumptuary laws, the primary shift in tastes that accom-
panied early economic and social embourgeoisement was a more conservative
adoption of samurai tastes, previously inaccessible, both financially and legally,
to other classes. The ascendancy of finer materials, such as cotton and silk,
among the greater populace was the background tendency of much of the
Meiji period, and experimentation with tailoring, divided garments, shifting
erogenous display, and other facets of modernity in dress, were left to an
exclusive few. The very fact that choice for the lower classes now existed—that
they had the opportunity to formulate new identities, and express previously
dormant aesthetic impulses—was the wellspring of modernity in fashion.
The installation of change as an acceptable and preferable value was, in the
Neither East Nor West: Japanese Fashion in Modernity 27

context of Japan (where in many ways modernity preceded modernization),

the central formulation of its modernity. The paradox that conservative vesti-
mentary behavior was actually progressive and an act of modernism, as it
denoted a social mobility in which people were self-actualizing, is a central
formulation of modernity in Japanese clothing. At the level of form, however,
the modernist project was a limited phenomenon. The application of Kantian
aesthetic values to sartorial forms, although instituted in formal, male, occupa-
tional dress very early, took a long while to be manifested more widely. This
was not the case in the related comportment modifications of hairstyling and
cosmetics, where their relative accessibility allowed the early manifestation of
naturalism, reductionism, and streamlining—all ventures in achieving a Kantian
truth in form.
While male Japanese dress adopted the suit briskly—and this, it will be
argued, is an exemplary example of modernism, as it balances being true to
the body and the clothing without emphasizing either one—women’s dress
waited a long time before it could assert the same proposition. This is mainly
because the imported women’s fashions of the 1870s were a profound
reaction against modernity, and were consequently immoderately ornamental,
anatomically perfidious, and formally arbitrary. Indigenous women’s styles in
Japan already fulfilled many of these requirements for the reactionary perfor-
mance of femininity in early modernity, which was characterized by the full
weight of display being transferred to women, and male dress demonstrating
seriousness and utility in contrast. It was not until the 1920s that the need
for political emancipation, appropriate mobility, and aesthetic modernity were
finally reflected in female dress. The male adoption of sartorial modernity, by
way of the suit, was only half the story, as the phenomenon of the “double life”
meant that sartorial modernity was adopted only for public life, while private
life, in the home and the leisure quarters, remained partial to traditional dress
forms. The “double life” was partly to do with the practical consideration of
clothing appropriate to furniture and living arrangements. Domestic interior
design remained predominantly traditional until the advent in the 1920s of the
bunka seikatsu (cultured life) and bunka juˉtaku (cultured houses)—which meant
Western-style houses with Western-style furniture (Sand 2003). Desks with
chairs were introduced to the civil service around 1872, making it practical to
wear suits at work, though leisure and home life remained floor-based, and,
thus, at variance with fitted garments, difficult-to-remove shoes, and the other
attributes of Western garb.
 28
MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS
Figure 2.1 Concert of European Music, 1889, Toyohara Chikanobu (1838–1912). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Neither East Nor West: Japanese Fashion in Modernity 29

The invention of tradition

The invention of tradition in the Meiji period, which accompanied the general
inclination of all classes toward samurai tastes and sartorial practices, meant
that indigenous styles were far from stationary, and they adapted dialecti-
cally to the provocation of imported styles. The refinement and adaptation
of “traditional” clothing forms facilitated the construction of Japanese identity
as something both adaptable and modern, and, at the same time, unique
and uncontaminated. The monarchy was often constructed as the pioneer
in this, demonstrating sartorially the military and economic sophistication of
Japan, while at other times stressing the importance of continuity, and racial
and cultural integrity. The invention of dress practice and its authentication
as “traditional” was the primary engine of early Meiji reinvention, once the
sumptuary laws were lifted and the newly permitted importation of cheaper
fabrics, mainly from China, allowed the bulk of the population to reinvent itself
as much closer to samurai styles than before (Minnich 1963; Rathbun 1993).
This realignment of class tastes was not limited to dress, but also permeated
custom, morality, and ritual, with the result that while the economic currents
moved toward embourgeoisement, the cultural currents moved, at least
initially, toward “samuraization.” The cultural confines of “samuraization,” as
they were codified in the Meiji period, allowed participation in it with limited
means; stoicism, abstemiousness, and Zen-restraint being key features in the
abstract that easily translated into consumption patterns, interior design, and
conventions of sartorial array.
In Japanese fashion, in general, sartorially avant-garde practice was at odds
with early social trends. The move toward modernity in dress, which can be
generally defined as a Kantian veracity in forms of dress, did not become the
predominant trend until the Taishoˉ period, even, perhaps for the vast majority,
until after the Second World War (Hirano and Chen 1993). Modernity was not
the dominant tendency and it was not performed by traditionally avant-garde
sections of the populace: the adoption of suits was a state-instituted fashion
among the political and bureaucratic elite, normally a very sartorially conservative
group. Later styles were promulgated by the mobo (modern boys) and moga
(modern girls) urban youth, another demographic not considered economically
endowed, or socially liberated enough to act as a generator of sartorial trends,
until after the youth-quakes of the 1960s. Top-down formulations of fashion
were inapplicable in both cases, with only the Imperial Household as an example
of elite provision of vestimentary models, and even that was highly unusual use
of a monarchy, as an engine of progressive reform rather than conservative
continuity.
 30
MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS
Figure 2.2 A Garden Refreshed by the Passing Rain, 1888, Toyohara Chikanobu (1838–1912). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Neither East Nor West: Japanese Fashion in Modernity 31

The Rokumeikan Period

In 1883, Japan built an entertaining hall in the style of a Western casino,
where the most elite levels of government would host foreign guests, dress in
perfect Japanese versions of Western fashions, and dance perfect Japanese
versions of Western dances, with the idea of impressing foreign dignitaries
and making them feel among equals. The construction of the Rokumeikan,
and its employment as a means of demonstrating cultural sophistication and
adaptability through carefully replicated dress and the more formal leisure
customs of international diplomacy in the 1870s, was an example of deliberate
and politically motivated sartorial modernity. Perhaps because early sartorial
modernity was merely a political maneuver, born of anxiety about the unequal
treaty arrangements and put into place as a calculated demonstration of
cosmopolitanism, it lacked the validity to be considered a real tendency toward
modernity in Japanese culture. Yet, though the Rokumeikan was a failure in
its political objective of restoring equality to the treaty arrangements of Japan
through charm alone, it was a defining product of the particular experience of
early modernity of the Meiji political elite, whose members were fascinated by
American and European culture and technology, and particularly enthusiastic
about a cultural program which equated modernization with westernization.
As a sartorial event that went against the general tendency of samuraization
in early modern Japan, early sartorial modernity can be considered an avant-
garde dress experiment, conducted by the educated and newly empowered
political elite. Besides early sartorial modernity’s limitation to a very small class,
and, especially in the case of women’s dress, its later repudiation, there are
also reservations that can be made regarding the concept of the “double life,”
in which sartorial modernity was limited to public and formal life, but was also
deliberately prevented from infiltration into other areas like leisure activities or
the home. This was perhaps part of a cultural strategy which the Japanese
adopted, consciously or unconsciously, to limit the potency of foreign cultural
influence, in reaction to the rapidity of the arrival of external cultural ideas. The
designation of certain foreign cultural practices as “play” enables a divide to
be maintained between what is Japanese and what is foreign. It permanently
positions some customs as non-serious, and perhaps even not real, which
prevents them from ever being fully assimilated into authentic Japanese
culture. This strategy for maintaining a kind of cultural purity, or a veneer
thereof, is something that continues to exist in various forms.
The events that ran counter to the general trends, or were decades ahead
of where those general trends would eventually lead (and thus avant-garde),
were in general performed by groups that can be seen to have been non-typical
when compared to sartorial avant-gardes elsewhere. This was partially the
32 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

result of the unique class arrangements and conceptualizations in Japan,

and the swiftness with which these arrangements had to attune themselves
to modernity. Also critically significant was the threat to notions of Japanese
identity and self-conception posed by the inundation of anomalous forms and
superior technologies that came with the reopening of the country, and the
rejoinder to this threat. Avant-garde sartorial events were at odds with general
tendencies, and further, they were performed by atypical avant-gardes, meaning
that the groups that were dressing in ways ahead of their time were different to
groups in other countries because of the particular historical and social circum-
stances. Civil servants were producing and giving form to a modern nation state,
and their clothed appearances were part of that agenda; yet the Taishoˉ period’s
modern boys’ and modern girls’ only product was themselves. They were avant-
garde in the displaying and the being, not in the production of works: they were
existentially modern. Furthermore, and critically for modernity, they were free
and responsible sartorial agents who determined their own dress development
through acts of will.
There is a clear distinction between the conscious actions of the creators
and the wearers of the garments of modern Japan and the long-term trends
displayed by clothing, which do not appear to result from these short-term
intentions. The implication is that a history of Japanese clothing would have
to be very different from a history of singular events that were the outcome of
individual intentions and actions. Causality in dress would, like physics, seem
to operate differently at particular universal levels. Though it would perhaps be
possible to formulate sartorial mechanisms in which ontogeny recapitulates
phylogeny; sartorial modernity is, in general, defined by the extreme reactions
against its core aesthetic agenda, and thus ontogenetic and phylogenetic
properties are largely incommensurate (Haeckel 1992). The links between
sartorial events and sartorial tendencies often simply reflect a relationship of
sequence rather than one of causality and perhaps an understandable desire
for an aesthetic dimension to the creation of aesthetic theory; finding patterns
in the randomness of sartorial happenings—the beauty of those patterns being
more often prescribed than inherent.

New materials
The fact that certain previously unavailable materials became available is a
concrete and measurable change, as definite a change as the introduction of
oil pigments was in the history of painting; and the immediate and dramatic
challenge to attitudes to the body, how and when it should be covered, and
whether or not clothing should echo or deny its form, are foundational to the
Neither East Nor West: Japanese Fashion in Modernity 33

history of Japanese sartorial modernity, and are, perhaps, anterior to other

formal causalities. In all discussions of causality, free will in sartorial choice is
still assumed, and the phenomenon this chapter attempts to explain is the
correlation of parallel choices made by Japanese dressers endowed with
free will that add up to fashions, not super-organic structures that dictate the
aesthetic patterns to the wearers of clothing, nor evolutionary models, nor
purely economic models (Hanks and Kroeber 1940).
Identity and its opposite—syncretic randomness—form the central, but not
exclusive, narrative of sartorial causality in modern Japan. The defining factor
of modernity was not any form taken by that identity, or form defined as its
opposite, but the degree to which that identity became transformable. This
is not to say that one could not be sartorially self-actualizing in Edo times,
but rather that the scope and magnitude for it increased exponentially within
the conditions of modernity, such that it can be perceived as an explicating
element (Nishiyama and Groemer 1997). The way in which events were used to
influence tendencies is part of the larger nation-building narrative of how modern
Japan became ethnically and culturally homogeneous, or more properly, how
the idea of ethnic and cultural homogeneity came to be a defining feature of
Japanese national identity even in the face of manifest heterogeneity. The way
in which clothing is used as a vessel for identity and its myriad variances is, in
essence, a Kantian process of liberation, of movement from arbitrary to self-
actualizing custom. Sartorial modernity, like modernity itself, is often defined
by its extreme divergence from modernity’s aesthetic agenda, as many of its
dominant forms were reactionary with regard to this agenda (Mitchell 2005). The
events of Japanese vestimentary modernization were thus often antithetical to
the long-term tendencies that finally elucidated it, and while sartorial modernity
ultimately prevailed, it was, for much of the period of modernization in Japan, a
partial, minority, or elitist affair.

The traditional and the new for artisitic

expression
Artists were among the first groups to engage with the unfamiliar approaches
to the human form—representing and clothing it. Responsible for visualizing
values, they were intensely invested in the debate over the future of Japanese
culture and the place of the body within it. With the enormous wave of cultural
influence that accompanied the reopening of Japan, designers of all kinds
faced a choice between adapting old forms and motifs now reified as tradition,
or using the new Western techniques and patterns identified with progress.
Making art necessitated choosing a style, and since styles were affiliated with
34 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

either Japanese or Western modes, to make art was to make a statement

about culture. This same choice was experienced every day for all Japanese
citizens with resources, at the moment of dressing and every time they
shopped for clothing. It was not the choice faced in Western Europe between
tradition and reform or within the parameters of popular fashions; it was a
much more important choice at a more fundamental stage of self-identification.
Isozaki Arata, the architect of the planned city, Tsukuba, in Ibaraki, said that
once you make a foundational choice about what style something will be, all
subsequent choices become easier as they are directed by that first choice
(Miyoshi and Harootunian 1989). In choosing a sartorial style, Meiji Japan faced
a similar dilemma, as did its visual artists.
The art form with the highest profile was painting, and painters were, in this
period of unprecedented cultural instability, faced with a stark hermeneutic
choice between two modes, based primarily on their choice of materials but
also upon style and cultural affiliation. These two modes were yoˉga, or Western
painting, and nihonga, or Japanese painting. Yoˉga artists worked in oil and
watercolors, were oriented toward Europe and essentially accepted modernity
as the new guiding force of artistic expression. Nihonga artists worked in tradi-
tional pigments and formats, taking their primary inspiration from the Japanese
past, and denying the value of foreign forms and the capacity for hybrids. A
handful of artists worked in both modes, but generally they were exclusive
categories. Within yoˉga and nihonga are a welter of different affiliations and
styles, ranging from the progressive to the conservative. Yet, on the whole, yoˉga
was by its very nature associated with stylistic evolution and perhaps derivation,
as a steady stream of young artists sought to keep pace with the avant-garde
modes emerging from Paris (Brown and Minichiello 2001). Nihonga, by contrast,
was inherently charged with finding, defining and refining values different from,
and often existing prior to, those imported from the West. Indeed, the issue of
dramatic evolution was a bone of contention in nihonga theorizing.
Another variable in painting choice was the subject. Standard nihonga
subject categories include landscape, bird, and flower, and the figure, which
includes historical subjects, literary themes, genre, and portraiture. Historical
subjects, like portraits of famous persons, tend to favor males, especially
political leaders and military heroes. Literary and genre scenes are balanced
between both sexes. But females alone comprise the long-sanctioned East
Asian painting category of bijinga, or “pictures of beautiful women.” European
art had, from the Renaissance, a re-engagement with humanism and the body,
yet Japanese notions of the body, how it could be depicted and covered, were
within nihonga—as perhaps with the kimono—extremely stylized.
Several artists of the nihonga painting elite specialized in bijinga, devoting
their careers to representing women in stylized ways. Implicitly these artists
entered the national dispute on the rise of the “new woman” (atarashii onna)
Neither East Nor West: Japanese Fashion in Modernity 35

and of feminine styles, or social roles, as indices of cultural identity where

clothing was a principal battleground. Some formulated elaborate taxonomies of
historical evolution and regional distinctions in canons of feminine beauty; others
sought subtle variations in feminine emotions and values (Davis 2010). Bijinga
specialists, many of whom started as illustrators, often had their work published
in newspapers and magazines and reinforced conservative corporeal values in
the mass media. Those with literary skills also frequently contributed essays
to popular publications, debating the subject of women, largely without the
influence of women themselves. And bijinga painters of sufficient repute even
served on public committees, charged with suggesting social policy concerning
women. Bijinga artists did not merely reflect prevailing opinions about women;
they helped to craft those opinions (Sato 2003).

The representation and clothing of women

In a multiplicity of ways, women and their situation and appropriate represen-
tation were at the very core of social and cultural tension and anxiety in late
Meiji and Taishoˉ Japan. It was a common historical sentiment of the era that
“women could not enter public space without arousing anxiety about their
presence” (Mackie 2003). It was irrefutable that men had a self-evident stake in
modernity with an equivalent sartorial expression, as a consequence of having
to work in the new economy and wear the clothes appropriate to the milieu of
modern employment in the factory or office. Women’s participation in the project
of modernization, however, was a far thornier matter. In a favorite Meiji formu-
lation, the nation’s goal was the adaptation of Western technology to preserve
the Japanese spirit and the manifestation of this as clearly gendered. For the
average urban male, modernization was mandatory. But for females—emblems
of that native essence—westernization was inherently problematic. In the
dispute over the fate of Japanese culture in the modern age, women’s bodies
and lives thus constituted “contested spaces.”
This contest was often played out between two antithetical images of
women. On one hand, the modern girl (modan gaaru, or moga)—sporting
pumps, a short dress, and bobbed hair, and conspicuous in such modern
spaces as cafés and urban streets—represented, at the least, an enchantment
with the material surface of Western modernity. She also held the promise or
threat of cultural and sexual liberation, and the possibility of militant social action
(Bernstein 1991; Vlastos 1998; Clark and Tipton 2000). On the other hand, the
traditional woman—championed in official ideology as “good wife, wise mother”
(Ryo sai kenbo), and belonging to the space of the home—stood guard over
conventional values sanctioned by Confucian and Victorian morality alike. These
36 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

poles in the debate represent politico-cultural ideologies, aesthetic choices and

even marketing strategies, all played out predominantly on the bodies of women
and their clothing.
Between these compelling opposites of radical modernity and reactionary
tradition was a rich and passionate middle ground, where the styles and values
of the moga and the good wife/wise mother mingled. This culturally composite
woman was largely the product of a sophisticated capitalistic society, where
ideology was not simply expressed through visual style, but also could be wholly
transformed into style as fashion—all the better to market it to followers who
were also consumers. For instance, the June 1926 issue of Shizeidoˉ geppoˉ,
published by cosmetics firm Shizeidoˉ, included an article on the modern girl,
emphasizing the coiffure, clothing, and cosmetics required to achieve the moga
look (Shizeido 1926).

Assimilating radical difference

It is a feature common to both capitalism and fashion that they assimilate, rather
than repudiate challenges to them. Anti-fashion is constantly being taken up
by mainstream fashion; the rebellion commodified and neutralized. Japanese
fashion does this as well: Shizeidoˉ turning the moga from a dangerous challenge
to female values and social position into merely a look, to be copied and then
forgotten as with all fashions. There is also an element in Japanese magazines,
even today, that tends to make them instructional, where it is presupposed that
anyone can achieve any look, rather than expressing restrictions or exclusivity of
fashions based in class envy. With a more highly developed tradition of aristo-
cratic differentiation through clothing, the West developed magazines within
Thorstein Veblen’s framework of conspicuous consumption; for the aristocracy
to remain visually differentiated from the rising middle classes, it had to change
fashions fast enough to keep ahead of the aspirants (Veblen 1899). Japan,
proudly egalitarian now—at least nominally—never had as much of a system
of visual differentiation as European aristocracies. Non-samurai were simply
not permitted to wear samurai clothing before the Meiji Restoration, and with
the abolition of these laws in the 1870s, a new visual system was established
around issues of tradition and modernity, rather than simply of class. Like the
merchant classes of Europe, Japanese merchants had developed a system
through which they could subtly demonstrate their wealth through items like silk
linings, but they were not permitted to actually imitate their samurai superiors.
Certainly, after the Restoration and the abolition of the sumptuary laws, it was
only those with means who could afford the new clothing, but merchant and
ruling classes wore the same thing. When Japan had a fashion trend, it was
Neither East Nor West: Japanese Fashion in Modernity 37

embraced universally, rather like Louis Vuitton handbags today: everyone has
one, so it no longer distinguishes social class, it simply signifies luxury, but
universally accessible luxury (Kyojiro 2003). Fashion was a modern desire for
visual newness in Japan, not a means of class differentiation, because Japanese
national identity was, and is, configured differently from identity in the West,
where class was, and perhaps still is, more central.
Related to this tendency in Japanese fashion there is also a tendency
to reduce threats to established order to play—a strategy of fashion and of
capitalism. Sadism and masochism is called S/M play, the play part neutral-
izing any of the Marquis de Sade’s original provocations to the norms of sex,
marriage, and transgression (Krafft-Ebing and Frye 1965). In this way, foreign
concepts, which could present a challenge to Japanese culture and norms,
are put linguistically into an experimental, and non-serious category, where
their threat is reduced. The playfulness of the terms mobo and moga hide
the seriousness of their potential challenge to established order and social
behavior.
Whereas the dialectics of modernity and tradition, foreign and indigenous,
comprised the basic formulation for cultural criticism in Taishoˉ Japan, there was
as much of an attempt to bridge these categories as an attempt to fix or fortify
them. Theoretically, the modern girl was defined in part by the difference she
presented from pre- or anti-modern female styles and behaviors. Yet, because
of the bridging, there was no absolute fracture between old and new, and thus
the categories were not mutually exclusive but rather contingent. The concepts
of modernity and tradition were hybrids, or at least heterogeneous constructs
subject to modification. Not surprisingly, there were both formal efforts to
deflect the potentially subversive qualities of the moga, by making her more like
a traditional woman, and spontaneous attempts to find formal commonalities.
Likewise, even as the Japanese-style woman (wasoˉ bijin) was being crafted as
an antidote or counterbalance to the moga, there were also attempts to infuse
her with the vitality of the modern girl.

Kimono dynamics
Japanese clothing before the 1860s was almost entirely confined to indigenous
fashions, a restriction strictly policed by the state with only a few exceptions
among rich, traveled eccentrics. Essentially, the indigenous fashions consisted
of many varieties of the kimono, the loosely fitted robe worn with a broad belt,
made of silk, mixed silk and cotton, just cotton or linen. The kimono itself was
an outgrowth of a kind of under garment called kosode and worn by the upper
class between the eighth and twelfth centuries. This gradually became an
38 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

outer garment—in a process reminiscent of the European process described

by Koda and Martin of underwear becoming outerwear as social formalities
evolved—and the basic style and form was fairly well set by the fourteenth
century (Martin and Koda 1993). Warmth was achieved in Japan by adding
layers of clothes and also by padding the garments with raw cotton or silk. Until
the end of the fifteenth century, linen from flax had been the most popular fiber,
but from that point on, the growing cotton industry increasingly reduced the use
of linen. The silk industry developed from the end of the sixteenth century, yet
silk always remained a luxury of the rich, and the sumptuary regulations—which
were abolished after the Meiji Restoration—restricted its use to the samurai and
noble classes, which accounted for well under 10 percent of the population
(other classes, notably the merchants and rich farmers, frequently violated these
regulations, using silk as a lining, and other means of subtly demonstrating
growing wealth and refinement.) There is no reliable quantitative information
for this period, but it is generally agreed that just before the Meiji Restoration,
the average Japanese would have worn some form of cotton or linen kimono,
while a rich person might have been clad in silk. At this time, woolens were
very rarely manufactured in Japan—indeed, they were almost unknown (Smith
1955). Some woolen and worsted fabrics (such as Raxa and Grofgren) had
been introduced at the end of the sixteenth century by Spanish, Portuguese,
and Dutch merchants, but the closing of the country by Tokugawa Iemitsu, in
1639, to anything but very limited Dutch and Chinese commerce prevented
this importation from developing. Until the Restoration, wool remained a luxury
commodity, used only by the richest nobles for accessories—in much the way
that furs might have been used in Europe (Smith 1955).
Among the first Japanese to adopt Western clothing, albeit only in the form
of military uniforms, were the officers and men of some units of the shogunal
army and navy. Some time in the 1850s, these men adopted woolen uniforms
in the style of those worn by English marines stationed at Yokohama. Producing
these uniforms could not have been an easy matter. All of the cloth had to be
imported, and tailors had to be trained in the comparatively difficult art of fitting
Western-style suits (Soˉmuchoˉ Toˉkeikyoku and Nihon Toˉkei Kyoˉkai 1987).
The indigenous kimono, being a loose garment, presented no particular
problems of cutting and fitting, and until recently, most Japanese women were
capable of putting these garments together entirely by hand. Kimonos are made
from one long, rectangular length of cloth cut into eight pieces; the pattern is the
same for everyone, male or female, child or adult. Every inch of cloth is used,
with no waste. No matter how efficiently an article of Western clothing is cut,
when fitted clothing is produced there will be pieces from which nothing can be
made. No buttons or hooks or other gadgets are needed to hold the kimono on:
the obi—the band or sash tied around the waist—is sufficient. This means that
when the garment is put on it can be adjusted for the wearer’s girth and height.
Neither East Nor West: Japanese Fashion in Modernity 39

As already stated, the kimono creates a certain understanding of the body, as

something to be wrapped. Western garments require a much closer individual
fit, and the Japanese needed special training in order to become Western-style
tailors—tailoring here meaning the English tradition of bespoke design: having
the clothes customized to the particular body became the prime European
male sartorial criterion. In the late 1850s and the 1860s, a few foreign tailors
catered to the small foreign settlements in Yokohama and Kobe. Some of these
establishments took Japanese apprentices, and they in turn became the first
native entrepreneurs in this trade. By 1886, the Association of Merchants and
Manufacturers of Western Suits, founded in Tokyo, already had 123 members
(O.A.M.T.W.S 1930). In 1890, the first style-book (fukusoˉ zasshi) was issued,
designed to introduce the newest fashions of Europe to tailors and the public.
Some sewing machines had been in use since the 1860s, and in 1887, a
special sewing machine school was founded in Tokyo, mainly for the benefit of
apprentice tailors. The Singer Co. established a school, also in Tokyo, in 1907,
and here the students were largely housewives and young girls (Bissell 1999).
Perhaps the most significant aspect of this early adoption of Western styles was
its public origin. For quite a while the public sector remained the major champion
of the new garb, reflecting the aesthetic dimension of the political agenda of
modernization.

State policy on Western dress

The Meiji Restoration of 1868 established in Japan a strong central government,
committed to abolishing feudalism and eager to use westernization as a model
for political, economic and cultural development—the idea of development itself
being the operative aspiration of modernity. These policies were reflected in the
clothes in which the members of the new government chose to be seen. When
the Duke of Edinburgh visited Japan, in 1869, the Imperial Court decided to
receive him in formal Western dress. In 1870, navy cadets were ordered to wear
British-style uniforms, while army cadets followed the French model (Harries and
Harries 1991). The turn of policemen and mailmen came in 1871, and that of
workers on the sole national railway line, running between Tokyo and Yokohama,
in 1872.
During 1871, debate commenced as to whether the principles of sartorial
reform should be extended to ministers of the central government and members
of the court (Irokawa 1985). The issue was whether, to what extent and at what
occasions, senior officials of the central and local government should wear
Japanese or Western dress. The agenda of wider westernization prevailed,
and an imperial rescript of that year reflected the official view: the court was
 40
MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS
Figure 2.3 Nobility in the Evening Cool, 1887, Toyohara Chikanobu (1838–1912). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Neither East Nor West: Japanese Fashion in Modernity 41

ordered to abandon its Sinicized costumes—they were considered effeminate

and un-Japanese—and courtiers and bureaucrats were urged to adopt Western
clothing; it was thought that this was much more practical and would demon-
strate their new alignment with Western rather than Chinese civilization (Hirano
and Chen 1993). The government had the Emperor speak as follows:

“The national polity [kokutai] is indomitable, but manners and customs should
be adaptable. We greatly regret that the uniform of our court has been
established following the Chinese custom, and it has become exceedingly
effeminate in style and character […] The Emperor Jimmu [660–585 BCE]
who founded Japan, and the Empress Jingu [201–269 CE] who conquered
Korea, were not attired in the present style. We should no longer appear
before the people in these effeminate styles, and we have therefore decided
to reform dress regulations entirely” (O.A.M.T.W.S 1930).

The emphasis was on the new adaptability that the state would require of
the people in order for Japan to modernize and remain independent, and it was
recognized that the reform of simple sartorial customs—the fundamental marker
and means of enacting individual and collective identity—would be a crucial
instrument in effecting this required malleability. The evocation of Emperor
Jimmu illustrates the State’s willingness to enlist and manipulate history and
custom and reinvent it in the service of fostering nationalism and expedient, if
untrue, collective memory.
When, in 1877, the new conscript armies of the central government faced
the last internal challenge to the new regime during the Satsuma Rebellion,
they were dressed in woolen uniforms while the insurgents wore the traditional
cottons and silks of the samurai. The symbolic aspects of the battle were
probably clear to both victor and vanquished. Thus, by the 1880s, European
clothing fashions had conquered some small but symbolically important corners
of the market, and their influence was spreading slowly—mainly from the top
down (Hirano and Chen 1993). The higher echelons of society in Tokyo started
to frequent European-style entertainments—social dances, garden parties,
musicales—and the men would often appear in tuxedos, or other forms of
European evening dress. At the time foreigners had extraterritorial rights in
Japan, and the government believed, perhaps naively, that the rapid spread of
Western manners and dress would enable it to get rid of the unequal treaties by
simply demonstrating Japan’s level of civilization and ability to adapt to European
customs. In line with this policy, the government sponsored, beginning in 1883,
a variety of nightly social affairs at the Rokumeikan, a Western-style building in
Tokyo. These affairs were attended by foreigners and high-class Japanese, all in
Western dress. Some department stores also opened Western-dress sections
at this time (Shirokoya 1957). The Empress and ladies of the court began to
42 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

be seen in dresses. During this decade, the Ministry of Education ordered that
Western-style student uniforms be worn in public colleges and universities;
private universities followed only at a much later date (Reischauer 1957).
Businessmen, teachers, doctors, bankers, and other leaders of the new society
made use of Western suits by the end of the nineteenth century, mainly at work
or at large social functions, and in 1898, the total consumption of woolen fabrics
reached about 3,000,000 yards, almost all imported from England and Germany
(Toˉyoˉ Keizai Shimpoˉ sha Tokyo [from old catalogue] and Ishibashi 1935).

The early twentieth century

By the early years of the twentieth century—about thirty years after the
Restoration—Western dress had become a symbol of social dignity and progres-
siveness, an accepted symbol of civic progress. In addition, it was usually a
reasonably good indication of public employment. The victory in the Russo–
Japanese War (1904–5), and the economic boom associated with it, turned
the eyes of Japan even more toward Europe, as the Japanese had proved to
themselves and the world that they were able to defeat a European power,
and somewhat broadened the narrow circle of people using wool and Western
suits. It is necessary to underline how limited the use of this type of dress still
was at that time. The vast majority of Japanese stuck to their own styles, within
which fashion systems had begun to operate in the modern sense, and even
those few who, voluntarily or involuntarily, changed to “modern” dress replaced
it when they returned home, with the more (physically and mentally) comfortable
kimono. Japanese interiors were impractical for Western clothing until the later
trend toward European furniture. Western dress in public, and Japanese dress
at home, remained the general rule for a very long time (Uenoda 1956).
At the beginning of the twentieth century, a development of much greater
long-range consequence was taking place within indigenous Japanese styles.
Western clothing was confined to a small elite, but the nature of indigenous
clothing was also affected by the new times. From the turn of the century,
woolens and worsteds showed their real gains, not in the narrow demand
for Western suits but in the adoption of these materials for the kimono. Thus,
the experience of sartorial modernism was, for many, not one of form, body
and movement change but one of textural change. In line with the general
samuraization of tastes, many adopted what the ruling class had already known
about for some time.
Almost up to the time of the First World War, from the point of view of the
majority of Japanese, there was no general westernization of clothes but rather
a gradual adoption of a new fiber, wool, together with a continued use of silk
Neither East Nor West: Japanese Fashion in Modernity 43

and cotton. The people had become acquainted with wool, but there were still
two enormous obstacles to the more widespread use of Western fashions: the
Japanese continued to prefer their own styles, and wool remained compara-
tively expensive. There were always cheaper substitutes among traditional
clothes. Among other things, the kimono has the advantage of lasting much
longer than Western clothes. Styles—usually designs of the cloth, not designs
of the clothes—change less frequently, and since the garment is loose, it can
fit successive generations of wearers (Hanley 1997). Since the mid-Tokugawa
period, there had been many used clothing shops in Edo, and business was so
brisk that people began stealing clothing to sell it, precipitating an unsuccessful
attempt to close down the market in 1724. By the eighteenth century, whole-
salers of used clothing emerged; and the volume of trade was huge (Itō 1982).
The standardization of the kimono made this trade much more vibrant than the
trade in used clothing in Europe and America; when you can fit into anything on
display, the opportunities for consumption greatly increase. This fact reduced
accessibility to Western clothing through the traditional channel of traders in
second-hand clothes.

Economic boom and earthquake

The Japanese economy underwent extremely rapid development during the
First World War, and this was a great stimulus to the westernization of national
life. Among what might be called the “smart set,” the slogan bunka seikatsu—
literally, cultured or civilized life, actually meaning a Western style of life—began
to be heard. These people craved bunka juˉtaku (cultured houses), bunka shoku
(cultured food), and bunka fuku (cultured clothes), and all this meant the same
thing—that European and American customs were considered superior (Clark
and Tipton 2000). While this may have been the general opinion, reinforced by
the arrival of Hollywood cinema and the like, the actual result was the creation
of an abundance of stylistic hybrids in these areas which better suited the
Japanese experience of modernity than either the indigenous or the foreign
models. These tendencies continued in the 1920s, and spread considerably
due to the Great Kantoˉ Earthquake of 1923 (Jansen 1995). The disaster almost
completely destroyed Tokyo and Yokohama, the largest metropolitan complex
in the country, and this tragic event caused something of a turning point in
Japanese fashion history. Over 700,000 dwellings were levelled, and millions
lost all their possessions—including their clothes (Seidensticker 1991). Many
victims replaced their clothing with a larger proportion of Western items, in part
because the pattern of demand had slowly shifted to a greater emphasis on
this type of fashion, and also because it was said that the kimono had proved
44 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

dangerous during the quake since its long sleeves and train prevented rapid
movement. Even though the latter allegation was not very plausible—after all,
the Japanese had long experience with both earthquakes and kimonos—it may
well have affected popular tastes. Also in the 1920s, primary and secondary
school students contributed to increased westernization as, after the Great
Kantoˉ Earthquake, many of the schools adopted plain, blue serge, Western-
style uniforms, and the popularity of social dancing and gymnastics intensified
the tendencies to westernization.
Until the 1930s, however, the majority of Japanese still continued to wear
the kimono, and Western clothes were still pretty much restricted to public,
non-domestic use by certain classes. Since most Japanese women were still
largely confined to the home, a large potential market was eliminated. Even when
Japanese women began to appear more frequently as members of the labor
force, either in industry or in service occupations, they usually remained in the
kimono. It is true that the conductresses on Tokyo’s municipal buses changed
to Western wool uniforms in 1924, but that was an exception (Nakagawa 1986).
Wherever Japanese women worked—in department stores, offices, bars, as
telephone operators or factory workers—they usually performed their tasks in
kimonos, if necessary covered with aprons and dusters. It was another disaster
that provoked a big conversion in women’s dress.
The general trend toward Western dress in the 1930s is explainable in more
rational terms. By that time, most of the people had worn Western-style school
or army uniforms, and presumably had acquired a kind of taste, or habit for fitted
and divided clothes. From 1873, all able-bodied Japanese men had to serve
three years in the army, and four years in the reserves, wearing Western-style
uniforms, and living in Western-style barracks. In addition, the stature of young
Japanese men and women had also changed—their very bodies had become
more modern through diet and lifestyle. They had grown taller, their legs were
longer and the women’s busts were a little larger, and this made new styles more
flattering. For example, in 1900, the average 20-year-old male was 160 cm tall
and the average female 147.9 cm tall. By 1940, they were 164.5 and 152.7 cm
tall, respectively (Japan. Soˉmuchoˉ. Toˉkeikyoku. and Nihon Toˉkei Kyoˉkai. 1987).
Furthermore, Western fashions themselves—especially women’s fashions—had
changed. The skirts were shorter and the sleeves narrower, increasing the
comparative advantage of dresses vis-à-vis the kimono if one wanted to lead a
more active life. Western fashions for women changed, from the reaction away
from modernity in the Victorian era, toward more modern forms. Meanwhile,
the woolen and worsted industries had experienced considerable growth—they
were now more productive and the real price of woolen textiles had declined
(Smitka 1998). As a result of all these factors, by the outbreak of the Second
World War, most working women in Japan, and quite a few housewives, wore
Western dress. The same was true of the men working in offices or factories.
Neither East Nor West: Japanese Fashion in Modernity 45

Already, in the 1920s, the Western suit had reached the upper classes in the
provincial cities, and, in the 1930s, it was ubiquitous in general business circles.
Male work clothes also reflected the Westernizing influences. Cotton, woolen, or
worsted work clothes, following Western patterns, were used in most factories
and the use of bicycles for delivery and message purposes contributed in no
small measure to the wearing of pants. The group least affected by all of these
changes must have been the farmers, who still made up over 40 percent of the
gainfully occupied population in the late 1930s (Hirano and Chen 1993). More
importantly, however, at home, in the cities and the country, most Japanese
continued to relax, eat and sleep in their indigenous clothes.

Foreign fads and superficial engagement

The adoption of aspects of Western material culture was for the most part
superficial and took the form of short-lived fads well into the twentieth century.
The changes that occurred during the early Meiji period—carrying Western
umbrellas or wearing Western shawls with traditional kimonos—were primarily
changes of style and did not really constitute a radical cultural shift. It is inter-
esting that Japan, superficially one of the most faddish nations when it comes
to fashion, is also extremely slow to abandon traditions—as with “S/M play,”
fashions are viewed as play and are engaged with on a superficial level only,
with any contexts or deeper meanings or social challenges being ignored. This
argument has often been made at a linguistic level (Hogan 2003). The distance
at which Japan keeps foreign influence, is also clear in the katakana alphabet
used exclusively for foreign words, which are not allowed to be absorbed into the
Japanese language; thus, foreign and indigenous are immediately distinguished,
just as gender is immediately distinguished in European. While the argument
is not without flaws and exceptions, it still has merit for demonstrating, if only
partly, this phenomenon of keeping foreign influence in a separate category, to
distinguish it from what is considered essentially Japanese.
Because of the early preference for the larger income of the middle and
lower classes in the Meiji period to be spent on a samuraization, consumption
patterns tended to favor many local products (Hanley 1997). Increases in the
standard of living resulted, by and large, in a greater demand for traditional
goods, and this went toward stabilizing the economy, as it meant that the
producers of traditional goods did not suddenly find themselves out of work
or technologically obsolete—the textile industry is a good example. The new
large-scale textile factories produced cloth that was too wide for the kimono, so
that, while they contributed to an increase in the consumption of cotton cloth
for other purposes, they also enabled the survival of the traditional industry
 46

Figure 2.4 A Contest of Elegant Ladies among the Cherry Blossoms, 1887, Toyohara Chikanobu (1838–1912). The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York.
MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS
Neither East Nor West: Japanese Fashion in Modernity 47

that produced the material for the kimono. Furthermore, consumer preference
for traditional goods meant that the country did not spend its valuable foreign
currency on consumer goods during the early stages of industrialization (Hanley
and Yamamura 1977). This was particularly important for Japan, which not only
set out on its industrialization with a somewhat lower per capita income than
that of Western nations, but was also nearly a century behind England, when it
began to industrialize.
The impetus for the eventual diffusion of new lifestyles and of a preference
for new goods can be attributed to a large degree to the military. Just as the
Sengoku Wars transformed life in the sixteenth century, the Sino–Japanese and
Russo–Japanese wars, at the turn of the twentieth century, transformed life in
the Meiji period. The adoption of cotton for military use by the Sengoku daimyo
led to its diffusion among the population as the favored material for clothing.
So, too, the soldiers’ contact with Western uniforms, mainly woolen, and foods
helped create a demand for such goods, when the troops returned home after
the wars with China and Russia.

Conclusion
As the first non-European or non-American nation to engage with euromodernity,
including modernity in clothing fashions, Japan had no model of how to navigate
the dilemmas of indigenous and imported styles. The solution of essentially
parallel fashion developments, a double life, was in keeping with Japan’s entire
approach to modernization. Japan attempted to preserve cultural aspects,
while adapting foreign ideas into its modernization program. The idea that an
essential Japan was being preserved, however, was an illusion, and indigenous
clothing changed more than the more visible adoption of Western clothing by
elites. The major movement of fashion throughout the Meiji and Taishoˉ periods
was what could be described, not as a modernization or a westernization, but
rather a samuraization, with all social classes and regional variations aspiring to
and gradually adopting a homogenized version of samurai clothing, previously
reserved for the 10 percent who constituted the samurai social class. Underlying
this, however, was the idea at the heart of fashion itself, that change for its own
sake is a desirable state and the source of beauty, and it is this that really defines
fashionable sartorial modernity in Japan. After the centuries of Edo period
seclusion, the abolishing of feudal sumptuary laws initiated the predominant shift
in tastes of early economic and social embourgeoisement and the conservative
adoption of samurai tastes, previously inaccessible, financially and legally, by
other classes. The availability of means to express new identities and previously
dormant aesthetic impulses—was the wellspring of modernity in fashion. That
48 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

change became an acceptable and preferable value was, in Japan, an example

of modernity preceding modernization. The seeming contradiction that conserv-
ative vestimentary behavior was actually progressive and an act of modernism,
as it denoted a social mobility in which people were self-actualizing, is a defining
feature of modernity in Japanese clothing.
The Japanese example provides a clear critique of many of the assump-
tions of contemporary fashion theory. It shows clearly that fashion was neither
a European invention nor the result of various waves of globalization. It had no
single direction of influence and despite the conceptualization of a monolithic
Other threatening a traditional, static cultural core, it was actually the indigenous
kimono fashions that underwent the largest changes and were the subject
of the biggest trends. Japan engaged with modernity on its own terms and
found sartorial forms to suit its particular needs, and did not simply replay a
European fashion history. All the dynamics of fashion were present; dynamics
of social class, of economics, of psychology, of shifting gender relations, of
technology, of aesthetics. To privilege one view, a national perspective of
Japanese adoption of certain European fashions, is to miss the much larger,
more complex and more interesting story of Japanese fashion and, indeed, of
fashion in general.

References
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 3
“FASHION” IN THE
CHINESE CONTEXT1
CHRISTINE TSUI

Introduction
The objective of this chapter is to examine the connotations of the term
“fashion” in the Chinese context. The term “fashion” itself is complex and in this
chapter it is used to refer to “clothing-fashion.” In this sense, the popular expla-
nation for the equivalent Chinese term shizhuang2 is “a prevalent new clothing
style that fits the time.”3 This chapter primarily explores the following questions:
What is the origin of the Chinese term for “fashion,” shizhuang? What is the
Chinese definition and perception of shizhuang? What are the primary differ-
ences between shizhuang in the Chinese context and “fashion” in the English
context? What are the differences between fuzhuang (clothing) and shizhuang
in the Chinese context? Do Chinese and Western scholars share the same
understanding of “fashion”? Does fashion play the same role in Chinese and
Western contexts? In this chapter, the latter, particularly, refers to the English
discourse.
In order to provide a more comprehensive study of “fashion” in the Chinese
context, this chapter also explores the differences between “fashion” and
“clothing” in Chinese discourse. The Chinese translation for “clothing” is
fuzhuang4 or yifu.5 The two words have little difference in connotation. Fuzhuang
is more formal, and is normally used by working professionals, for instance, as
in fuzhuang chang (clothing factory); fuzhuang gongsi (clothing company). Yifu
is mostly used in daily life communication: for instance “please wear more yifu
today because it is cold.” I use shizhuang and fuzhuang for the Chinese terms
and “fashion” and “clothing” for the English terms.
The “Chinese” in this chapter is constrained to simplified Chinese only, the
common language used by mainland Chinese. In some cases, simplified Chinese
may be different from the traditional Chinese used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and/or
52 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

overseas Chinese. I argue that fashion in Chinese academic discourse enjoys a

less prestigious position. Research on fashion in China still mainly focuses on its
material aspects. Fashion in the West is the focus of a more abstract discourse
and involves a vaster scope of disciplines.

Notion of “fashion” in ancient Chinese

According to the The Barnbart Dictionary of Etymology (1988), a “sense of
style, fashion, manner of dress” was first recorded in the year 1300. The word
“fashion” itself did not come to signify “a popular style of clothes or way of
behaving” until the sixteenth century (Cresswell 2009).6 In Chinese, there are
several ancient terms that signify something similar. Based on the Etymology
of Chinese (Ciyuan 1983),7 shishizhuang8 was first introduced by the famous
Chinese poet Bai Juyi (772–846),9 and initially meant a particular makeup style
for women that was in vogue at the time. The word shiyang10 first appeared in a
poem by Chen Shidao (1053–1102),11 and referred to “the prevalent style fit for
the time.” The words shiyang and shishizhuang reveal that the Chinese people
were making a distinction between “prevalent” stylish clothing, and ordinary
clothing much earlier than the West.12
Besides the notion of a “prevalent style fit for the time,”13 “fashion” has
two other popular meanings in a Western cultural context: fashion changes,14
and fashion as a social phenomenon15 (social class, psychology, modernity,
capitalism, identity, etc.). Although many scholars believe that fashion is a
Western phenomenon (e.g. König 1974, Wilson 1985), Finnane (2008: 9) affirms
that “Chinese dress in the sixteenth to nineteenth century […] shows evidences
of short-term changes in urban fashions” in China. Chen (2013) argues that in
Tang dynasty (618–907), both women of the royal court and outside of court
used luxury silk fabrics to compete for “power” and “social status” in a period
when the empire was declining and silk production expanding. In other words,
“fashion” was not only a “material” but also a “social phenomenon” in the history
of China. Both the explanations of the ancient Chinese words and the two cases
presented by Finnane and Chen substantiate that China has had its own notion
of changing trends in clothing styles for many centuries. Such a notion complies
with Kaiser’s argument (2012: 173) that “fashion has been historically located all
around the world and that “the fact that these historical traditions of fashion are
not as well-known or advertised as the European one should not diminish their
value” (Riello and McNeil 2010: 4).
“Fashion” in the Chinese Context 53

The origin of shizhuang

Shizhuang in Chinese consists of two characters, shi and zhuang. The character
shi has been used for thousands of years and appears in the oldest set of
Chinese characters available today in archeological relics (JiaguWen)16 (Wei
2010). The character generally relates to “timing” or “times,” “season,” “on
time,” “immediately,” “something that happens often,” “fit for the time” (Zhang
et al. 1996; Chi, Song, and Lu 1998: 947; Zhu 2000). It is still an active character
and retains a similar meaning in China today. The Chinese character zhuang
historically refers to clothing, traveling packages, and makeup (Gu 2003: 725;
Fei and Qiu 2002), and today (when used as a noun), it denotes clothing.
Therefore, the juxtaposition of shi and zhuang means “clothing fit for the time.”
However, the two characters (shi and zhuang) did not converge into
one word until the mid to late nineteenth century. The Chinese Etymology
Dictionary Ciyuan collects words that were in use before the mid-nineteenth
century, and shizhuang is not among them. Of course, the emergence of a
particular word does not mean that the phenomenon did not exist—it was
referred to with another term (as became clear in the paragraph “Notion Of
Fashion In Ancient Chinese”). The increased use of the word shizhuang in the
Chinese fashion industry affirms that the word emerged in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, and was a result of Western influences during
this period.
Documents from the Shanghai Historical Archive Center (Shanghai Lishi
Dangan Guan) identify a “Father of Fashion” (shizhuang zhifu) in China—a man
by the name of Zhao Chunlan.17 Mr. Zhao traveled to the United States18 and
studied Western cutting technology19 for women’s clothing in the mid-nineteeth
century. On his return to China, he cultivated a group of Chinese apprentices
to continue this style. Designating Mr. Zhao as the “Father of Fashion” implies
that there was no shizhuang before him, and, furthermore, establishes a close
correlation between shizhuang and “Western dress.” Shizhuang was a term that
described a particular type of fashion, and it emerged at this time to describe
a phenomenon peculiar to Western women’s clothing styles, as they came to
be adapted and created in China during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. That is to say, the relatively recent historical emergence of shizhuang
as a term is not a result of the relatively recent emergence of the concept
of fashion per se, but rather the result of the emergence of a new branch of
clothing that became fashionable as a result of China’s interactions with Western
modernity.
Zhao’s influence continued through his students as they went on to form
Hong Xiang—the first store20 using the word shizhuang (fashion) in its name in
China. It started out as “Hong Xiang Ladies’ Tailor Shop” (Hongxiang Nüzi Caifen
54 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Dian) in 1917.21 Its founders were fourth-generation students of Zhao Chunlan.

The term “ladies’ tailor” was used to distinguish it from “men’s tailor,” as well
as from “traditional Chinese tailors.” Traditional Chinese tailors cut men’s and
women’s wear in similar forms and, as a result, all historical Chinese costumes
for both men and women look flat.22 However, Zhao was not alone in intro-
ducing Western cutting techniques in China. Starting from the mid–1900s (the
first Opium War 1840–2), flocks of Western merchants migrated to Shanghai.
Some of them opened tailor shops that introduced new cutting technologies
to Chinese tailors. The basic difference between the two cutting forms23 at
the time was that the Chinese form was flat, while the Western one hugged
the wearer’s body by reducing the volume differences between bust, waist,
and hips. Eventually, some of the Chinese tailors switched to Western cutting
methods and they were among the founders of Hong Xiang. In 1928, the shop
changed its name to the “Hong Xiang Fashion Company” (Hongxiang Shizhuang
Gongsi), while still only providing women’s wear. When I asked Mr. Jin, the son
of one of the founders, what made Hong Xiang choose the word shizhuang
for the shop name,24 he replied that the name was given by a literary friend
of his father’s, who understood it to mean “clothing fit for the time.” This case
demonstrates, again that shizhuang was particularly related to women’s wear in
its westernized form.
The nomenclature of the Chinese clothing industry from the 1920s to the
1950s25 provides further evidence of the application of shizhuang in China. The
Shanghai Historical Archives show that the clothing industry in Shanghai was
segmented into different genres, including “new clothing” (xinyi zu), “normal
clothing” (yizhuo zu), “Western men’s suits” (xifu zu), “fashion” (shizhuang zu),
“machine-sewn clothing” (jifeng zu) and “leather garments” (qiuyi zu). The
taxonomy was based on the category of the garments and their business
model.26 Again, shizhuang in this context is also peculiar to “Western women’s
clothing” (nüzi yang fu27 or xishi nüzhuang).28
From the 1950s to the 1970s, during Mao’s era, shizhuang gradually
became taboo because of its association with “bourgeois style.” The word
was completely eradicated from Chinese publicity during the radical Cultural
Revolution (1967–76). The period in which the use of this particular word was
forbidden underscores the aforementioned findings that shizhuang has a strong
association with Western fashion. Therefore, although China possessed the
notion of “popular styles or wear” 1,000 years ago, the word shizhuang currently
used as the equivalent of “fashion” in Chinese, was a result of the gradual
influence of Western fashion, starting from the middle of the nineteenth century.
Shizhuang was initially a peculiar name for Chinese women’s wear in Western
form. The correlation between “women’s wear in Western form” and the conno-
tation of “clothing fit for the time” reveals that “Western women’s clothing” was
widely regarded as “clothing fit for the time.”
“Fashion” in the Chinese Context 55

Research method
To answer the research questions, I collected the definitions of “fashion” as
defined by the words fuzhuang and shizhuang from three different sources:
dictionaries, academic journals, and fashion textbooks, and then conducted a
textual analysis of these resources and definitions.

Dictionaries
The introduction of e-libraries has facilitated quick research into the meaning
of any term from numerous dictionaries. I located three popular English and
two primary Chinese online resources that allow access to the multi-entries
of dictionaries: Oxford Online Reference,29 Gale Virtual Reference Library,30
Blackwell Reference Online,31 CNKI.net (Chinese),32 and Apabi.cn (Chinese).33
From the Chinese dictionaries, I collected the definitions of shizhuang, the
English–Chinese translations of “fashion” and “clothing,” the Chinese–English
translations of fuzhuang and shizhuang. I then compiled the meanings of
“fashion” from the English dictionaries. The search eventually identified twenty-
two definitions of shizhuang and the same number for “fashion,” dating from
1970 to 2011.34 There are forty-five Chinese dictionaries in total that include 192
translations for the four terms. The genres of these dictionaries include general
interest: TV/Film, Culture, Education, Agriculture, Military, Medicine, Accounting,
Business/Trading, Economy, Politics, Clothing, Industry, Gender, Science, and
Psychology.

Academic journals
I selected two academic journals to study the definitions and role of fashion in
each of the two cultural discourses. The English journal Fashion Theory was
chosen primarily because of its prestigious position in the international academic
field of fashion. Although there is no equivalent of Fashion Theory in Chinese
which concentrates on the social-cultural-theoretical aspect of clothing-fashion,
the most relevant Chinese journal is Zhuangshi,35 because it underpins “Chinese
contemporary design practice and theory.”36 It was founded in 1958, making
it the oldest academic journal in the field of Chinese design since the estab-
lishment of PRC, in 1949. It is also the core journal listed in the Chinese Social
Sciences Citation Index. In order to make the research manageable, I searched
the terms “fashion”/shizhuang, “clothing”/fuzhuang respectively, in the titles (as
opposed to key words), then compiled the titles of the articles, their key words,
abstracts, authors and years of publications into one Excel file. Zhuangshi has
provided English translations for titles of its articles since 2002, so I used these
translations to supplement my own dictionary-based translations.
56 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

By January 2014, I had located sixty-four Chinese titles that contain the
word shizhuang, thirty-three of which have English translations; and 372 titles
carrying fuzhuang, 239 of which have English translations. Fashion Theory turns
out to feature fourteen titles that include the word “clothing,” and 218 that use
the word “fashion.” After reading through the titles, abstracts, and key words of
each article, I identified a list of articles that potentially included discussions of
the definition of the terms. In analyzing these, I located twenty-two definitions
from twenty full papers, published between 1958 and 2012 from Zhuangshi, and
thirty-five definitions from eight papers, spanning 1998 to 2004, from Fashion
Theory, including the citations of definitions from other resources.

Textbooks
A selection of textbooks was initially based on a search of Amazon.com in English
and Dangdang.com37 in Chinese, according to the relevance and popularity of
the topic. I chose eight books in each language according to the prominence
of the authors in the field, the standing of the publishers and the edition of the
book (more editions usually indicate greater popularity). All of the English books
had indexes, which helped me to easily locate the definitions. I also examined
the introduction and/or the first chapter, as authors typically conceptualize the
terms within these sections. None of the Chinese books provided an index, so
I had to scan the contents of these books, then locate the sections related to
connotations of shizhuang or fuzhuang. The search turned up eight Chinese
definitions and eighteen English ones, including citations from other resources.

Findings from the research

Background of the authors
The English-language authors who write about fashion cover a wide spectrum of
disciplines, including fashion research, sociology, art history and criticism, cultural
studies, literature, psychology, consumer studies, and behavioral science. The
Chinese publications, on the other hand, reveal that only researchers in fashion
institutions are publishing on fashion topics. This implies that in the West, there
is a much more diversified scholarly interest in the subject of “fashion.”

The subjects
The English dictionaries cover a range of subject categories, including General,
Arts and Crafts, Aesthetics, Clothing/Fashion, Body, Business, Children,
Communications, Dance, Diet, Film, Sociology, World Origin, History, Literature,
“Fashion” in the Chinese Context 57

and Culture. In contrast to this diversity, the Chinese dictionaries converge

in the General category: fifteen of the twenty-three target general readers.
Additional disciplines include Arts and Crafts, Light Industry, Silk, Yu Opera,38
and Aesthetics. Although the Chinese dictionaries also have volumes on Culture,
Literature, History, Sociology, Film, Dance, Communication, Children, and
Business, none of them feature the term shizhuang.
Findings from the textbooks demonstrate a similar outcome: a narrower range
of topics in Chinese and a much wider range in English. The Chinese fashion
textbooks only include Aesthetics, General Introduction of Fashion,39 and Design
Theory of Practice.40 The English textbooks range from Fashion Communication,
Cultural History of Fashion, Fashion and Identity, Fashion and Social Agenda,
general Fashion Studies, and Social Theory. The variety affirms that “fashion” has
much more diversified facets in the Anglophone source material. Consequently,
the background of readers/authors of shizhuang is much narrower and unified
than that of the readers of “fashion,” reflecting its more specific connotations.
Although Zhuangshi claims to be a journal of “design theory and practice,” the
focus of the majority of its articles is “practice” rather than “theory.” Of the 1,794
key words from the 372 papers, the top-ranked 1,000 key words are almost all
about the “how”—how to teach, how to cut, how to design, how to be more
creative, etc. This difference reveals that Chinese scholars value “practical”
components more than the “ideological” facets of fashion. A review of the full
articles confirmed this result.

Definitions
In the Chinese dictionaries, fourteen of the twenty-two definitions listed define
shizhuang as “clothing or styles fit for current time,” or something equivalent.
The most common adjectives used to describe shizhuang include “prevalent,”
“new,” “fit for the time,” “latest,” “trendy,” and “vogue.” The data shows a high
degree of consistency in the words selected to describe shizhuang. The form of
the definition consists, in general, of repeated adjectives plus concrete nouns,
of which, “clothing” and “style” are the most frequent. The results suggest that
shizhuang has a fairly unified meaning in China and is more likely to be viewed
as a material object. The English descriptions include much more conceptual
diversity. Besides defining fashion as “a popular style in vogue,” or something
similar, these dictionaries also interpret fashion as “attitude,” “communication
code,” “ideal,” “desire,” “awareness,” “expression,” “statement,” “belief,” “system
of meaning,” and so on. Most of the nouns used in the English dictionaries are
abstract, perceptual, and spiritual. The contrast between the “concrete” and the
“abstract” nouns echoes the fact that Chinese scholars attach more weight to
“material” and “practical, functional, technical” than “symbolic” and “theoretical,
ideological, and cultural” aspects of fashion.
58 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

The definitions offered in Chinese journal articles are also very consistent. Of
the twenty-two Chinese articles reviewed, nearly half of them define fuzhuang
as “culture” (wenhua), including, in one instance, amplifications of that noun:
“material culture” (wuzhi wenhua), and “spiritual culture” (jingshen wenhua). Other
commonly repeated definitions encompass “arts,” “decorations” (of body) and
“history.” Not surprisingly, the English journals produce no overlaps—”fashion”
means “individual freedom” (Paulicelli 2004: 4), “metaphysical overtones and
aesthetic considerations” (Saisselin 1959 cited in Kim 1998: 53), and “passion
for the artificial” (Baudrillard 1990 cited in Wilson 2004: 382).
Although both journals show a certain degree of resemblance or sameness,
such as defining fashion as “spirit,” “decoration,” “economy,” “language,”
“aesthetic,” “society,” “culture,” “modernity,” and/or “capitalism,” the comparison
between the two reveals that the Chinese definitions are general, vague, and
highly consistent and undifferentiated, while the English ones are specific, exact,
passionate, recounted, diverse, and variegated. For instance, some of the
Chinese journals define fuzhuang as “society” or “culture,” while the English ones,
instead of defining “fashion” in a general way, use the expressions “character
of the age” (Haas-Heye 1916, cited in Simmons 2000: 75), “the law and the
codification of manners and style” (Paulicelli 2004: 4), and “dream energy of
society” (Benjamin 1999 cited in Wilson 2004: 383) to paint a more elegant and
delicate picture. To cite another example, some Chinese papers define fashion
as “life” and/or “a lifestyle,” while the English ones use “the materiality of our
thoughts and memory” (Paulicelli 2004: 30) and “remembrance of its presence”
(Martin 1988: 15–16, cited in Wilson 2004: 375) to specify what fashion means
to “life.” The variety reveals that although the Chinese researchers in the field of
fashion try to entrench the symbolic meanings of fashion, their understanding of
“fashion” is still of a general and undefined nature.

Vocabulary and tone

The wider choices of vocabulary demonstrate the advanced skills of Anglophone
academic criticism. In addition to adopting a variety of abstract nouns, the
English writers also choose metaphors and active verbs to personify fashion
and endow fashion with an indispensable and polyvalent power over the gamut
of daily life. When reading the English texts, I encountered active and powerful
verbs like “communicate,” “colonize,” “construct,” “deconstruct,” “infiltrate,”
“organize,” “pervert,” “sweep,” and “unite” next to fashion, which makes fashion
appear animate and omnipotent. An example is “fashion sweeps imperiously
on, conquering, infiltrating and colonizing all areas of social, cultural and (lest
we forget) academic enterprise” (Radford 1998: 162). Sociology scholar Diana
Crane (2000: 248) defines the role of fashion as follows in her book Fashion and
Its Social Agendas:
“Fashion” in the Chinese Context 59

Fashion and clothing, like litmus paper, offer clues to discerning links between
social structure and culture and to tracing the itineraries of material cultures
in fragmented societies. In the increasingly multicultural society of the
twenty-first century, clothing codes will continue to proliferate as a means
of expressing relationships within and between social groups and segments
and of indicating responses to even more conflicted hegemonies.

Corresponding to the English texts, almost all the Chinese texts define
fashion or its role in a form of “to be” verbs, i.e. “fuzhuang is …,”, “shizhuang
is …” Of all the Chinese primary data that I collected, the one example that
endorses fashion in the most versatile way states:

Fuzhuang is a material cultural phenomenon. It needs material […] Fuzhuang

is an inorganic component of the human body […] Fuzhuang is the external
“expression” of the human heart […] Fuzhuang is also for self-protection […]
Fuzhuang is also about creativity, it does not always succumb to the body,
(it) can quasi-modify the natural shape of the body (translation, Xu and Guan
2007: 2–3).

The use of the word “is” makes fashion feel stagnant and inanimate.
Christopher Breward (2003: 9) argues that “fashion not only is something,
but also functions in many ways.” The “is” statement confirms that fashion
for Chinese authors is a static substance and/or a passive reflection of
society, rather than something that can actively shape or function in the social
community. Their tones are also very different. The English papers often use
“[one of] the most” to amplify fashion, for example “the most appropriate form
for,” “the most compelling,” “the most destructive,” “the most personal and most
elementary,” and “the most fundamental.” The use of “[one of] the most” creates
a determinative tone. The Chinese texts reveal very little emotion because of the
use of static, plain and inanimate vocabulary. Fashion in English functions as
an energetic, powerful, protean “person” that struts across a wide spectrum of
fields: sociology, anthropology, politics, religion, etc., while the Chinese fuzhuang
and shizhuang are banal, dull and inanimate objects.
Western scholars use the instrument of language to endow fashion with an
elegant dignity. Their language use testifies to their tremendous passion and
respect for fashion. Their meticulously choreographed writings elevate fashion
from “material” to “spiritual,” or “symbolic” levels—which makes fashion and/or
clothing a “symbol” rather than a material object. As a consequence, their writings
upgrade fashion in the minds of Anglophone audiences and readers. I argue that
Chinese fashion researchers have not yet mastered the tactics of powerful writing;
although they are aware that fashion is more than just “material,” the “symbolic,”
or “spiritual” aspect of fashion still remains a vague concept in their minds.
60 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Today, fashion and/or design in the West are perceived as trivial compared to
other fields (Barnard 2002). However, compared to China, fashion in the West
has attained a higher position in the social system as demonstrated by the
increasing numbers of academic publications on fashion from different disci-
plines (Breward 2003: 9). Fashion in the Chinese context is usually perceived
simply as a material object rather than a symbolic one. Although some of the
Chinese fashion scholars agree that fashion has spiritual values, I believe the
spiritual connotations remain vague in the mind of these scholars.

Differences between fuzhuang and

shizhuang
Research on the translations of the four terms and applications of the
two Chinese terms indicate that fuzhuang has a much broader usage than
shizhuang. While fuzhuang has a larger scope that includes clothing, dress,
fashion, costume, and garment, shizhuang is just a facet of fuzhuang which
particularly means clothing that is “high-end,” “in vogue/trendy,” “modern,”
“European,” “Western,” “international,” or “capitalist.”
The following findings support how fuzhuang differs from shizhuang. By
reviewing all of the translations, it is evident that fuzhuang translates into apparel,
clothes, clothing, costume, dress, fashion, and garment.
Of all the English translations, “apparel” and “clothes” are used the least
frequently. In some cases “apparel” is interchangeable with “garment,” but
“garment” is a more popular translation than “apparel.” “Garment” is more
commonly associated with “manufacture” and “technology”—for instance,
“garment factory,” “cutting of the garment” and so forth.
“Clothing” is the most widespread translation of fuzhuang. “Clothing” is often
applied in a general context, i.e. “clothing and textiles,” and in expressions such
as “clothing, food, house, traveling” (yishi zhuxing), “daily clothing,” and functional
or special clothing like “safety clothing” and “protective clothing.” “Dress” is
another common English translation for fuzhuang. This study has revealed that
the English translations “dress” and “clothing” are used interchangeably, for the
most part, for fuzhuang. “Dress” is also used in combination with “one-piece
clothing” (lianshenqun), “women,” and “evening, party, ceremony,” which is
close to the English usage. “Costume” is most commonly used in association
with “historical,” “ethnic,” “movie/film,” and “opera.”
“Fashion” is associated with “design” or “designer,” although the Chinese
version is fuzhuang sheji(shi) (designer) instead of shizhuang sheji(shi). I ascribe
this to the difference in cultural systems. In English, people speak of “fashion
design(ers)” more often than “clothing design(ers)”; however, in China, the
“Fashion” in the Chinese Context 61

nomenclature of the education programs, which is centrally administrated by

the National Ministry of Education, the program of “fashion design” is called
fuzhuang sheji instead of shizhuang sheji, and, consequently, all of the Chinese
titles for the fashion schools in China are fuzhuang xueyuan (school) instead
of shizhuang xueyuan. Fuzhuang is also translated as “fashion,” when the
discourse relates to “vogue,” “trend,” “modern,” “contemporary,” “good quality,”
and “high standard” (for instance, “fashion boutiques” (jingpin fuzhuang dian)).
Fashion is also randomly associated with terms like “advertisement,” “brands,”
“pattern cutting,” and “illustration,” but these words are also connected to
“clothing,” “clothes,” “garment,” and “apparel.” The translation of shizhuang is
simply and unequivocally “fashion,” although as stated above, “fashion” can be
translated as fuzhuang depending on the context.
Research on the applications of the two Chinese terms in dictionaries,
journal articles, and textbooks is consistent with the findings listed above
with regard to the definitions of fuzhuang and shizhuang. Fuzhuang is used
much more frequently and widely than shizhuang. Shizhuang is usually used
when associated with certain peculiar prestige contexts: 1) representing
“high-level,” “high-quality,” or “exquisite quality,” such as shizhuang jinpinwu
(fashion boutique), gaoji shizhuang (haute couture/high fashion); 2) representing
“creativity,” as in chuangyi shizhuang biaoyan (creative fashion show); and 3)
when connected with fashion cities like Shanghai shizhuang (Shanghai fashion),
Hong Kong shizhuang (Hong Kong fashion), Riben shizhuang (Japanese
fashion), etc. Other applications of shizhuang include conventional usages,
such as associated with “models,” the “cat-walk,” and “advertisement,” for
example shizhuang moteer (fashion models), shizhuang guanggao (fashion
advertisement), shizhuang biaoyan (fashion show), shizhuang shejishi (fashion
designer), shizhuang zhou (fashion week), and shizhuang hua (fashion
illustration).
The Chinese journal papers reveal that shizhuang is also used in tandem
with “modern” (xiandai), for example xiandai shizhuang sheji (modern fashion
design), xiandai shizhuang liuxing (modern fashion trend) and xiandai shizhuang
tixi (modern fashion system). Shizhuang is also often used to denote a time
period, such as chuantong fuzhuang (traditional clothing), in contrast with
dangdai shizhuang (modern fashion). Shizhuang is also frequently connected
with the “international” domain, such as bali shizhuang (Paris Fashion) and Guoji
shizhuang zhidu (international fashion capitals).
Obviously, shizhuang still represents the prestige of the “modern” and the
“West” just as when it first emerged in China in the late nineteenth century.
Apparently it is no longer constrained to “women’s wear”; it generally means
clothing that is fashionable. According to The China Dictionary of Arts and
Crafts, shizhuang “[used to] mean fashionable women’s wear. But now it
includes men’s wear, children’s wear.” (1999: 125).
62 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Conclusion
Fashion, defined as “prevalent new clothing styles that fit the time” in this
chapter, is an autochthonous concept in China, not a loaned one. The Chinese
version, shizhuang, emerged alongside the migration of Western fashion and its
cutting technology in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, and has not evolved
much in meaning since. It originally meant “women’s dress in Western forms.”
After the victory of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, shizhuang gradually
became a taboo due to its close connection with the bourgeoisie. Shizhuang,
from the post-Mao era of liberalization and reform, is widely perceived to be
clothing that is “exquisite in quality,” “modern,” “trendy,” “vogue,” “international,”
or “Western.” The word is still associated, to some extent, with the Western
phenomenon, but it no longer only refers to women’s wear. It is a type of
fuzhuang that has infiltrated academic publications and, therefore, engenders
more power than shizhuang. This distinction approximates the difference
between “clothing” and “fashion” in the Anglophone context. Although Malcolm
(2002) endeavors to distinguish between the terms “clothing,” “fashion,” “dress,”
and “style” in his book Fashion As Communication, which discusses the defini-
tions of and differences between each term, he also acknowledges that it is
extremely difficult to distinguish all the terms explicitly. Yuniya Kawamura (2005)
sees clothing as “material” and fashion as “added symbolic values.” Both cases
show that it is incorrect to draw the conclusion that “fashion” is a genre of
“clothing” in the Anglophone context.
“Fashion” enjoys a charismatic cachet and potency and plays both active
and passive roles in Anglophone discourse. It not only “is” something, but also
actively influences and shapes many other aspects of society. Compared to
“fashion” in the English context, “fashion” in the Chinese context earns little
respect from spectators. “Fashion” in the Chinese context is banal, monotonous,
parochial, and inanimate, whereas “fashion” in the Western en compasses a
greater diversity of symbolic meanings, and plays a higher and more vital role
than it does in the Chinese context.
To conclude, although the word of shizhuang was a result of influences from
Western fashion, it did not naturally inherit the enriched connotations and higher
roles of “fashion” in the Western context. I therefore argue that, as a result,
the monotonous and material view of “fashion” in the Chinese context endows
it with a lower position than in the West, resulting in a lesser development of
“fashion” in China, despite the fact that the notion of “fashion” has been in
existence for over a thousand years.
“Fashion” in the Chinese Context 63

Notes
 1 I intend to conduct additional research on the definition of “fashion” in Chinese in
the context of the fashion industry.
 2 时装.
 3 See Xinhua Chinese Dictionary (Xinhua hanyucidian) (Rev. ed. 2006); Chinese
Encyclopedia: Volume of Light Industry (Zhongguo da baikequanshu:
qinggongjuan) (1992: 360); the Encyclopedia of Aesthetic (Meixue baike quanshu)
(1990: 427–8); Dictionary of Fashion (Fushicidian) (2011:467).
 4 服装.
 5 衣服.
 6 Some of the resources come from online dictionaries or encyclopedias that provide
no page numbers.
 7 辞源. It was started in late Qing Dynasty (1908), finished by 1915, and published
by ShangwuYinshu Guan. The edition that I used for this chapter is a modified
online edition produced by the same publisher between 1979 and 1983.
 8 时世妆.
 9 白居易, poet of Tang Dynasty (618–907).
10 时样.
11 陈师道, poet of Bei Song dynasty (960–1127).
12 Kawamura researched the notion of a “sense of style, fashion and dress” in
French, English, and Latino. Based on her research, such notion of ’style” and/or
“fashion” in Europe did not emerge until 1300 (2005: 3–4).
13 Doyle (2011); Webster’s New World College Dictionary (2010); The American
Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2006); Calasibetta (1998); Picken &
Valentine (1973).
14 Flügel (1930); Polhemus and Procter (1978).
15 Sproles and Burns (1994); Brenninkmeyer (1963); Veblen (1899/1998); Simmel
(1904/1957); Spencer (1896/1966); König (1973); Baudrillard (1981,1976/1993).
16 甲骨文. Oracle Bone Inscriptions, dating from the fourteenth to eleventh centuries
b.c.

17 I did not find any documents recording Zhao Chunlan’s birth and death year.
18 Some of the historical sources indicate that Zhao went to the United States with
a priest and learned Euro-American cutting technology in the USA. Other sources
state that he learned it from a European nun in Shanghai. In either case—all
documents state that Zhao was considered the “Father of Fashion” in China and
learned the Euro-American cutting technology from a foreigner.
19 See the next paragraph for differences between European and traditional Chinese
cutting technology.
20 According to historical data written by the son of one of the founders of Hong
Xiang—Mr. Jin Taijun and Shanghai Local Annals (Shanghai difangzhi) (Mo 2011:
155).
21 According to the archives stored in Shanghai Archive Center.
64 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

22 There are several reasons why the historical Chinese costumes look flat. Difference
in the traditional Chinese cutting technology is just one of the reasons.
23 The cutting form is one of the primary differences between traditional Chinese and
European cutting technology.
24 The interviews were conducted for my book Dialogues with Three Generations of
Fashion Designers (Shanghai designers only) (Duihua Zhongguo Sandai Shizhuang
Shejishi) (2005), China Fashion: Conversations with Designers (2009; 2013). I
double-checked this with Jin again when I saw him in July 2013.
25 This is the time when the Chinese fashion industry took shape and emerged before
the Communist Party merged all the private business sectors with state-owned
companies in 1956 (gongsi heying).
26 There were three types of business models in the clothing industry in this period.
One provided full made-to-measure services that included providing materials
and accessories as well as cutting, making, and trimming (baogong baoliao).
The second type had the clients provide the fabric and accessories, while the
shops only cut and made the clothing (lailiao jiagong). The last type represented
wholesale business module, which produced garments in larger volumes (pifa).
27 女子洋服.
28 西式女装.
29 See www.oxfordreference.com (accessed 31 January 2014).
30 Gale is one of the brands belonging to Cenage Learning; www.cengage.com
(accessed 31 January 2014).
31 See www.blackwellreference.com (accessed 31 January 2014).
32 Built in 1999, CNKI was initiated by TsingHua University and supported by the
Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Technology, and the Ministry of News & Press
in China. According to the introduction of the website, this is the largest electronic
library in the world, its “tool books” (gongjushu) section contains nearly 7,000
copies of dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, and other tool books. (http://
cnki.net/gycnki/gycnki.htm) (accessed 31 January 2014).
33 The Apabi library was built in 2006 by a company that is part of Peking University.
According to its website, “90% of the publishers in China” partner with Apabi
(www.apabi.cn) (accessed 31 January 2014).
34 Due to restrictions in length, it was not possible to include the list of dictionaries,
journal papers, and textbooks that I used for primary data in this chapter. Please
see the References section for a complete list of dictionaries, journal papers, and
textbooks used.
35 The English title of this journal is “Art & Design.” I am using the Chinese title to
differentiate it from other English journals with similar titles. It was founded by the
first arts & crafts institute in China—the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts, which
is now the Faculty of Fine Arts of TsingHua University (http://www.izhsh.com.cn/)
(accessed 31 January 2014).
36 See http://www.izhsh.com.cn/magazine/24/72.html (accessed 31 January 2014).
37 Dangdang.com is the largest online bookseller in China.
38 An opera that originated in He Nan province in China.
“Fashion” in the Chinese Context 65

39 In Chinese, it is fuzhuang gailun. The course provides fundamental concepts and

an introduction to fashion as well as the fashion industry.
40 This is the theory of design practice, not of fashion theory.

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Yuju Da Cidian). Zhengzhou, China: Zhongzhou Historical Books Publisher, 1998.
Xiao, Qiongqiong, ed. The Theory and Practice of Fashion Design (Fuzhuang Sheji Lilun
yu Shijian. Beijing: Beijing Polytechnique University Press, 2010.
Xie, Feng. “The Nature of Fashion (Lun Shizhuang zhi Benzhi),” Zhuangshi (April 1987):
5.
Xu, Hairong, ed. The Dictionary of Chinese Costumes (Zhongguo Fushi Dadian). Beijing:
Huaxia Publishing House, 2000.
Xu, Hongli, and Zhikun Guan. The Textbook of Fashion Aesthetics (Fuzhuang Meixue
Jiaocheng). Beijing: China Textile Press, 2007.
Yang, Yueqian, ed. “Shizhuang.” In The Encyclopedia of China: Volume of Light Industry
(Zhongguo da Baikequanshu). Beijing: Encyclopedia of China Publishing House,
1992.
Yuan, Ze. “The Role of Silhouette in Fashion Design (Lun Fuzhuang Sheji zhongde
Zaoxingxian),” Zhuangshi (January 1986): 45.
Zhang, Jiatai, and Che Xu, eds The Modern Chinese Dictionary of Commendatory and
Derogatory Terms (Xiandai Hanyu BaobianYongfa Cidian), Shenyang, China: Liaoning
People’s Publisher, 1992.
Zhang, Weiyuan, and Chuanming Wang, eds Dictionary of Fashion (Fushi Cidian).
Beijing: China Textile Press, 2011.
Zhang, Yaheng. “The Aesthetic Taste of Fashion (Shilun Fuzhuang de Shenmei
Tezheng),” Zhuangshi (June 2002): 13.
Zhang, Yali (2006) “The Spiritual and Emotional Accent in Fashion Design (Fuzhuang
Sheji Yishuzhong de Jingshen Benzhi yu Qinggan),” Zhuangshi vol. 157 (May 2006):
104–5.
Zhang Yujin, et al., eds Dictionary of Xuci of Ancient and Modern Chinese
(GujinHanyuXuci Da Cidian). Shenyang, China: Liaoning People’s Publisher, 1996.
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Sichuan Cishu Publishing House, 2000.
70 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Websites
www.oxfordreference.com (Oxford Reference online) (accessed 31 January 2014).
www.cengage.com (CENGAGE Learnning EMEA) (accessed 31 January 2014).
www.blackwellreference.com (Blackwell Reference online) (accessed 31 January 2014).
www.cnki.net (the largest e-library in Chinese) (accessed 31 January 2014).
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Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank her supervisor Professor Louise Edwards, and
the editors of the volume, Professor Jennifer Craik and Dr. Angela Jansen, for
their invaluable feedback on this chapter.
 PART II

THE
COMMODIFICATION
OF CULTURAL
HERITAGE
 4
BEING FASHIONABLE IN
THE GLOBALIZATION ERA
IN INDIA: HOLY WRITING
ON GARMENTS1
JANAKI TURAGA

Introduction
India is a perfect example of the fact that fashion is not a recent development of
globalization; on the contrary, it is deeply rooted historically, as well as connected
to the rest of the world. Fashion in India, like anywhere else, is simultaneously a
materialization of internal social, cultural, political, and religious developments,
and also a reflection of external influences. In the last two decades, India has
seen the emergence of a fashion trend, which consists of an amalgamation of
sartorial sensibilities of the urban Indian youth and international fashion trends.
A common fashion and lifestyle statement is being made by young people
through wearing religious and spiritual symbols and mantras on their garments.
Religion and spirituality have become fashionable, and are proclaimed not only
on commonly worn garments such as T-shirts, salwar-kameezes, and shirts, but
also on couture garments. Traditionally, sacred cloths, which ranged from plain
to written to pictorial, were the esoteric preserve of the initiate, and were worn
only in culturally prescribed sacred contexts in various parts of India. The modern
garments with holy writing and symbols are worn in non-sacred contexts and
primarily used to make fashion and lifestyle statements.This chapter examines
this burgeoning of the modern day “secularized sacred” fashion across India
since 2000, and analyzes both internal and external (both Eastern and Western)
factors that have resulted in a decidedly post liberalized and globalized
phenomenon. It questions what makes the wearer cross the traditional rules of
74 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

engagement with the sacred, taking elements of it to the non-sacred domain,

which ironically, proclaims the fashionableness of the wearer, while at the same
time proclaiming and underscoring his or her underlying religious and spiritual
beliefs. It is argued that this era is characterized by the critical rethinking and
interpretation of nearly all elements of life and society, and the redefining of the
value systems that structure lives and lifestyles. This critical, recasting process
is reflected in the more visible areas of religion, fashion, and modes of articu-
lation in the realm of popular culture. In clothing and fashion, there has been a
sea change in the clothing styles of communities and people that reflects clear
negotiation between tradition and modernity, a marked transition from traditional
to modern, and multiple fashion trends.
India is witnessing a commodification of elements of culture, whereby religious
iconography is applied to fashion. This chapter deals with the holy writing
fashion trend, primarily in the context of Hindu religious texts and sacred cloths,
but Jain and Buddhist sacred cloths and holy writing fashion are also included
in the larger schema, wherever there is commonality.2 The social lives (Appadurai
1988) of the extant sacred cloth traditions and the contemporary fashion are
very different and distinct with independent cosmologies of meanings and signs
besides their praxis of production and consumption.
Being essentially a recent urban fashion trend, the data for this research
was collected through fieldwork conducted between January 2013 and July
2014 in New Delhi, and more specifically in Dilli Haat, an urban Haat, where
craft producers come from all over India to sell holy writing fashion garments
directly to consumers.3 The sacred cloth traditions of India are used as the
reference point and cultural counterpoint of holy writing fashion because they
break all the rules of the traditional sacred enclaves, also the rationale and point
of departure for its sociological interrogation. Holy writing fashion is conceptu-
alized in this chapter as “secularized” sacred fashion. It is a product of popular
culture that has emerged from the processes of liberalization and globalization.
Its contextual framework is new age spiritualism and religion, the urban middle
class (encapsulating both the old and the new), and popular culture.
Holy writing is defined as the written names of deities, mantras, and symbols
of Hindu religious and spiritual heritage, such as “Om,” which is written both
as a symbol and as a mantra, depending on how it has been visualized and
conceptualized, or the Gayatri mantra, considered to be the supreme mantra
of Hinduism.4 The concept of “secularized” sacred has been defined in this
chapter as an element of the sacred (object, image, text, verse, and so on) that
despite being desacralized, still retains in its new “secular” avatar, some of its
sacredness, which functions as its identifying marker. The sacred is exclusive,
while the secularized sacred is more inclusive, with unrestricted usage and open
accessibility to all in the public domain, which gives it the secular identity marker.
The traditional sacred cloths which are conceptualized within the framework of
Being Fashionable in the Globalization Era in India 75

great and little traditions and “sanskrit” and “Prakrit” traditions, constitute the
reference point for the modern enclaves of the “secularized” sacred garments,
not only because the latter are independent of the former, but also because
they transgress all cultural conditions that govern the usage of the former. The
following sections examine the production and socio-cultural usage of holy
writing garments in juxtaposition to the traditional written sacred cloths.

Traditional enclaves of the sacred cloths

Sacred cloths with holy writing, images, and symbols of deities are part of the
cultural and religious traditions of India. Traditional sacred cloths can be divided
into two categories: those that are worshipped (such as Andhra Pradesh’s
Srikalahasti Kalamkari, Gujarat’s Mata ni-pachedi, Rajasthan’s Nathdwara
Pichchwai, Assam’s Brindavani Vastra), and those that are not worshipped
but worn by the worshipper for ritual use, for the duration and time of worship
and within the geographic space of worship such as a household shrine. In the
category of sacred cloths that are worn, there are two distinct categories. There
are the plain ones, with or without a small border, either in silk, cotton, or a mix
of cotton and silk, in shades of white, ecru, yellow (pitambar), and saffron. In
South India, bark cloths made of agave in shades of natural green and murky
brown were used extensively by the priests and brahmins during ritual use.
Banana rayon cloths are now currently used in shades of white and ecru for
ritual use. Their usage and production are nearly similar with minor regional
differences. Then there are the illustrated ones, which include writing, symbols,
and pictures of deities like “Namavali”5 sacred cloths, as well as common sacred
cloths, which are also illustrated, but are of a lesser quality, and whose usage
and production are limited to certain parts of India.
The “Namavali” sacred cloths belong to the great and “sanskrit”6 tradition,
while the common sacred cloths belong to the “Prakrit”7 tradition. Further, the
usage of the written sacred cloths, whether the Namavali sacred cloths or the
common sacred cloths,8 varies, but both are, in general, geographically limited
to North and East India (for Namavali sacred cloths see Pathak 2008). The
Namavali sacred cloths are worn by a niche of worshippers,9 and are woven
with precious fibers such as silk and Pashmina wool, as well as printed. These
are the luxury cloths worn by rich people who can afford expensive fabrics and
the high cost of labor. By contrast, the common sacred cloths with multiple
local traditions have a more widespread usage, and are worn by common
people including priests and worshippers. Often, both kinds are also worn by
worshippers during puja, depending on the socio-cultural context of the region
as well as the worshipper.
76 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

The “Namavali” sacred cloths10 used to bear the names of a single deity,
repeated a specific number of times. These cloths were the esoteric preserve of
the initiate and worn only in culturally prescribed sacred contexts in varied parts of
North and East India. They were worn as upper garments only, as shawls, caps,
turbans, and a stitched upper garment known as kurta. These traditional sacred
cloths with holy writing were worn by priests and worshippers, typically male,
only during the worship of the deity and meticulously removed on completion
of puja. Women were generally not allowed to wear them. The culturally condi-
tioned rules of engagement with the sacred words or the “paddhati” were usually
not breached by both the wearer (consumer) and the weaver/printer (producer).
For example, one was not supposed to sit on these garments, and the garment
had to be kept off the floor at all times to prevent desecration of the names of
the gods. The producers of these holy writing garments were mainly weavers
and hand block printers working with silk and cotton, who took care to weave
and print correctly, and in complete form, the name of the deity. Incomplete,
incorrect, and incorrectly-written names of the deity were considered a mistake
and inauspicious both for the creator and the wearer. Therefore, weavers and
printers took great care to ensure accuracy of spelling and adhere to the exact
number of repetitions of the names and the design pattern of the Namavali.
Common sacred cloths belonging to the little, “Prakrit” tradition are mainly
prevalent in North India, where they are part of popular culture and in the hands
of common people. The usages governing these are more varied and flexible.
The producers are dispersed, and varieties of cloths are produced for different
local traditions and markets. The conformity to local traditions remains intact
as long as the local market remains stable and insists on the same products
done in a specific way. Since they are produced according to the shifting market
demands, they are more flexible and fluid, reflecting the trending preferences of
its consumers. With the expansion of markets especially through distant and
floating populations of pilgrims and spiritual tourists, more generalized products
have emerged that cater for a mass market. Therefore, in recent years, many
such holy writing cloths have appeared with incomplete or incorrect names that
do not adhere to the traditional system of printing of holy names with reference
to the number, sequence, and arrangement. These are mainly screen printed
and mass-produced. The general template is a yellow or ochre, or saffron field
with red or maroon print, which at once indicates a spiritual and religious cloth.
On this background, any kind of printing of any spiritual or religious sect is done
like Shirdi Sai Baba, for example. Many of the new fangled religious gurus of
minor sects/cults get custom-made cloths with mantras and images specific to
their sect/cult, which are worn by the followers as a display of their membership
to the sect/cult, especially during public events.
The consumption base of these little traditional “Prakrit” sacred cloths is vast,
dispersed, and more extensive than the traditional constituency of the great
Being Fashionable in the Globalization Era in India 77

tradition sacred cloths. Traditionally, the “Prakrit” tradition holy cloths culture is
strong in holy places and pilgrim destinations mainly in North India. Today, these
cloths are commonly available in neighborhood shops that sell items for worship
as well as in and around temples. Although a certain ethics and rigor used to
govern the production of these shawls with holy writing, even as recently as
the 1980s, today there is a marked laxity in their production. These cloths are
typically bought as souvenirs by tourists, as well as pilgrims to these sites. The
hippie subculture that flourished in the late 1960s and 1970s included many
spiritual seekers and explorers from abroad who could be seen sporting the
holy upper garments, printed with the holy names of Krishna and Rama, while
wandering about pilgrim centers. The blockbuster Hindi film Hare Rama Hare
Krishna (1971) captures the flower power and hippie culture in India and Nepal,
and some of its cast wear clothing inscribed with the holy writing of Hare Rama
Hare Krishna.

Modern enclaves of the “secularized

sacred” cloths: holy writing fashion trend
The first decade of the twenty-first century saw the emergence and widespread
acceptance of clothing inscribed with holy writing in urban areas, where cultural
mores and taboos were less distinct and more diluted. This fashion trend is not
only independent of the written sacred cloths tradition, but also seems imper-
vious to the cultural prescriptions and proscriptions that affect and restrict the
production and consumption of traditional written sacred cloths. The holy writing
here consists primarily of the names of deities and all kinds of identifiable and
unidentifiable mantras and holy verses besides “Om”, like the Gayatri Mantra, for
example. They are seen on daily attire such as T-shirts, shirts, kurtas, dupattas,
salwar-kameez suits, stoles, shawls, saris, Bandee/Sardaree (the traditional
Indian style jackets), and casual trousers styled according to the latest fashion,
as well as on yardage used to produce ready-made garments.
This present-day fashion trend fundamentally differs from both the Namavali
and the Prakrit traditions of sacred cloths in terms of content, nature of usage,
context, producer, consumer, production, and consumption, and is the inverse
of the written sacred cloths tradition. These holy writing “secularized” sacred
fashionable garments hinge on design and aesthetics, which is a very important
aspect which gives them their uniqueness, and distinguishes them from the
written sacred cloths. The design repertoire and color palette is also different
from the traditional sacred cloths. A fine line is walked by the designers as a
design and color palette misjudgment renders their garments non-marketable
in the fashion segment. Saffron color, which is the traditional holy color of
78 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

spirituality, is used creatively with other colors so that the fashionable garments
are not visually perceived as traditional sacred cloths by the consumer. Given
the popularity of these garments, especially among the urban youth, it is clear
that they have defied all prevailing usages of holy writing on garments, and also
transgressed cultural rules and traditions.
Holy writing fashion garments, including their site of production and
consumption, are rooted in the non-sacred, and are secularized because of
their use in non-sacred contexts, as well as their accessibility to people of all
religions and sexes. Their consumption base is vast and dispersed, and is
more extensive than the traditional constituency of the sacred cloths, which
is culturally conditioned and restricted. Furthermore, they do not represent a
transition from traditional sacred textiles to modern sacred textiles, since tradi-
tional holy textiles have continued to remain in their traditional enclaves, while the
modern fashion trend of holy writing on textiles is a contemporary phenomenon,
whereby elements of religion are commodified. The producer–consumer matrix
of these two independently coexisting niches is different: the production base of
the written sacred cloths tradition is primarily the block printers and weavers of
North India, while holy writing fashion is designed and produced by both screen
printers and block printers in urban and rural areas across India.
A necessary condition for mantras to be printed onto fashion garments was
the freedom from religious and social sanctions, which was created due to the
commodification of religion and mantras (see page 87). When religion became
commodified, the hitherto culturally restricted mantras were deliberately brought
into the public domain by various religious pandits (scholars) who advocated
them to people approaching them as a sure fire, quick panacea and cure
for all kinds of problems. Mantras began to be used everywhere, such as in
body art (tattooing) and clothing. Beginning with Om, which is a traditionally
popular mantra, and also the most commonly tattooed motif in India, the range
of mantras has extended over time from the common to the unfamiliar and
esoteric.
The prime originators of this fashion trend are the graphic artists and
designers (visual artists), who creatively reappropriated and reframed elements
of culture for consumption in popular culture (see page 88). High-profile fashion
designers have actually played a limited and minor role in this fashion trend,
primarily because they have been facing criminal complaints and public protests
from right-wing organizations, forcing them to withdraw from engaging openly
with this fashion trend. In 2006, both fashion designer Dipen Desai and a store in
Ahmedabad that was selling his garments, printed with the Jain Navkar mantra
and Hindu Gayatri mantra, faced criminal complaints by the police, under
Section 295(c) of the Indian Penal Code, based on the complaints by Hindu and
Jain organizations on the grounds of (i) “hurting religious sentiments,” and (ii) that
the clothes insulted Hindu and Jain religions.11The incident was reported on the
Being Fashionable in the Globalization Era in India 79

India Fashion Week’s website,12 as well as discussed in Jain discussion forums

on the Internet. It acted as a deterrent to fashion designers wanting to venture
into designing holy writing garments. Furthermore, in 2007, in Gujarat, a Member
of the Legislative Assembly of the right-wing conservative Hindu party Bharatiya
Janata Party, along with his followers, confiscated holy writing garments printed
with Navkar mantra, Gayatri mantra, and Om from helpless local vendors and
stormed a police station in Ahmedabad, complaining that these garments not
only injured the religious sentiments of the people, but also that unholy acts are
performed by boys wearing these fashion kurtas.13 This backlash from politicians
and right-wing organizations has dissuaded fashion designers from bringing out
fashion collections on holy writing. In areas of cultural conservatism, holy writing
fashion functions at best at a subterranean level.
The travel trajectory of holy writing fashion began with a Western garment—
the unisex T-shirt that has been integrated into Indian clothing tradition—and
progressed to indigenous garments. The T-shirt is the most favored site of
creative expression of the youth. The nature of production of the T-shirt, which
is smallscale, dispersed, unobtrusive, and highly profitable, has enabled the
production and consumption of “Yoga” and Buddhist holy writing garments.
These products are sold in the major markets in New Delhi, frequented by the
youth (and especially foreign tourists), as well as in upmarket craft markets such
as Dilli Haat and elite boutiques. E-commerce sites such as www.amazon.
com, and www.myntra.com, for example, have emerged as significant market
places, ensuring anonymity and freedom from any backlash from right-wing
organizations. The expansion of the Internet on mobile phones has facilitated the
mushrooming of e-businesses, which offer these garments with a wide range
of designs throughout India, facilitating the spread of this fashion trend both in
diverse anonymous production centers, as well as consumer bases. Innovative
use of new textile fashions such as Srikalahasti Kalamkari (which itself is a deriv-
ative of the traditional sacred textile tradition), as well as holy writing fashion, are
seen in products sold on e-commerce sites such as www.exoticindiaart.com.
The availability of digital printing and machine embroidery facilities has
enabled customized individual designs (particularly Buddhist), which are popular
on tourist markets in India. Every year new trends occur in terms of extension
to other garments, such as Bandees (a cotton sleeveless jacket), and trousers,
the addition of new holy writing mantras, innovative design templates, and color
palettes. In early 2013, saris (see Figure 4.1) and salwar-kameez dupatta sets
(see Figure 4.2) were introduced, with Shiva and Om mantras, interspersed with
the sun motif, and using a black, saffron, and maroon color palette. In early
2014, yardage, with holy mantras interspersed with the sun motif, were stitched
into unisex sardarees/bandees, as well as on tourist-market casual trousers (see
Figure 4.3). They became highly popular among tourists and, more selectively,
among the Indian urban youth.
80 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Figure 4.1 Sari with holy writing. Sari with Om, Shiva, Hare Rama Hare Krishna mantras
and other illegible mantras in 2013, being sold at Dilli Haat, INA, New Delhi. Photograph
by the author.
Being Fashionable in the Globalization Era in India 81

Figure 4.2 Salwar-kameez dupatta sets with holy writing. Salwar-kameez dupatta sets
with different legible and illegible mantras being sold in a handloom stall at Dilli Haat
INA, New Delhi in 2013. Photograph by the author.

The geographic locus of consumption is limited to areas of cultural tolerance

and cosmopolitanism such as urban spaces. It is neither tolerated nor sanctioned
in tradition bound, culturally conservative regions, and rural areas and specific
urban neighborhoods. Within cities, it is restricted to parts that are amenable
to this fashion. Furthermore, fashion dynamics, levels of cultural tolerance,
and cosmopolitanism, all determine its prevalence and popularity in each
metropolitan city. Mumbai is considered to be the most culturally tolerant and
cosmopolitan, followed by Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), which is one of the
centers of the global Information Technology (IT) economy. Conservative cities
like Chennai (formerly Madras) and Hyderabad, for example, are now changing.
Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) has always been artistically inclined and is culturally
tolerant. Smaller cities like Ahmedabad and Visakhapatman, for example, have
low levels of cultural tolerance and cosmopolitanism.
82 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Figure 4.3 Touristy casual trousers. These trousers, popular with foreign tourists, are
inscribed with partly legible mantras. Photograph by the author.
Being Fashionable in the Globalization Era in India 83

The consumer base is both niche and geographically widespread. This

niche is further nuanced with multiple non-exclusive sub-niches which are also
geographically widespread. Of the middle classes, those that are professionally
linked to the global economy are the primary constituency. This category is the
prime mover as exposure to other cultures—within India, as well as outside the
country, both East and West—has expanded the middle class’s own level of
cultural and religious tolerance. Members have also been influenced by other
(both East and West) perceptions of Hinduism. Bought at boutiques and aesthet-
ically designed by designers trained in fashion or otherwise, these garments are
favored by them and are considered “high status.” For this niche, displaying
these garments on their bodies is meant to show that they have the perfect
combination of materialism and spiritualism with an aesthetic fashion sense.
The sub-niche of the youth, considers wearing these holy writing garments as
“cool,” but these are only one kind of the many fashionable garments worn by
them, and are not ubiquitous like jeans and T-shirts. Part of secular India, they
are often unaware of the cultural taboos regarding the usage of sacred elements
in daily life. They favor T-shirts, kurtas, shirts, touristy trousers; the latter are
more popular among foreign tourists. Foreigners in tourist sites such as Goa and
headquarters of the new age spiritual gurus such as those found in Bengaluru
and Coimbatore are the major buyers of these garments. Another sub-niche is
that of young adults who have graduated from wearing T-shirts to shirts, kurtas,
dupattas, salwar-kameezes, and saris. The older-age group of men and women
in their 40 to 50s also provides a consumer base for these kurtas and saris.
Lastly, there are the pilgrims undertaking pilgrimages, who wear these garments,
in lieu of the traditional sacred cloths, when they go to the temple to pray to the
gods. The rich upper-class segment sources its holy writing fashion garments
from high-end boutiques, and also commissions fashion designers to create for
them. The middle-class segment sources its holy writing fashion garments from
a more diverse set of producers spread across India, such as small clothing
businesses which stock the designs of graphic artists and designers (visual
artists), independent craft producers, and others.

Buyer and seller mindscapes: Negotiating around the

edges
Actual production is a closely guarded business secret, and producers and
sellers are reluctant to reveal the actual place of production, the selection of
mantras, the designing of the garments, and so on. The producers are small
scale and dispersed, including block makers, hand block printers and screen
printers, who do not advertise their work; neither do producers and sellers.
In order to address varied consumer demands, producers experiment and
84 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

innovate to bring out new designs and mantras in varied color palettes. Test
marketing of new mantras is continuously done. Unknown mantras with low
sales that have to be repetitively explained to the customers are discarded.
Obscure and sometimes unintelligible mantras or verses are also sold without
any qualms or explanation. It is common to see incomplete and incorrectly
sequenced mantras, as well as unknown mantras that make no sense. The
accountability of the mistakes is passed on by the producer to someone else
in the production chain such as the designer or the block maker. But despite
these mistakes, which traditionally would have been perceived as sacrilege,
these garments are popular.
The cultural matrix governing the use of mantras impacts the producers and
sellers, too, who make a distinction between personal choice and business. A
lady producer and seller confessed that while neither she nor her family members
would wear these garments, she produces them nevertheless because it is
business. Some producers make a deliberate choice not to produce garments
that clothe the lower part of the body such as trousers and salwars, for example,
instead, focusing on creating garments that clothe the upper part of the body.
However, some producers choose to treat the production of lower garments
inscribed with holy writing as a purely business venture and produce trousers
that are highly popular with foreign tourists.
Many block printers and producers chose not to print mantras, mainly due
to their adherence to the cultural restrictions governing the use of mantras in
daily life. Some producers of yardage and garments printed with the scripts of
regional languages, refused to print holy words onto their products because it
was against their cultural sensibilities and practices. One Sikh producer whose
popular products include kurtis, kurtas, and stoles, beautifully conceived and
executed based on the interplay of two great Punjabi traditions—Phulkari
embroidery and Gurmukhi script—did not allow any holy words or scripture
from Sikh religion to be printed on his garments as it went against the basic
tenet of Sikhism. Similarly, a traditional hand block printer and an entrepreneur
businessman from Rajasthan, did not print any holy writing fashion garments
as it was against Rajasthani culture and textiles tradition. Instead, he preferred
to produce fashion garments with vernacular language alphabets that are hand
block printed on cotton fabric. Dastkari Haat Samiti’s “Akshara”14 initiative, which
was designed to bring literacy to illiterate crafts people through the creation of
products that incorporate the alphabets of vernacular languages, decided to
steer clear of needless complication to its literacy project by not including holy
writing, especially as both Hindus and Muslims produced goods for each other’s
communities.
The typical buyer’s perception involves an entirely different set of criteria that
come into play while buying a holy writing garment. The set of criteria primarily
involves the interrogation of the written elements on the garment, assessment
Being Fashionable in the Globalization Era in India 85

of its suitability by examining its connotative meaning in his/her syncretic cultural

matrix, and, finally, determining whether it is useful in the creation of the desired
image of oneself. A college-going urban student, who is part of secularized
India, is often unaware of the cultural taboos, and views them merely from a
fashion and aesthetic point of view. But a woman aware of the cultural taboos
of her socio-cultural matrix, has to take into account the cultural proscriptions
of her family’s cultural background, and, if married, that of her in-laws, her
social circle, and her workplace. Similarly, she must figure out ways to negotiate
the cultural proscriptions—for instance, that one should not sit on holy writing
and gods’ images, not go to the toilet wearing any sacred clothing, not wear
any sacred clothing while menstruating, as well as other notions and practices
involving purity and pollution—while still going about the business of daily life.
The management of these multiple minefields determines her choice of whether
or not to buy a holy writing fashion clothing item, where to wear it, and how often.
The classic fashion dispersal model is the top down trickle model from the
higher social classes and cognoscenti, to the middle classes, and finally to the
lower classes, as well as from the fashion designers to the imitators at lower
rungs (Simmel 1904), but this does not apply to holy writing fashion. Rather, it
trickles across disparately located groups with similar consumption trajectories
and levels. It emerges from the middle classes, spreading horizontally and verti-
cally within that group. Its spread to upper and lower social classes is limited
as it is determined by multiple factors such as the nature and content of the
holy writing, and its engagement with conservatism in different locales, both
geographical and cultural. The fashion model most applicable is the populist
model, where multiple groups belonging to varied cultures, socio-economic
status, location and age groups have created this fashion trend. This is explained
by the fact that the middle classes are the locus of production and consumption.
The primary producers were, and are, graphic artists and designers (visual
artists who are often professionally trained), who creatively interpret the various
elements of Indian religion and culture onto garments. Simultaneously, the vast
burgeoning middle class constitutes the consumer base.

Contextualizing holy writing fashion:

societal changes in globalization era
The post-liberalization and globalization era has been characterized by large-
scale social changes which have led to both structural changes, such as the
emergence of new middle classes, and socio-cultural phenomena, such as new
age spiritualism and religion, and popular culture. These provide the template for
the emergence and spread of holy writing fashion, which is uniquely placed at
86 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

the juncture of these three contexts. This section examines these social changes
in the context of the genesis and trajectory of holy writing fashion.

The urban middle class

Holy writing fashion decodes, as well as articulates the middle class’s15 urban
psyche, that is its economic and socio-cultural situation; what it seeks, wants,
needs, desires, fears, expresses, and articulates, as well as its self conceptual-
ization and self-construction. The socio-cultural contexts of holy writing fashion
lie in the larger internal changes brought about by the post-Independence
development agenda in India. These have seen an increase in literate profes-
sionals who form the exponentially expanding middle classes, both old and
new16 which largely inhabit India’s metropolitan cities. Wider processes of urbani-
zation, education, industrial growth, and development policies created a highly
skilled labor pool, not just for India’s domestic economy, but also for the world
economy, many of which migrated to Indian cities, as well as abroad. Today’s
educated middle-class India is more exposed to the rest of the world than any
other generation in the history of the country; it inhabits a truly global world. This
process has intensified, deepened, and accelerated due to forces of liberalization
and globalization in the late 1990s—particularly as a result of the development of
the IT and communication sector (mobile, Internet, and satellite direct to home
TV), which has had a profound and far-reaching impact on modern India.
This has resulted in the extension of the secular, which, in turn, has given
rise to a certain kind of generalization of worldviews and consumption patterns
across the Indian middle classes.17 The rising aspirational expectations of the
expanding middle class have given rise to increasing consumerism. Therefore,
a mobile and educated middle-class India has been critically revisiting many
of its ancient cultural practices, as well as its spiritual and religious notions.
This concurrent rediscovery of its rich and diverse heritage, on the one hand,
and the ever increasing exposure to global developments and worldviews,
on the other, has given rise to multiple frames of reconstruction of the self
by objectifying some elements of culture, reframing and appropriating them.
This postmodern encounter with a middle-class Indian has been a two way
engagement where the middle-class Indian has not merely brought his or her
own understanding of modernity to negotiate with the multiple modernities that
he or she encounters (Breckenridge 1996), but also created a postmodern
template where things, events, cultures, and personal and professional growth
are framed and contextualized. The postmodern urban middle-class Indian
identity is continuously self-constructed, as well as a pastiche of various styles
(Berger 2010), with multiple-identity constructions for each kind of encounter,
with various kinds of modernities. This critical reevaluation has not only resulted
Being Fashionable in the Globalization Era in India 87

in a very vigorous popular culture, and the open articulation and expression
of anxieties and conflicts brought about by rapid changes in both personal
and socio-cultural milieus, but also in the increase of new age spiritualism
and religiosity. As a result, the hidden and private aspects of spirituality and
religiosity in general as well as personal terms have been brought out into the
open. The integration of a spiritual and religious anchor or belief into one’s life
is often publicly displayed by holy marks and clothing, in this case holy writing
fashion. The urbanized middle class is the locus of the holy writing fashion
trend’s genesis, production, and consumption. The old is the site of cultural
production, while the site of consumption of holy writing fashion is both the old
and new middle classes.

New age spiritualism and religiosity

The internal and external changes have created conditions of existence where
the old order and paradigm are no longer valid, but a new order is not yet in
place. The resultant loss of moorings, both cultural and socio-economic, a
feeling of rootlessness, and that of not belonging have created a vacuum and a
space for a renegotiation of the self. The modern Indian suffers from lebensangst
(an unwillingness to face up to life’s problems) and searches for lebensraum
(living space).The spiritual and religious presents itself as something universal
and available. However, the dipping into spiritual and religious is not confined
to Hinduism, but rather concerns all spiritual and religious traditions.18 Elements
of religion have been commodified to make not merely lifestyle statements, but
also assuage an underlying lebensangst brought on by continuous shifting life
situations and contexts and the gradual disintegration of old expectations and
established behavioral patterns. The new age spiritual and religious Gurus‘
primary constituency is thus these vast burgeoning middle classes seeking
personal moorings. They are offered different packaged brands, which are
designed to strengthen, deepen, and widen the consumerist lifestyle without
its side effects, but with an added perquisite of spiritual benefits.19 Religion and
spirituality are commodified and repackaged as tools for contemporary living.20
This explains the rise and proliferation of new age spiritual gurus, the bulk of
whose followers come from the middle classes.
The depth and extent of the widespread need to resort to the spiritual and
religious realm to resolve the existential dilemmas of all classes of Indians is
manifested through:

a) an emergence of numerous religious and spiritual TV channels and

programs which specifically provide solutions to existential problems of
the common people;
88 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

b) films that make gods more accessible to people by recasting them

as friends of the people, such as My Friend Ganesha (Rajiv S Ruia:
2007)—in which the god is deliberately cast as a cute child, thus
reinforcing the idea of him as a friend—and My Boss Bajrang Bali
(Krishna Vamsi: 2004);
c) the proliferation of religious magazines which offer with nearly every
issue, a holy item (such as a Rudraksha bead) guaranteed to aid in
solving problems; and
d) an increase in numerous religious popular culture products, such as
images of gods set in contemporary settings, for example, Ganesha
working on a computer.

The reappropriation of selective elements from spiritual and religious spheres is

most visible in the proliferation of popular culture products. In the last decade,
many such products have been available on the market across India, and
numerous graphic artists and designers have played with holy symbols and
images in various lifestyle products. It is now common to find fridge magnets
or flying kites with “Om” inscribed on them, small plates featuring the swastika
symbol, or laptop skins with gods and holy symbols on them. Specialized shops
have emerged which sell products such as cushion covers, coasters, and other
lifestyle products featuring images of gods that have been playfully interpreted
and depicted.

Popular culture as a site for holy writing fashion

In today’s integrated India, where people from different walks of life, commu-
nities, and cultural and social backgrounds converge and intermingle in the
same working arena, the individual requires incredible skills to negotiate this
minefield of conflicting morals and cultural frameworks. Popular culture is a
safety valve and an avenue for the expression of this lebensangst. It functions as
lebensraum, as a site for expressing existential fears. The proliferation of religion
and spirituality in popular culture is an eloquent commentary on the present
state of Hindus, who are increasingly seeking a religious/spiritual intervention,
repackaged to address their issues and dilemmas. It tells of a deeply fractured
psyche riddled with existential dilemmas, unwilling to compromise on anything,
but seeking to have it all—seemingly a most materialistic attitude of existence.
The fun religious popular culture products have effectively prepared the ground
for the short but significant leap from popular culture products to the emergence
and wider acceptance of holy writing garments.
The holy writing fashion’s popularity and acceptance is also due to the
specificity of popular culture. In India’s rapidly changing society, popular culture
Being Fashionable in the Globalization Era in India 89

has mediated changes in culture, and the major areas of negotiation include
dressing styles, cultural icons, and spirituality. It has allowed and provided
space for articulation of thoughts, feelings, responses, and action without
disrupting and creating havoc in the existing system. More significantly, it has
sanitized the revolutionary potential of the new and emerging interventions. It
has incubated and developed popular resistance to all kinds of hegemonies,
often in a humorous, non-threatening manner, and has allowed space for
critiques of the social system to become part of the traditional, mainstream
society. This kind of change is insidious and very sly, but yet “in your face,”
out in the open, and non-threatening to the established order. This version of
religion in popular culture, which is continuously metamorphosing according to
the market demands, is seen for the first time in India’s history and that, too, on
a large scale.
A further impetus to the growth of this trend has been the intensification,
since 2000, of Western interpretations and adoptions of Indian spiritualism and
religion into their lifestyle, as witnessed by the prolific use of holy symbols like
Om and the Gayatri mantra in clothing used as yoga and meditation accoutre-
ments, and the designer lines depicting Indian deities and gods. India, in its turn,
has partly mirrored this Western fashion trend of incorporating Indian spiritual/
religious heritage in clothing.
Since 2000, there has been an emerging trend of indigenous appropriating
and reclaiming of local cultures, visible especially in advertisements. Graphic
artists, designers, and advertisement professionals, catering to a contemporary
India, have revisited aspects of Indian culture in order to create products relevant
to Indian customers. Thus, today we have two perspectives—the Self and
the Other—each interrogating Indian spirituality from within and without, in a
non-exclusive, interactive manner.

Holy writing fashion and the individual:

the making and remaking of the self
The recent trend of mixing and matching elements from different cultures is
only part of a larger historical trend of religious and spiritual syncretism, which
is characteristic of India. In a plural heterogeneous society, its multiple groups
have their own codes, daily life practices, ways of living, sexuality, bodies, and
the “cultural” meanings and myths connected to the cosmos, spiritual world,
and the material world. New contemporary meanings are generated through
the interplay of combining various elements, at times conflicting, from one’s
own and others’ culture. In postmodern India, where metanarratives have failed
and are failing, individual narratives are being constructed to make sense of
90 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

one’s own life. These personal narratives involve accessing multiple cultures that
function as resources from which the individual picks and chooses elements to
construct his or her own individual and unique narrative.
Holy writing fashion, then, is only one template upon which a transient
individual narrative is based, and is discarded by another template over the
course of time. It provides one kind of a social skin which is constructed and
put on for an occasional display in a certain context in which it functions as a
code for unique and distinct membership. This social skin is subsequently shed
in order to create another narrative in a different context. In the course of the day,
an individual in today’s urban India inhabits many such social contexts that are
constituted by the people with whom he or she engages, be it family, relatives,
colleagues, friends, peers, or others, and thus that individual constructs and
sheds many social skins depending upon the number of social contexts that
constitute the day.
Garments function as multiple social skins that are peeled off and put on
in the habitus of these varied contexts of daily or occasional engagement.
A person wearing holy writing fashion garments communicates to his or her
reference group, as well as to others, that he or she is fashionable, spiritual,
hip and cool, and has great taste, as well as aesthetic and syncretic sense.
This public face of the wearer also reflects the private face of the wearer. The
intention of the wearer could thus be a declaration of any or all of the following:
his or her inner spiritual tendency, membership to a reference group, fashion and
aesthetic sensibilities, fashionability, and/or to create a personalized protective
armor for self protection.

Conclusion
The fashion trend of holy writing on garments is symptomatic and reflective
of the transformation that Indian society is undergoing due to its transitioning
economy. The resultant large-scale societal changes have given rise to a
vibrant popular culture, an extension of the secular, and the commodification
of various elements of culture, notably religion and spirituality. This fashion is
essentially indigenous, reflecting and articulating an indigenous perspective
and engagement with the changes in society. This new gaze is neither wholly
Western, nor wholly traditional or indigenous, but rather a synthesis, a mix of the
modern and the traditional, reflecting the mindset of the modern urban—which
is curious and flexible, prone to continuously reinterpret, adapt, and recast its
cultural and religious heritage. Partly fueled by the emergence of neo-spiritualism
which caters again to a lifestyle that induces stress and diseases, the present
generation seeks to make sense of its existence through instant nirvana fixes
Being Fashionable in the Globalization Era in India 91

available on the market. Rooted in the middle classes, who are the backbone
of the transitioning economy, it is located in popular culture, which has allowed
the emergence of new syncretic cultural matrixes that permit a seamless
integration of diverse and conflicting elements of culture. It is one of the many
fashion trends of present day India with a populist fashion model and a trickle
across a fashion dispersal model that emerge from the middle class. Two trends
have enabled the fairly widespread geographic niche acceptance of holy writing
fashion garments: firstly the cultural appropriation of foreign cultural influences
into one’s own, making it an integral part of one’s constructed identity; and
secondly the resolving of personal insecurities, lebensangst, through spiritual
and religious (fashion) products within the template or context of popular culture.
Individuals create multiple-identity constructions to function in today’s society,
whereby these holy writing garments provide not only a talismanic succor but
also a social skin that the consumer wears in specific contexts.
Traditional culture matrixes do not allow the buying and wearing of these
fashionable holy writing garments, but new syncretic cultural matrixes provide
scope for seamless accommodation of this fashion into a person’s life. Its
success lies in the dominance of new syncretic cultural matrixes over the tradi-
tional ones. Holy writing fashion symbolizes the negotiation of cultural heritage
for self-construction, the negotiation and resolution of varied minefields and
complexities in one’s lifestyle, and the articulation of one’s public and private
self. It is the articulation of one’s spiritual inclinations, as well as sartorial sensi-
bilities. It is a modern fashion phenomenon that has emerged due to large-scale
internal changes, as well as external influences that impinge upon individuals
as they encounter and negotiate multiple modernities that are both local and
international. It functions as a tool for negotiating complex changes and is ever
evolving and responsive to change. Having been in existence for more than a
decade with numerous avatars, this fashion trend is here to stay, although it is
not clear what forms the holy writing on garments fashion may take in the future.

Notes
 1 I am thankful to Dr. Vijayalakshmi Shankar, Dr. Anamika Pathak, Dr. Lotika
Varadarajan for fruitful discussions during the course of this independent research
project. Finally, I am deeply grateful to Professor T. Desiraju, who motivated me to
continuously engage with the world with an open, curious, and questioning mind.
 2 The trend of holy writing on fashionable clothing is non-existent in Christianity,
Islam, Zoroastrianism, and Sikhism, but exists at a subterranean level in Jain
and Buddhist religions. Jain and Buddhist religions are minority religions, but
as offshoots of Hindusim, they partly share the broader notions of cultural
prescriptions and proscriptions such as the theory and praxis of dealing with
sacred things and objects, for example.
92 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

 3 Dilli Haat attracts a regular, but wide and disparate consumer base from all over
the country, ranging from the young to the old. It is much frequented by the college
students who provide a pan-Indian fashion platform reflective of the local popular
markets. It also provides a space where one can interact with buyers and sellers, as
well as producers. Interestingly, very often the seller and the producer are one and
the same. In addition, the pan-Indian validity of the findings were validated through
a research of Internet news reports, debates and discussions, e-commerce sites.
as well as telephonic interviews with consumers from other Indian metropolitan
areas.
 4 The study excludes other visual symbols such as the feet of Vishnu, the Sun, or
the Trishul of Shiva because they are visual symbols.
 5 The Hindu deities have numerous names, and 108 different names of a deity
generally constitute a Namavali. However, higher counts do exist and the
worshipper has the choice between the basic 108, or more.
 6 Sanskrit tradition in this context is referred to as the great tradition which is
the preserve of the few, with possible Aryan origin such as Sanskrit language,
brahminical Puranas, Vedas, and so on. Prakrit tradition, often referred to as
the little tradition, is the preserve of the rest, and is indigene with numerous
local traditions, vernacular languages, folk tales, non-brahminical, and others.
The Sanskrit/Prakrit binary opposition is like other binary oppositions used to
understand the incredible diversity of India such as Marga/Desi, English language
(colonial, alien and now dominant)/ Bhasha (vernacular), India/ Bharat.
 7 We do not know the exact origin of Namavali cloths whether they originated from
the great-sanskrit tradition or from the little-prakrit tradition. It is suggested that
the template for the development of sanskrit and prakrit traditions came from an
already existing template which was in the public domain and which subsequently
evolved into sanskrit and prakrit traditions. It might still survive in a niche market
and usage, accessible to few who insist on the age-old paddhati.
9 Typically, the rich and the royal as only they could afford the expensive silk
and pashmina wool fabrics. The painting in National Museum, New Delhi,
from Raghogarh, Central India, (circa AD 1795, Paper, 30.5x44 cm, Acc. No.:
51.71/218) perfectly illustrates this point. It depicts Raja Balwant Singh (1770–97)
of Raghogarh with his son, Jai Singh, worshipping the idols of Rama and Sita
and others on a swing. Raja Balwant Singh is wearing Namavali cloths, while the
attending priests wear the regular plain sacred cloths.
10 The production of these luxury garments has by all accounts ceased a long time
ago, though a one-off commissioned item may still be produced at the numerous
production centers in North India, but a contemporary piece has not yet come
into the public domain. The name/s of the deity was either printed or woven onto
the cloth, the material ranging from cotton or silk to a mix of silk and cotton. The
name/s of the deity is written 108 times, either as the repetition of only one single
name, such as Hare Rama or Hare Krishna or Jai Shree Devi Durge or as 108
different names of the deity. The design of the Namavali sacred cloth primarily
encapsulates the written word, symbols, and images of the deity such as Sri
Rama, Krishna, Durga, and Siva. Technically, Namavali consists of numerous
names of one single deity, which often are the celebrated attributes of the deity
chanted during puja. So, while the original Namavali has both multiple names and
Being Fashionable in the Globalization Era in India 93

single name of the deity, the textiles derivative of Namavali repeats only one name,
possibly due to the technicalities associated with weaving.
11 http://ibnlive.in.com/news/religious-text-on-clothes-offending/17902-15-1.html
(accessed 20 August 2014).
12 http://www.indiafashionweek.com/news/26165.html (accessed 21 August 2014).
13 http://www.jainsamaj.org/rpg_site/ahimsa_times_show.php?id=123 (accessed
21 August 2014).
14 Interview with Jaya Jaitly, Dastkari Haat Samiti, who conceived the Akshara project,
on January 15, 2014.
15 In this chapter, the concept middle class is used to denote both the old and the
new that coexists in India. The old is not yet a part of the global economy, while
the new middle classes are firmly integrated into global economy, especially
Information Technology.
16 Leela Fernandes defines the “new” middle classes as “a distinctive social and
political identity that represents and lays claim to the benefits of liberalization”
(2006: xviii).
17 Pavan Varma (2007) explains the overt homogeneity of a very heterogeneous class
as being the result of the same educational pattern, work atmosphere, increased
mobility, media expansion, and consumption patterns whether it be food, fashion,
cinema, music, or others.
18 The popularity of feng shui in India is phenomenal and it is now pervasive on TV
channels, and in the proliferation of shops in urban areas that are widely patronized
by all sections of society.
19 Edward Luce gives a perfect example of an Infosys employee represented by
a typical new middle-class urban Indian who is a migrant from the village, is a
follower of a prominent new age spiritual guru and displays his photograph in his
office cubicle. He follows the new age spiritual guru’s branded package of tools
for living that will help him acquire a higher self-esteem, and become more Indian
(2006: 306).
20 For a more detailed examination see the article online at: http://indiatoday.intoday.
in/story/stereotype-of-saffron-clad-sadhus-are-out-new-age-gurus-are-trendy-
young-people/1/206030.html.

Glossary
Bandee a traditional cotton Indian jacket worn by commoners to royals.
Churidar stitched lower garment of North India, trouser-like, fitting the legs and
gathered at the ankles akin to bangles on arms, hence, the name churi in Hindi
which in English means “bangles.”
Dupatta a woven cloth used to cover the shoulders and upper part of the body, part of
the salwar-kameez ensemble.
Haat a traditional informal market in India.
Kameez typical upper garment stitched top of North Indian girls and women. The
kameez, along with salwar, the lower garment, and dupatta, an unstitched length of
94 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

cloth that is used to cover the head and the bosom by draping it over the kameez, is
the typical dress of Punjabi women, but has now become a pan-Indian dress code.
The Pakistani Pathan suit is the male variation of salwar-kameez.
Kurtas upper garment of women worn over trousers/jeans and salwars and
churidars.
Kurtis a fitted and shorter version of kurta. The kurta was reinvented as a kurti by a
fashion designer post in 2000.
Namavali garland of names; etymological meaning of Namavali: Nama-names,
Vali- garland.
Paddhati established systems of, rules and regulations, or ways of doing something
that are culturally conditioned rules of engagement.
Pitambar the yellow color of Lord Vishnu’s garments.
Prakrit the low-brow, common traditions of the remaining castes, includes folk culture.
Puja ritual worship of the deities.
Salwar typical lower garment stitched somewhat like gathered trousers, and worn by
women of North India, but with specific styles for both sexes.
Sanskrit the great, highbrow and pure tradition of the upper castes.
Sardaree made of wool fibers, this is a traditional Indian jacket worn by anyone from
commoners to royals.

References
Appadurai, Arjun. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Berger, A. A. The Objects of Affection: Semiotics and Consumer Culture. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Breckenridge, Carol A. Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in Contemporary India.
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Craik, Jennifer. The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion, London: Routledge,
2005.
Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. London: Fontana
Press, 1993.
Fernandes, Leela. India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic
Reform. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
Jain, Jyotindra, ed. Popular Culture: Iconic Spaces and Fluid Images, Mumbai: Marg,
2007.
Kasbekar, Asha. Pop Culture India! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle. Oxford: ABC Clio,
2006.
Luce, Edward. In Spite of Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India. London: Little,
Brown, 2006.
Moti Gokulsing, K., and Wimal Dissanayake, eds Popular Culture in a Globalized India,
London: Routledge, 2009.
Nandy, Ashis. An Ambiguous Journey to the City. New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2001.
Pathak, Anamika. “Siva-Parvati Woven Namavali Shawl.” Kala: The Journal of Indian Art
History Congress, vol. xiii, 2007–8.
Simmel, G. “Fashion.” International Quarterly 10 (1904):130–55.
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Turner, Terence. “The Social Skin.” Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (2) (2012):
486–504.
Varma, Pavan K. The Great Indian Middle Class. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2007.
 5
EXOTIC NARRATIVES IN
FASHION: THE IMPACT
OF MOTIFS OF EXOTICA
ON FASHION DESIGN AND
FASHIONABLE IDENTITIES1
JENNIFER CRAIK

Introduction
The idea of the exotic has been central to the history of fashion design and its
reception as innovative, unique, or outstanding. But while there are many refer-
ences to the exotic and exotica, it is rarely defined, especially in relation to how
the term is used in relation to fashion and design. The idea of the exotic implies
a sense of magic, something that is recognized but intangible—something out
of the ordinary. Despite that, an element of the exotic is a central part of how
cultural identity is formed and defined. The exotic is also shorthand for the
divide between the persistent distinction made between inspiration in Western
“fashion” and non-Western symbolism in “dress,” since non-Western exotica
is the recurring and deeply embedded basis of Western fashion. Above all, an
examination of the use of the exotic in fashion reveals the mutual dependency and
synergies between fashion sensibilities in all cultures and historical moments. In
other words, there is a convergence between Western and non-Western fashion,
as contemporaneously illustrated in the case of China and India, which have
demonstrated their success at engaging with Western (or Eurocentric) fashion,
while retaining their distinctive symbolism and stylistic registers as producers,
consumers and increasingly as cutting edge designers. This chapter explores
the case of the incorporation of the exotic in Australia indigenous fashion design.
98 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Elsewhere, I have explored the ways in which three distinctive types of

exotica have constructed narratives of national identity in Australian fashion,
namely, outback or rural dress, swimwear, and Australiana-themed fashion
(Craik 2009). More recently, a fourth type of national identity has recurred as
a form of fashion inspiration, namely, motifs of Australian indigenous culture.
Since European settlement, the place of indigenous culture has been contested
with the consequence of ambivalent references in discourses of national identity.
This has been reflected in different cultural narratives including tourism, film,
photography, art and craft, sport, and music. But it has also featured in fashion
and, as the assertion of indigenous identity has become more prominent in
recent years, so, too, has the visibility of indigenous themes in the design of
textiles and garments. Increasingly, references to indigeneity are becoming
the leitmotif of discourses about national identity and culture and thus, too, in
national dress codes and fashion. The exotic in Australian fashion is, therefore,
increasingly indigenous. This chapter explores specific indigenous fashion
narratives, and contrasts surface (2-D) references to the exotic—for example,
in textiles—with structural (3-D) manipulations of the exotic in the design
process—for example, in the shape, form, and construction of garments.

Defining exotica
To begin, it is necessary to define the term “exotica”. A range of definitions can
be found in dictionaries and glossaries, including phenomena that are: curiously
unusual or excitingly strange; foreign, unfamiliar, strange, or rare; a fusion of
something foreign with local or indigenous culture; something introduced from
abroad, but not fully naturalized; and something having a strange or bizarre
allure, beauty, or quality. To summarize, exotica refers to something or a quality
that is not embedded in a particular culture, but to which the culture relates or
responds, or with which it resonates.
In relation to fashion inspiration, I have argued that exotica is integral to
what is regarded as cutting-edge design. In other words, exoticism and
fashion go hand in hand such that references to cultural motifs are a foremost
inspiration in fashion. So, what is it that exotic motifs add or contribute to
design? Here, I argue that exotic references create narratives of difference and
distinctiveness both for the designer and the wearer. This includes allusions
to motifs, objects, customs, and aesthetics from other cultures in fashion, as
well as well-known cultural tropes from the art, history, and popular culture of
one’s own culture.
In an earlier publication (Craik 1994), I proposed that there were three forms
of exoticism in fashion:
Exotic Narratives in Fashion 99

1 Techniques of dress and decoration in non-Western cultures. Examples

include: saris in the subcontinent; kimonos in Japan; hanbok in Korea;
tunics, robes, and pigtails in China; veiling in Islamic cultures; and
tattooing as a symbol of status or role.
2 Adaptations of traditional (customary) dress within Western fashion.
Examples include: the salwar-kameez in diasporic Indian cultures, saris
with cardigans or coats in cold climates, and leggings under dresses
and skirts with headscarf for Muslim schoolgirls in Western societies.
3 Appropriation of “exotic” elements in Western fashion. Examples
include: the inclusion of North American Indian fringing or feathers in
mainstream fashion; the reproduction of Aboriginal paintings as textiles
for use on T-shirts, or other fashion; and the periodic appearance of the
“cheongsam” in Western fashion.

To this I have added a fourth form, namely, the appropriation of Western fashion
in non-Western fashion. Examples include: the combination of denim jeans with
customary dress; the global proliferation of baseball caps as sporting and leisure
wear; and the normative status of sneakers as the default footwear of choice
when they were originally designed as sports shoes. While we recognize inspira-
tions and references like these, almost without thinking, we are also conscious of
a set of tensions and oppositions that are embedded in such cultural borrowings
and adaptations. There are three sets of oppositions:

1 Indigenous versus exotic motifs and references;

2 Contrived versus appropriated motifs and references; and
3 Authentic versus inspirational motifs and references.

While these overlap, and sometimes may be synonymous, an indigenous motif

refers to something that is specifically and uniquely embedded in a particular
culture (e.g. the myth of the rainbow serpent, or representation of a turtle totem),
as opposed to a generic, but design-imbued representation of something
commonly associated with exotica (e.g. a boomerang, handprint, or kangaroo).
Often the difficulty is establishing whether a certain motif has a specific
“ownership,” or belongs in the sacred, rather than the profane domain—and
who has the authority to designate it in one domain or another.
The second tension relates to the act of using motifs. In a contrived use
of exotica, a motif, image, or theme is deliberately used and manipulated to
achieve a particular design outcome while appropriation refers to the deliberate
borrowing or reusing of a motif or image, often in a different context, and with
little regard for the ethics of use (e.g. permission, licensing, collaboration).
The third tension is to some degree a judgment as to whether a motif appears
100 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

as an authentic design usage versus the creation of a design that has been
inspired by, but is not a direct translation (rip-off) of a motif or an image.
These tensions and oppositions run through the discussion and reception
of exotic imagery in textiles and fashion with scant regard to the issues raised
by such practices, in particular, that Western cultures draw on the exotica of
non-Western cultures and past cultures (e.g. folk cultures, traditions, historical
cultures) to add an element of frisson to everyday culture and imbue the
everyday with a special—almost magical—quality. Non-Western cultures, by
contrast, tend to have grounded connotations and relationships with exotic
motifs in their cultures that convey quite specific social meanings and implica-
tions. Mixing these two registers lies at the heart of fashion for exotica, but in so
doing raises many questions about the links between Western and non-Western
as codified symbolic and communicative realms.
The following discussion looks specifically at how the idea of the exotic has
been used in and shaped by the development of a distinctively Australian sense
of fashion.

How has Australian fashion design been

shaped by exotica?
Exotica has long been a motif in Australian fashion, as traced by Margaret
Maynard (2001). Throughout the twentieth century, exotic motifs, including
Aboriginal, Polynesian, Indonesian, Hawaiian, and Indian inspirations, have
“been plundered for women’s leisure clothing (although not exclusively) to
stimulate and titillate the jaded tastes of consumers” (Maynard 2001: 153). As
well as using exotic motifs in Australian fashion design, garments and fashions
from non-Western cultures have also been incorporated into what has become
termed “ethnic chic.”
Maynard outlines the use of exotica in Australian swimwear in the 1920s (such
as oriental designs, and garments such as the kimono, as well as references
to the cultures of antiquity), Polynesian and Hawaiian influences in the interwar
years (especially in textile designs, such as hibiscus, palm trees, and pandanus),
and Islander and Indonesian influences from the 1940s (with sarongs and batik
fabric), while Indian garments, fabrics, and accessories dominated the youth
fashions of the 1970s, and have recurred in subsequent fashions. Alongside
these diverse forms of exotica, the use of Aboriginal motifs has also occurred,
for example, in the textiles of Olive Ashworth, from the 1950s, in her efforts to
counter the craze for what she called “mock Hawaiian, pseudo Spanish and
phoney Polynesian” motifs circulating in fashion (Maynard 2001: 154; Williamson
2010: 117). This was the start of an ongoing fascination with Aboriginal motifs
Exotic Narratives in Fashion 101

in fashion and textiles, in a cyclical process of acclamation, followed by renun-

ciation, coinciding with periods of nationalistic fervor (Craik, forthcoming).
Since Ashworth, many other designers have continued to make explicit links
between Aboriginal culture and leisure wear, emphasizing the problematic links
between women at home and as objects of fantasy. At times the exotic is stressed
through generalized Australiana motifs, not simply Aboriginal designs (Maynard
2001: 154). Prominent among these motifs are: Australian flora and fauna (such
as waratahs, gum blossoms, Sturt Desert Peas, koalas, kangaroos, cockatoos,
and reef life); landscape and the colors of the outback, especially the desert
(the mythical heart of Australia); images and symbols derived from well-known
examples of Australian art (for example, the textile designs of Florence Broadhurst’s
wallpaper, “pop” artist Ken Done’s colorful depictions of Australiana, and artist
Del Kathryn Barton’s popular culture symbols); icons and clothing typifying rural
Australia (such as R. M. Williams’ moleskins and boots, Akubra hats, Drizabone
coats, and ug/ugg boots); images that allude to Australia’s climate and surfing-
cum-swimming lifestyle and culture (such as images of elements of beach culture,
sunsets, sharks, and thongs); and motifs associated with indigenous identity and
national identity (x-ray artworks depicted on T-shirts, “dot” painting style designs,
ochre palette colorways representing the soil of the outback).
The heyday of the uptake of Australiana in fashion was the 1980s. Australiana
references have been prominent in the design of successive uniforms for
Australian sporting teams at international events. For example, in 1984,
prominent fashion designer Prue Acton designed the opening parade uniforms
for the Australian team in the Olympic Games, choosing wattle yellow wool
dresses (for women) and shirts (for men) depicting koalas, emus, and wombats.
While ridiculed by the Australian media and public, the team won the best-
dressed award for the opening ceremony (Williamson 2010: 107; Berry 2012:
91). In 1988, athletes wore yellow Drizabone-style coats and Akubra hats; in
1992, khaki shorts with Australiana patterned shirts; and, in 2000, Mambo-
designed colorful ironic Australiana shirts and jackets (which subsequently
became collectors’ items). In avant-garde fashion, designers such as Jenny
Kee and Linda Jackson popularized the sophisticated blending of indigenous
and Australiana inspirations in colorful textiles, fashion, and artwork, epitomized
by their Flamingo Park boutique and catwalk parades, as well as collections
with names such as Bush Couture and Opal (Maynard 1999, 2000, 2001; Craik
2009; in press). Other notable designers included Jenny Bannister, Bronwyn
Bancroft, and the fashion label Balarinji. A number of indigenous collectives also
emerged during this period, including Tiwi Designs, Desert Designs, Ernabella,
Utopia, and Bima Wear (Williamson 2010: 115–19).
Fashions inspired by Australiana became mainstream during this period as
Australians proudly wore colorful, nationalistic clothes that reflected a newfound
sense of national pride. As Berry observes:
102 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

In simplifying Australian landmarks and animals as symbols of national identity,

designers simultaneously created garments that appealed to tourists as
souvenirs and conveyed postmodern irony in the local context. (Berry 2012: 54)

The underpinning of this period was the desire to create a new sense of national
culture in order to reconcile the traditional myth of Australian identity as the bush
and the outback with the recognition of a modern urban culture fanned by the
energy of youth and popular culture. While an earnest pursuit at one level, this
quest also embraced an irreverent and rebellious “larrikin” sensibility with irony,
juxtaposition, critique, and spoof central to the emergence of a contemporary
design language and discourse (Gray 2010: 152).
As well as achieving popularity as mainstream fashion, the work of these
designers also resonated with developments in the art world and galleries and
museums acquired examples for their collections. An increasing number of
galleries have held fashion exhibitions drawn from their own collections or touring
shows. This demonstrates that the incorporation of Australiana and indigenous
motifs in fashion has resonated with a new sensibility and homegrown aesthetic
in Australian art. Indeed, with no gallery dedicated solely to fashion or costume
in Australia, examples of fashion from this period are almost exclusively found
as “artefacts” and examples of “material culture” in art galleries and museums
(such as the Powerhouse in Sydney, National Gallery of Australia, and National
Gallery of Victoria) rather than in other collections. But are they there because
they are fashion, art, craft or design? Berry (2013) has traced the fraught and
ambiguous uptake of Australiana fashion as the craft versus art embodiment of
national cultural identity.
Another development during this period was the politicization of indigenous
culture and recognition of the sovereignty of Aboriginal people. As a result, the
use of Australiana motifs—especially indigenous ones—has become increas-
ingly tinged by the overt and implicit politics of inspiration and appropriation.
Aboriginal activists used Australiana clothes such as T-shirts as effective forms
for advertising and promoting their causes, alongside the more benign prolif-
eration of indigenous-themed fashions of the day. Such concerns have become
even more prominent in recent years.
One of the underpinnings of the classification of Australiana motifs in textiles
and fashion is the form these take, in particular, whether exotic references and
inspirations take the form of surface (2-D or two-dimensional) representations and
translations of depictions of Australian-ness, for example, in textiles or as surface
decoration on T-shirts or jumpers; as opposed to molded forms (3-D or three-
dimensional) which involve the manipulation of shape, contours, and construction,
for example, in creating silhouettes and embellishing the body–clothes relationship
through how a garment fits on the human form. While 2-D examples of Australiana
fashion have been treated as artwork—akin to paintings—3-D Australiana fashion
Exotic Narratives in Fashion 103

tends to be classified as craft, decorative art, or high-end design creations.

Equally, 2-D Australiana is generally more suited to the mainstream fashion (mid to
low) as well as the tourist market. This is what fashion designer Roopa Pemmaraju
describes as the “cliché of Aboriginal art being limited to ‘dot paintings or cheap
$2 merchandise’” (quoted by Sutton 2013).

Australian fashion designers using exotic

inspirations
In the contemporary fashion context, a number of designers have been playing
with exotic inspirations in their designs. However, there are a number of different
sources of exotica and different cultural identifications of designers incorporating
exotic motifs. In particular, indigenous-inspired fashion is developing a sophisti-
cated visual language and interplay between 2-D and 3-D forms.
Table 1: Typology of exotic inspirations for Australian fashion designers

Ethnicity of designer Source of inspiration Mode of production

Non-Australian Culture of origin Customized niche clientele

Australian design icons High-end artisans
Couture market

Australian Global cultural exotica Collaborations with non-Australian

non-indigenous textile artisans
High-end market

Non-Australian Australian indigenous Collaborations with Australian

artworks indigenous communities and
artists
Textile and garment production by
non-Australian artisans
Mid-market

Australian Australian indigenous Collaborative “fusion” design

non-indigenous and exotica and culture Australian business model
indigenous Collaborations between
indigenous and non-indigenous
production
Niche “eco” market

Australian Global cultural exotica, Collaborations

non-indigenous Australiana, and popular Niche fashion-forward clientele
culture references Fashion-art fusion

Drawing on the above typology, examples of these designers can be distin-

guished and contrasted as follows.
104 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Non-Australian inspired by another culture and iconic

Australian design inspirations
In many ways, it has been easier for non-Australian designers to find a voice
to articulate the spirit of national culture than Australian-born designers. This
may be because they remain observers looking on from the fringes at the
national obsession with claiming a unique identity. A prominent recent example
is Japanese-born, Sydney-based fashion designer Akira Isogawa who has
achieved recognition of excellence both in Australia and abroad. Migrating to
Australia in his 20s, Akira’s’ grounding in Japanese culture created an interesting
fusion with the prevailing Australian cultural zeitgeist of the 1980s. According to
Parkes:

His design is informed by a multicultural background and a respectful inter-

action with other cultures; he seeks the approval of Europe, but is conscious
of nurturing the local market; he remains obsessed with the quality of crafts-
manship and materials used in his work; he is not constrained by the limits
of his field (designing rugs, homewares, costumes for dance etc), and is a
committed collaborator; and he has embraced iconic elements of Australian
identity within his work. (Parkes 2006: 21)

Akira’s design inspiration has been shaped by his nuanced understanding

of traditional Japanese costume and textiles, adapted for a relaxed Australian
aesthetic in order to produce exquisitely crafted clothes that are also wearable.
The designer’s long-standing success rests on his ability to subtly combine
his Japanese cultural heritage and symbolism with a deep understanding of
Australian aesthetics and cultural heritage, which, as a migrant, he sees with
new eyes. However, his cultural references are not confined to merely Japan and
Australia, instead drawing widely on other cultural references and motifs from
the arts and crafts of Asia, and elsewhere. He seeks out handcrafted textiles,
and employs specialist craft artisans to produce textiles, as well as to embellish
surfaces through beading, embroidery, and smocking. The results are stunning
combinations of exquisitely chosen textiles and embellishments from different
cultural traditions and forms (from commissioned silks to home furnishing
fabrics) to create garments that embody a blend of multicultural references in
sophisticated and elaborate yet wearable garments (www.akira.com.au).
Collaborations and close working relationships are central to the designer’s
production process. His aim is to make garments that are “timeless,” yet
individual. The result is complex constructions (often incorporating origami-
folding techniques) that make innovative use of textiles, and feature detailed
finishes in natural fabrics. According to Akira: “The designs are quite specific,
but in that way they are timeless and quite individual” (quoted by Oakley Smith
Exotic Narratives in Fashion 105

2010a: 18). His work has featured in a number of exhibitions, notably solo shows
at the National Gallery of Victoria, in 2005, and Object Gallery, in Sydney, in 2001.

Collaborations with global artisans

In contrast to Australian designers who rely on Australia-specific inspirations or
alternatively eschew that for an “international” or global source of inspiration, the
label Easton Pearson draws on multiple exotic references that are interpreted
in a specifically Australian design context. Like Akira, Easton Pearson shows in
Paris, as well as in Australia.
Friends Pamela Easton and Lydia Pearson established the label in Brisbane,
in 1989, capitalizing on their close proximity to Asia to draw on “a melange of
Asia Pacific cultures through a manifestation of techniques and fabrics and the
relationships built through commerce” (Oakley Smith 2010b: 111). By extensive
travel and collaboration with artisans, Easton Pearson focuses on custom-
designed textiles as the source of inspiration exhibiting color and embellishment.
As the designers explain:

There is a very artisanal feel to the clothes we make. It’s about decoration,
color and interesting construction. And we design with a lot of different
“someones” in mind […] It seems that the people attracted [to the clothing]
are those that can make it their own (Oakley Smith 2010b: 113).

Through the combination of commissioned textiles and collaborative hand-

craft finishes via long-standing partnerships with Indian craftspeople, Easton
Pearson has achieved acclaim in the fashion industry and recognition. Tony
Ellwood, director of the Queensland Art Gallery, says that their 2009 exhibition
at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane (Wallace, McNeil and Teliga 2009)
highlighted:

their sourcing and production of ideas and sources, from the history of art
and dress, literature, film, books and music, that distinguishes much of their
work. Art museums world-wide [now] consider fashion design a part of a
contemporary visual culture. (Tony Ellwood, director, Queensland Art Gallery,
quoted in GOMA 2009)

Indigenous inspirations in Western fashion design

Another non-Australian designer who has had an impact is Roopa Pemmaraju,
who came to Australia from India in 2007 with her engineer husband. Trained
in fine arts, and with considerable experience as a fashion designer in her
106 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

native Bengalaru (Bangalore), as well as having a mother who owns an apparel

production factory, Pemmaraju was well placed to take advantage of her skills and
connections when she entered the Australian fashion industry. Captivated by the
vibrancy of Aboriginal art, she sought to collaborate with an Aboriginal art collective
to work on creating textiles based on Aboriginal designs that could then be styled
as ready-to-wear fashion for the mainstream market. After receiving a number of
rejections, the Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation in Yuendumu (in central
Australia) agreed to cooperate with the designer. The first collection was launched
to acclaim in 2012, and was bought by department store David Jones.
Pemmaraju selects the designs for textiles that are manufactured using a
variety of traditional craft-based processes utilized by her mother’s factory.
Skilled artisans produce the silk garments and embellish the clothes with
delicate hand finishes. Pemmaraju’s collections are now a staple of fashion
shows, and also stocked by Australian department store Myer, as well as sold
through various stockists and online.
The hallmark of Pemmaraju’s label is the recognition of synergies between
the traditions of Indian artisans and Aboriginal artists, while ensuring fair trade
and sustainable protocols in her dealings with indigenous people. Royalties
of 10 percent are paid to the Aboriginal community, and Indian workers are
paid considerably higher than in other peer apparel factories (Sutton 2013).
Pemmaraju separates the inspirational aspect of her exotic inspiration from the
political issues, saying:

I love Aboriginal art because it’s pure, it’s natural, it’s ethical. I don”t care
about the politics. I care about the artists, what’s their inspiration, what they
see around them, what’s their tradition. It is the same way I see my artists in
India. (Quoted by Breen Burns 2012.)

Creatively, the designer’s aim is that: “Dreaming narratives are imbued with
themes of cultural memory, voyage and ancestry and challenge traditional
perspectives on Aboriginal art” (quoted by Sutton 2013). Each garment has a
tag attached to it that tells the concept and story associated with it:

The connection with Aboriginal art seems to have been a tactic of assimi-
lation. Fashion has allowed her to weave two cultures into one; the intricate
patterns of Aboriginal artists manufactured with the careful skill of Indian
craftsmen. (Brient 2013)

According to Pemmaraju, the artists and artisans in both communities are

pleased with the collaboration because it enables them “to engage with the
wider world” via “a positive interaction with the rest of the world” (Cecilia Alfonso,
Warlukurlangu manager, quoted by Brient 2013). Despite her success and high
Exotic Narratives in Fashion 107

profile, Pemmaraju has had difficulty establishing a viable business model. Although
stocked by major department stores as high-end fashion, sales of her designs have
flagged, and the costs of maintaining collaborations, and of design, manufacturing,
and distribution have not proved viable. Pemmaraju has sought partnerships with
start-up creative entities to develop the concept behind the brand.

Figure 5.1 AKIN Collection 2012 collaborative fashion project: Top designed by Shea
Cameron; pants designed by Georgia Grainger; textiles designed by Napoleon Oui;
photography by Michael Greves. Courtesy of QUT Creative Enterprise Australia.
108 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Australian indigenous and non-indigenous collaboration in

design, production, promotion, and distribution
The AKIN collaboration is, in some ways, a continuation of the collaborations of
Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson with Aboriginal communities and artists. In this case,
the Creative Enterprise initiative of the Queensland University of Technology paired
five indigenous artists2 with five emerging fashion designers3 through KickArts
in Cairns (McBrierty 2013). The aim was to produce a catwalk collection from
which to develop business models to take the collaborations further and ignite
“an ongoing platform for indigenous artists and the Australian design community
to work together” (Arts Queensland and Brisbane City Council 2013). The project
grew out of concerns about previous use of Aboriginal motifs in fashion:

There is a history of indigenous artists in Australia being treated unethically; by

misappropriation and misrepresentation of their work, inequity of payment for
their creativity and little acknowledgement of their cultural contribution to collab-
orative fashion products sold globally. This has created an atmosphere of bad
press for fashion, as well as a fear for emerging designers to include/collaborate
with indigenous artists for textile prints. (McMahon, Morley, and Macnee 2012)

The result has been that many designers have looked outside Australia for
sources of inspiration such that collaborations with indigenous designers and
communities outside Australia have been easier and more successful. Not only
does this undermine the potential for Australian indigenous fashion to “brand
a truly unique Australian label in the international marketplace,” where fashion
labels have engaged in collaborations, this has generally involved adapting
“indigenous prints, for collections that have little acknowledgement of the
artist’s contribution and strong branding for the label and/or fashion designer.”
(McMahon, Morley, and Macnee 2012)
In order to redress this situation, the AKIN project sought to create an
overarching brand that presented the collective work of the designers and in
which each received equal payment and recognition. As part of the process of
designing a collection, participants were trained in supply chain logistics, costing,
time management, collection “ranging,” and textile-printing processes. The
outcomes were well received by the media and public, and have produced “an
ethical template for other indigenous artists and emerging designers to create
fashion collections that offer a unique aesthetic that could position and brand
Australian fashion in the international marketplace” (McMahon, Morley, and
Macnee 2012).
The result was a collection of distinctive fabrics featuring indigenous-inspired
prints which could mix and match in outfits that combined “classic tailoring
techniques and loose form silhouettes” with the resulting collection being
Exotic Narratives in Fashion 109

Figure 5.2 AKIN Collection 2012 collaborative fashion project: Top and pants designed
by Shea Cameron, and textiles by Tommy Pau; coat and visor designed by Monique
White, and textiles by Arone Meeks; photography by Michael Greves. Courtesy of QUT
Creative Enterprise Australia.

“wearable, functional and full of modern Australian heritage” (McBrierty 2013).

The AKIN collection became a centerpiece of the inaugural Australian indig-
enous Fashion Week, in 2014, and it was subsequently invited to show in a
fashion event in Indonesia. The result has been judged as successful and as
“an equal exchange between indigenous artists and Non-indigenous designers”
(Arts Queensland and Brisbane City Council 2013).
110 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Figure 5.3 AKIN Collection 2012 collaborative fashion project: Shirt, shorts, and scarf
designed by Hayley Elsaesser; textiles designed by Sharon Phineasa; photography by
Michael Greves. Courtesy of QUT Creative Enterprise Australia.
Exotic Narratives in Fashion 111

Australian non-indigenous designers inspired by global

exotic and popular culture references using diverse
collaborations with artists, designers, and cultural
workers
The final example is the label Romance Was Born, a collaboration between
Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales. In some ways, this is both a return to the heady
Australiana days of the 1980s and also a new level of combining indigenous with
a kaleidoscope of other cultural exotica and inspirations (English and Pomazan
2010; Romance Was Born 2014). Launched in 2005, the designers have been
inspired to push the boundaries of fashion by creating vivid and outlandish
theatrical pieces for collections, which have been launched in spectacular
promotional shows and installations.
These non-indigenous Australian designers are inspired by a myriad of
cultural references, motifs, images, and icons including a strong connection
with kitsch Australiana. By the use of craft techniques ranging from the simple
to the complex, and intrigued by the theatricality of costume, Romance Was
Born collaborates with artists, singers, designers, and celebrities to produce
distinctive one-off pieces that are outlandish yet wearable:

We like to think Romance Was Born has its own style or signature, with
its own prints and cuts and shapes, and sometimes people find it hard to
translate this when buying in a shop. (Quoted by M. Oakley Smith 2010: 274)

Although a niche label, by aligning themselves with the art world and perfor-
mance events, the label has attracted national and international acclaim being
included in diverse exhibitions, winning awards and being stocked in Australian
and overseas fashion outlets. In 2014, they were commissioned to produce
the children’s program to accompany the Jean-Paul Gaultier Exhibition at the
National Gallery of Victoria (Story and Harvey 2014). In an earlier collaboration
with fashion guru Jenny Kee and textile maverick Linda Jackson, the cultural
currents of the 1980s fused with the spirit of the 2010s to create an invigorated
revival of cultural Australiana and a projection of yet another phase of national
cultural identity.

Australian indigenous Fashion Week 2014

Recognition that Australian indigenous fashion design has reached a new
plateau came with the staging of the first Australian indigenous Fashion Week
(AIFW), in Sydney, in April 2014. Although there had been indigenous designs
112 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

and designers represented in previous fashion weeks and events, this was the
first dedicated fashion event specifically to showcase an emerging generation
of indigenous Aboriginal textile and fashion designers as well as models. The
event was a signal that the fashion world was acknowledging the rich cultural
and creative potential as inspiration for fashion design. As one commentator
reflected:

Australia’s indigenous people are synonymous with a rich cultural palette

that is both elusive and enchanting. Their intensely spiritual stories of the
Dreamtime, vibrant music and eclectic artistry, pay homage to the world’s
oldest enduring culture […] However, when it comes to that small, cultural
signature we call fashion, far less is known about the native flare of Aboriginal
Australians. But that is about to change. (Willis 2012)

This was a new chapter in indigenous design. Indigenous motifs have

recurred in Australian design historically and contemporaneously, most notably
in the Balarinji-designs painted on Qantas planes in the 2000s, and the recent
reinvention of the craft of making possum skin cloaks, which have become a
feature of Aboriginal elders during the openings of sporting and parliamentary
opening ceremonies. However, these have been exceptions and symbols of
indigenous identity rather than as part of the grammar of Australian design more
generically: “What is more difficult is determining the nature of the relationship
between contemporary indigenous designers and the design world at large”
(Cook 2014). Russell Cook argues that the Bauhaus heritage in design practice
marginalized Aboriginal design to the point where it “is hardly ever referred to as
such, and is often dismissed as craft or art” (Cook 2014).
The advent of AIFW has been welcomed as an important step in the recog-
nition of the legitimacy of contemporary Aboriginal design as a legitimate art
form and creative practice alongside its inclusion in the “art world” as paintings,
ceramics, and textiles:

The recent shift in the fashion world towards supporting contemporary

Aboriginal designers is a powerful step in the right direction. AIFW will further
raise the profile of Aboriginal designers and Aboriginal fashion models—not
as a cultural curio but as engaged with design and fashion as anyone else
working in the industry.

What was until now seen as a customary creative practice can today be
accepted as a dynamic modern fashion movement. (Cook 2014)

Under the tagline, “It’s not just dots,” AIFW showcase the designs of estab-
lished and recent designers and labels including Desert Designs (and Jimmy
Exotic Narratives in Fashion 113

Pike), Grace Lee (sophisticated silhouettes with indigenous-inspired fabrics), Mia

Brennan (Mimi Designs featuring silk and leather dresses in indigenous-inspired
fabrics), Lucy Simpson (Gaawaa Miyay Designs creating textiles and fashion),
Shaun Edwards (Wild Barra swimwear, shorts and T-shirts), Letticia Shaw
(Ticia label), Lyn-Al Young (silk sheaths and leather harnesses), and the AKIN
collection (Behrendt 2014). The resulting show presented a:

smorgasbord of styles reflect[ing] the diversity of indigenous cultures across

Australia. Indigenous design and handicrafts inspired bold prints, chunky
knotted and woven fabrics, carved and painted soft leathers and references
to the dhari, the striking ceremonial headdresses of the Torres Strait Islands.
(Behrendt 2014)

The best known of the designers was Desert Designs, a collaboration

between non-indigenous design teachers Steve Culley and David Wroth, and
Aboriginal prisoner and artist Jimmy Pike (Wells 2011). Established in the
1980s, it has become a fixture in embodying the mainstream fashion and interior
design possibilities of indigenous inspiration by translating artworks into textiles
for fashion, accessories, and interior design (such as carpets and rugs). The
inspiration has been the interpretation of the culture and visuals of landscape in
vibrant colors which have been commercialized to provide economic return to
Pike and other collaborators.
The brand has recently been revitalized by a new generation of directors
(notably Jedda-Daisy Culley and Caroline Sundt-Wells) and a group of Aboriginal
artists with new licensing agreements (Chandra 2013). The success of the
label has stemmed from the strength of the artwork: “Jimmy Pike’s designs
were vivid, dynamic and ground-breaking in their use of non-traditional colors”
(quoted in Wells 2011). The collection shown at AIFW was perhaps the most
outstanding show revealing the depth of inspiration that this label had achieved.
Overall, the event was judged a success.
The aim of the AIFW was to take indigenous fashion from a “cottage” industry
to the “next phase” of mainstream fashion by mentoring emerging indigenous
fashion designers and introducing them to the mainstream industry and its
business practices with the aim of taking “one step closer to a moment when
indigenous fashion is a central element of Australian style” (Behrendt 2014). It is
now expected to become an annual fixture depending on sponsorship.
Reactions to AIFW were generally positive, although fashion retail experts
cautioned that indigenous artworks as the basis of design was not sufficient
to create marketable fashion garments. Rather, designs also had to offer
consumers something distinctively different in terms of fashion language. As
David Bush, former GM of David Jones, commented: “There’s plenty of lovely
art, but art doesn’t necessarily translate into fashion” (quoted by Lobban 2014).
114 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Spelling out what this meant, fashion cognoscenti Nancy Pilcher, former VP at
Condé Nast (Asia Pacific), reflected:

“From my perspective, I think the print is one thing but the design is vital
[...] There’s no doubt the prints are amazing, but if it’s done in a way that
doesn”t suit the fashion trends, no one is going to buy it […] There is a
future here. There is a story and the Indigenous know how to tell a story
through their art […] There has to be a plan to take it forward. These
Indigenous designers have to be guided. It has to be fashionable. It needs
to have the edge that makes it interesting for the global fashion world.”
(Quoted by Lobban 2014)

Nonetheless, the consensus was that the event succeeded in creating a

new and distinctive design language for indigenous fashion. As founder of AIFW
Krystal Perkins put it, the catwalk collections combined traditional story telling
with indigenous skills to create fashion garments with a strong emphasis on
sustainability of culture and fashion. Although the event was deemed a success,
the AIFW subsequently went into liquidation with significant debts and a repeat
fashion week seems unlikely in the near future.

The cultural politics of exotic fashion and

inspiration
This chapter has demonstrated that Australian indigenous fashion design has a
strong creative potential that challenges dichotomous and linear assumptions
about the domain of fashion as exclusively Eurocentric versus “dress” practices
in other cultures, times, and places. Instead fashion sensibilities are global as
well as being nuanced to simultaneously incorporate global trends while incor-
porating specific themes, symbols and cultural references that are unique to
each locality. Understanding global fashion, therefore, involves unpacking the
interplay between the global and the local in the production of multiple and
competing fashion systems that exhibit hybridity, cultural borrowing, invention
and reinvention.
To begin that process, future researchers need to investigate some key
questions that dog the rich state of indigenous fashion design. These include:
How should we define innovation in fashion design as compared with revivals
and reworkings of previous designs? Where is the dividing line between inspi-
ration and appropriation with regard to the use of indigenous motifs, designs
and themes? Why are some indigenous designs regarded as generic symbolism
and thus “available” for use as inspiration and manipulation while other motifs
Exotic Narratives in Fashion 115

and designs are deemed to have specific owners with rights over intellectual
property and thus the use of these images? While these issues are specifically
related to design protocols and cultural integrity, they are embedded in wider
issues of sustainability and ethics. These involve a myriad of complex pressing
concerns about the politics of fair trade, ethical and environmentally friendly
sourcing and supply chains, strategies of licensing, collaborations, codes
of conduct, codes of authenticity, and the outsourcing of specialist skills to
subcontracted artisans in developing countries.

Conclusion
This chapter has traced the narratives of Australian culture and national identity
through the changing references to, and uses of, exotic motifs and themes in
fashion design. It has shown that fashion design is now structured by narratives
of relational and transnational fusions that reflect new cultural alignments and
assertions. These stem from new cultural politics that underpin deeper issues
than just body-clothes relationships in the global fashion wardrobe and, in the
case of Australia, have changed the conceptual basis of national identity to
place indigenous culture at the heart rather than on the periphery.

Notes
1 A version of this chapter was presented at the 3rd Fashion in Fiction Conference,
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, June 12–14, 2014.
2 Arone Meeks, Napoleon Oui, Sharon Phineasa, Tommy Pau and Margaret Mara.
3 Monique White, Georgia Grainger, Hayley Elsaesser, Shea Cameron and Samantha
Delgos.

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 PART III

SELF-ORIENTALISM
OR NATION
BRANDING?
 6
OTTOMAN COSTUME
IN THE CONTEXT OF
MODERN TURKISH
FASHION DESIGN1
ŞAKIR ÖZÜDOĞRU

Introduction
In the context of early globalization theory, it has been argued that the spread
of European fashion on a large scale would result in the disappearance of
so-called non-Western fashions. Within the Eurocentric discourse in fashion
studies, clothing styles outside of Europe have been depicted as static and
traditional, as opposed to dynamic and modern European fashion. However,
Turkish fashion designers have been successfully using their cultural heritage
(traditions) as a source of inspiration to create distinctive design identities. On
the one hand, in a globalized world, it allows them to differentiate themselves on
the highly competitive international fashion market, while on the other hand, on
a national level, it makes them successful as a result of a general revaluation of
local cultural heritage as a counter reaction to cultural globalization. Therefore,
this case study meets the general theme of this volume in that globalization is
not leading to cultural homogenization, but, on the contrary, stimulates cultural
heterogenization through the (re)invention of, and emphasis on, local cultural
heritage and vestimentary traditions as a powerful means of distinction.
Following a number of state development plans initiated by the Turkish
government in the 1960s and 1970s, Turkey became an important manufacturing
center for European and North-American confection companies; production
was cheap and of high quality. Additionally, in the 1980s, the rapid spread of
a liberal economy in Turkey made it possible for the country to compete in
122 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

the international market. As a result of the Customs Union Agreements with

the European Union in the 1990s, textile and clothing export expanded, but
this growth required more effort in order to be competitive. On the one hand,
Turkey had to compete with low-cost contract manufacturer countries, such as
China and India and on the other hand, the country was up against developed
countries like Italy, France, and England, which were strong on design, while
using the Third World for their production. Therefore, Turkish companies which
aspired to become international, could no longer solemnly focus on production,
but rather had to transform themselves into innovative and creative design
enterprises. As such, Turkish companies and their fashion designers started to
turn to local cultural heritage for inspiration in order to create a distinctive design
identity that was able to stand out, and differentiate itself in the international
market. This cultural heritage helped them to establish a design authenticity
that would play a central role in their branding strategies abroad. Not only did
the legacy of the Ottoman Empire have a strong reputation abroad, but also its
richness enabled a large variety of styles and identities.
From that moment on, Turkish fashion designers began to develop collec-
tions that merged European fashion aesthetics with Ottoman clothing elements.
These collections became collages of European fashion and Ottoman traditions
and varied from Ottoman decorations, produced with modernized techniques,
to pieces of traditional Ottoman clothing, adapted to European silhouettes.
The main aim of this chapter is to examine how contemporary Turkish fashion
designers have been incorporating Ottoman cultural heritage in their designs,
and particularly how this heritage is being used in a self-Orientalist manner as
a promotional tool to gain recognition on the international fashion scene. In this
chapter, four contemporary Turkish designers’ collections and discourses are
analyzed in order to demonstrate how they position themselves on the interna-
tional fashion scene through the eyes of outsiders. At this stage, it is important
to underline that all of the fashion designers discussed received their fashion
training in Europe, and/or are trained in European fashion design, and that their
primary aim has been to become successful in Europe and/or in the United
States besides Turkey. Cemil İpekçi, who was trained at the Royal Academy of
Arts in London, for example, is well-known for both his “ethnic designs” and
haute couture dresses, and has his own couture house in İstanbul. Atıl Kutoğlu
is one of the most influential fashion designers on the Turkish fashion scene,
while also being successful in Austria, where he presented his work initially. He
opened his first flagship store, which is especially successful among middle- and
upper-class Turks, in Turkey, in 2009. Nedret Taciroğlu, who specialises in haute
couture, has designed two lines, the “Nedo Collection” and “Nedret Taciroğlu
Collection” for the Turkish market. Dilek Hanif, in her turn, was the first Turkish
fashion designer to have presented during the official Paris Haute Couture
Week in 2004. She created the ready-to-wear brand “Dilek Hanif” in Turkey in
OTTOMAN COSTUME IN THE CONTEXT OF MODERN TURKISH FASHION DESIGN 123

2011, and has collaborated with various international brands since. This chapter
focuses on these four Turkish fashion designers and their design approaches.

A brief history of Ottoman costume

Anatolia, which hosted various small and large civilizations from the prehis-
toric ages to the present, has been the motherland of the Turks since 1071.
In 1299, the Turks established the Ottoman Empire, the boundaries of which
covered three continents. These boundaries comprised a cultural mosaic of
diverse ethnicities, religious beliefs, and traditions, resulting in a hybrid cultural
identity over time. Interestingly, this cultural mosaic entailed both the so-called
“East” and “West,” and both seemingly opposing cultural traditions blended
in Ottoman’s rich vestimentary heritage. But, between 1876 and 1922, the
Ottoman Empire, during the Reformation Period (not to be confused with the
European Reformation), turned more to Europe in terms of both culture and
politics, and European fashion came to influence Ottoman clothing particularly
during this time. After the collapse of the Empire in 1923, the Turkish Republic
was established, and characteristic Ottoman garments like the fez and the black
chador were banned because of their notoriety as symbols of reactionism and
conventionalism. Wearing this apparel in public was forbidden, while European
fashion, as a symbol of cultural modernization and secularism, came to
dominate the public sphere.
Throughout the history of the Turks, it can be noted that there have not been
significant transformations in dress until the introduction of Islam in the eleventh
century. Until then, Turkish clothing consisted of nearly the same garments for
both men and women (Barbarosoğlu 2009: 97), namely a type of long shirt and
loose trousers. Both men and women wore a waistcoat over their shirt, as well
as a belt and a headpiece. They also wore a caftan, a long T-shaped garment
with long sleeves, a round collar, and open in the front, and shoes or sandals.
The most significant transformation in Turkish clothing with the introduction of
Islam was that women adopted a yaşmak, a two-pieced-headscarf (Sezer Arığ
2007: 9), but for the most part the garments remained nearly the same until the
Reformation Period in the nineteenth century.2
Later, Ottoman clothing changed slowly through interaction with Europe.
According to Muhaddere Taşçıoğlu (1958: 21–5), the first appearance of a
European-style gown in the Ottoman Palace was in the sixteenth century, during
the period of Süleyman the Magnificent. After this period, differences between
women’s and men’s wear developed, and many styles were banned for women
in public places. The acclaimed historian Cemal Kafadar (1993: 256–8) states
that in local and foreign art works representing the Ottomans in the sixteenth
124 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

century, a long and loose topcoat, a two-pieced-headpiece, and a face-covering

material can be seen. In the early years of the Ottoman Empire, between
the fourteenth and eighteenth century, the social life of women was confined
predominantly to the private domain. They only had access to public life in the
company of their husbands or close male relatives. In the eighteenth century,
women enjoyed a period of emancipation, and gained access to public places,
which resulted in a transformation of their clothing from a veiling instrument to a
form of adornment. For example, the two-pieced-headscarf, mentioned above,
was now made from a thin see-through fabric, ornamented with gems. Also,
long, loose topcoats became fitted to the body and their collars were expanded.
Additionally, a new kind of topcoat that clearly showed the lines of the body was
introduced, but these were banned by the Sultan’s imperial order (Taşçıoğlu
1958: 52–4).
By the eighteenth century, lost wars and territories necessitated some
transformations in the state structure of the Ottoman Empire, and, in the last
decades of the eighteenth century, ideas of modernization from Europe were
implemented, and Ottomans started to adopt European fashion. Aspects
of euromodernity were first introduced in the army, with Selim III completely
reorganizing the army according to European standards. In addition, he
separated the realms of education, law, and politics.
In the beginning of the nineteenth century, ambitions of euromodernity were
expanded and especially under the reign of Mahmut II, many reforms and
regulations were introduced. New schools for medicine, military education,
and music were opened, and Mahmut II introduced new clothing regula-
tions that were inspired by Europe. For example, a European style jacket and
trousers were introduced in the army, and the sultan banned the male Ottoman
headdress, which strongly referenced Islam, replacing it instead with the male
headpiece called fez. According to Ayten Sezer Arığ (2007: 23), these regula-
tions became equally imposed on the civil population, whereby the frock and
religious headdresses were only allowed for religious men, while wearing a
fez became mandatory for all male civilians. In this period, European fashion
was also increasingly adopted by women, but exclusively by members of the
palace.
After the declaration of reforms in 1839, European fashion became more
widespread and progressively mixed with local fashion. It was increasingly intro-
duced and promoted by magazines and tailors and by now adopted widely by
Ottoman women, especially in İstanbul. Adopting all the latest fashion trends
from Europe, including hairstyles, women would adorn them with characteristic
Ottoman silver thread decorations. A garment that became characteristic for the
Reformation Period is the istanbulin, which was worn by officers. Although the
frock coat had become the official attire for civil servants during this time, some
older men did not feel comfortable wearing a starched shirt, collar, and tie; these
OTTOMAN COSTUME IN THE CONTEXT OF MODERN TURKISH FASHION DESIGN 125

clothing items also made it difficult to perform religious necessities, such as

abdest and namaz. Thus, the istanbulin, an Ottoman version of the frock coat,
was introduced. Since the chest of the istanbulin was totally enclosed, the tie
and the starched cuffs became unnecessary (Özer 2006: 329).
The Ottomans were not only affected by fashion trends from Europe,
however; they also adopted fashion trends from the East. For instance, the fez
came from Morocco, while the characteristic black outer garment for women,
the chador, was adopted from the Middle East. Due to the chador’s widespread
use in public, it transformed, over time, into a hybrid form merging Western and
Eastern influences. For example, in the last years of the nineteenth century, it
was split into two pieces: a skirt and a gown. Then, the skirt part was shortened
and gloves came to cover the arms. The last version of the black chador was a
sort of pelerine placed on a tailleur, while a tulle piece covered the wearer’s face.
An European-style umbrella was added as a fashionable accessory to this outfit.
According to Muhaddere Taşçıoğlu (1958: 54), this version of the black chador
was more a fashion statement than a means of modest covering. Although still
accepted as daily attire for women in the last years of the nineteenth century,
by the beginning of the 1920s, the black chador had been banned under the
new Republic.
It must be emphasized that the transformations that are mentioned above
did not necessarily apply to all of society. Some appeared at different times and
places, while others never made it to the rural areas. Conversely, while people
living in the palace were usually the first to adopt new fashions, the black chador
was never adopted, even though it became widespread among the rest of
the population. The palace and privileged classes tended to adopt European
fashion first, before it trickled down into the everyday lives of the lower social
classes, but new fashions needed considerable time to replace old ones. Thus,
while some segments of the population had already adopted European fashion,
others continued to wear local fashion.

The Republican period and the

modernization of dress
The Republic of Turkey was officially founded on October 29, 1923. Reforms
in daily practices were almost immediately introduced, including changes to
holiday dates, measurements, the calendar system, the alphabet, and also
clothing. The founder of the modern Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk,
gave speeches that emphasized the importance of clothing in the modernization
of Turkey. He described the modern Turkish costume as: “low-cut shoe, pants,
vest, shirt, tie, jacket and, of course, as a supplement of these, a European
126 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

style headdress” (Sezer Arığ 2007: 38). After Atatürk’s famous speech on hats
on August 27, 1925, the wearing of the fez was banned, and the wearing of
a European-style hat became mandatory by law. Therefore, the hat became
a symbol of modernity in the Republic of Turkey (Şeftalici 2004: 4–5). At the
same time, the wearing of the black chador by women was banned in the early
1930s, in order to force women to adopt a European lifestyle. Both the banning
of the fez and black chador, and the imposing of European garments did not go
without resistance. For example, women would attach a headscarf to their gown
under the chin. This style, called sarma baş, was very close to today’s veiling
style of traditional Muslim women.
During the first years of the Republic, Atatürk himself promoted European
fashion among the people by wearing suits, pullovers, vests, coats, penguin
suits, tuxedos, and so forth. He always wore appropriate hats with his suits and
sported European-style accessories, such as handkerchiefs, walking sticks,
and chain watches (Sezer Arığ 2007: 43). Atatürk also educated people in
European fashion, and established training institutions because education had
a primary role in the adoption of European fashion aesthetics in Turkey. The Girls
Art Institute, for example, was founded in 1927, with the aim of manufacturing
European style clothes for modern life in Turkey by teaching students European
tailoring skills. In addition, Evening Art Schools were established with again the
primary subject being clothing (Şeftalici 2004: 15–18).
Further stimulus came, following the 1929 economic depression, which
deeply affected the Turkish economy. In order to help the economy, the
government decided to support local textile production, while installing radical
limitations on imports. In 1933, the Sümerbank was founded with the aim of
managing the official factories, improving the industries, establishing art schools,
and giving out scholarships. With the establishment of Sümerbank, and the
limitations on imports, most of the national textile demand was covered, but
at the same time, textile production came totally under state control, as well
as clothing manufacturing—from its production to its consumption (İnalcık
2008: 152).
To summarize, in the first decade of the Republic, the introduction of euromo-
dernity was orchestrated meticulously by the state as a social engineering
project in every aspect, from its political regime to daily life. During these years,
European fashion became a symbol of modernity. While the new government
banned local dress, European dress became common attire through both
restrictions and education campaigns. Nevertheless, the wearing of European
fashion was limited to the Kemalist elites as a symbol of modernity, while it was
largely criticized and rejected by the conservatives. This separation became the
visual evidence of the political debate between Kemalists and conservatives
focused on secularism, which can still be seen through clothes, even today.
OTTOMAN COSTUME IN THE CONTEXT OF MODERN TURKISH FASHION DESIGN 127

Contemporary Turkish fashion designers

Turkish sociologist, Fatma Karabıyık Barbarosoğlu (2009: 144), divides the
history of Turkish dress into five main periods. The first stretches from the Huns,
which is acknowledged as the first state established by nomadic Turks living
in Middle Asia around AD 370, until the adoption of Islam by Turks in the tenth
century. She determines the second period as extending from the acceptance of
Islam until the early decades of the nineteenth century. The third period begins in
the nineteenth century, and ends with the instauration of the new Republic. The
fourth period, she describes as going from the instauration of the Republic to the
1960s. Finally, the fifth period is described as going from the 1960s to current day.
The history of a large part of the second period and the whole of the third period
is also the history of the Ottoman Empire. According to Barbarosoğlu, the period
of the Republic is divided into two periods. The first begins with the declaration of
the Republic and ends in the 1960s, because in this period the textile sector was
the engine of industrialization in Turkey, and most of the textile production was
state-controlled, aiming to meet national demand. The second period went from
the 1960s to the 1990s and correlates with the superiority of the private sector
over state-controlled textile production. Although I agree with this periodization,
I think the period from the 1990s until today should be differentiated since in
the 1980s, the textile sector focused on importation, and in the 1990s Turkey
started to be a significant player in the international market. According to Senem
Kozaman Som (2011: 94), in this period, the contract manufacturing-based
market approach was transformed into enterprises focusing on branding, and,
thus, Turkish firms needed to transform themselves into firms offering novelty and
creativity, in order to compete in the international market. The number of Turkish
brands known internationally subsequently increased.
Students, who were sent to Europe after the declaration of the Republic
to learn European tailoring, returned to Turkey in the 1930s to open the
first European tailoring ateliers. They introduced the latest European fashion
trends, particularly haute couture. Simultaneously, the textile sector reached an
important production capacity by this time, and, thus, Turkey could supply most
of its own textiles from 1932 to 1962. Girls Art Institutes organized numerous
fashion shows, both in Turkey and in several European countries in the 1950s
(Şeftalici 2004: 15–19). In the 1960s, it was particularly the ready-to-wear sector
that developed. The period also witnessed an important transition in the country,
from a totalitarian regime to a multi-party regime, as well as a liberalization
of politics. As a result, private equity in the textile and ready-to-wear sector
became larger than the state’s.
Due to the prevalence of ready-to-wear, the concept of designer started to
emerge. Turkish fashion design can be read as an evolutionary process that
128 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

began with imitations of European designers in the 1920s, European design, and
Turkish production in the 1930s, and the development of Turkish fashion design
and production in the 1960s. The concept of fashion designer, however, which
implies designing unique and innovative items, did not become widespread
until the 1980s. In these years, through the removal of limitations on import,
Turkey managed to position itself on the global market due to the expansion of
consumption culture in Turkey, whereby foreign companies opened retail shops
in the centers of large Turkish cities. Simultaneously, through the Customs Union
Agreements, Turkey entered the international market as an important manufac-
turer. However, an essential factor in aiding Turkey to compete in the international
market was the transformation from contract-based manufacturing to offering
innovation and creativity. Thus, Turkish firms and fashion designers developed
various strategies in order to strengthen their position (Kozaman Som 2010:
95–6). One of the strategies was to modernize characteristic local garments such
as the caftan, the şalvars, and the entaris by designing hybrid styles, merging
Western and Eastern clothing traditions. References to elements of Ottoman
clothing, and distinctive motifs and colors of Ottoman decorative arts became
rich sources of inspiration for Turkish fashion designers. However, reinventing
and modernizing Ottoman garments, and creating hybrid designs in an eclectic
manner, resulted in diverse ideological, political, and social discussions. Turkey
is a hybrid space on the crossroads of East and West, and modernization is
an ongoing contradictive process, not only in politics, but also in daily life and
clothing. According to Fred Davis (1992: 17), fashion came into existence, as a
system drawn upon certain recurrent instabilities in the social identities. Although
he makes this statement based on European fashion, the symbolic meaning
of clothing in Turkey is a materialization of uncompromising tensions between
Eastern and Western influences on Turkish society. Since the first interactions
between Old Europe and the Ottoman Empire, westernization has been a
controversial topic. There have been endless debates between modernists and
conservative thinkers, and the discussion is still very much ongoing today.
Simultaneously, Turkish women’s lifestyle magazines were introduced in the last
years of the Ottoman Empire, featuring the latest fashion trends in female attire.
Here, too, while some people claimed that imitating Europe was damaging local
identity and culture, others defended the Europeanization process in all formal and
informal institutions, including the army, education, management, and clothing
(Barbarosoğlu 2009: 143–60), claiming that westernization had to be introduced
in all aspects of life, and not just in technology. According to these supporters,
following European fashion trends was a distinctive sign of being modern (Göle
2008: 66). In terms of politics, Georgeon (2006: 11) states that the uniqueness of
Turkish modernization comes from the fact that it is a country that has a substan-
tially Muslim population, as well as a secular state. Simultaneously, he emphasizes
that a part of the Turkish intellectuals criticizes Atatürk for having caused a break in
OTTOMAN COSTUME IN THE CONTEXT OF MODERN TURKISH FASHION DESIGN 129

Turkish identity, which resulted in an identity crisis. According to Georgeon (2006:

11–12), this discourse is not aimed at defending Islam, but rather at praising
tradition. In clothing, this tension resulted in a wide variety of hybrid clothing styles
and fashion trends, ranging from Ottoman-inspired European fashion to Islamist
consumerism and conservative-liberal clothing styles.
A group of fashion designers has been materializing this tension by merging
Ottoman fashion elements with European fashion aesthetics since the 1980s.
Of the first generation of Turkish fashion designers, Cemil İpekçi, for example,
played an important role because he defended the politics, beliefs, and clothing
of the Ottoman Empire through his designs, speeches, and attitudes. He was
born in Istanbul, in 1948, and studied textile design at the Royal Academy of
Arts in London. After working as a ready-to-wear designer in France between
1972 and 1975, İpekçi went onto establish his own brand, “Tzagne,” before
returning to Turkey in 1984. He became famous for his references to Eastern
influences in his designs, and his collections reflect a wide variety of Seljuk,
Ottoman, and Arab influences. Although he is known as an ethnic designer, his
collections are generally based on European-style silhouettes, with reference to
characteristic Seljuk and Ottoman clothing.
Joanne B. Eicher and Barbara Sumberg (1995: 296) argue that ethnic dress
emphasizes group identity, and separates the wearer from others. İpekçi uses
elements from various periods of traditional Seljuk and Ottoman craftwork
and clothing history in combination with European cuts, offering new designs
season after season. For example, in his fashion collection “Seljuk,” presented
in 1984, he combined Seljuk motifs and decorations with European silhouettes.
He applied abstract flower motifs from the artworks of the Seljuk Empire on
loose fitting two-pieced suits, tailleurs, and gowns, but instead of respecting the
Seljuk’s rich color pallet, consisting of claret red, turquoise, green, and purple,
he used contrasting black and white. This collection implied the Orient by its
decoration, but referenced the Occident by its cuts and colors.
In 2006, İpekçi found inspiration in traditional Turkish ceramics, i.e. çini for
his fashion show “Kütahya.” The art of ceramics has a long history in Anatolia,
but the most impressive objects were produced in the Seljuk and the Ottoman
periods. In his 2006 collection, he presented corsets with loose fitting dresses,
waists wrapped with sashes, and women’s trousers. Tinsels, which are very
characteristic components of Ottoman clothing, were used as decoration.
Motifs of the typical ceramics were embroidered or painted on the fabrics,
emphasizing a hybridization of Eastern and Western elements. By 2000, İpekçi
started integrating both Ottoman daily wear, as well as court and harem dress
in his designs. In his Harem collection presented in 2000, for example, he used
Ottoman clothing as his inspiration, and the collection was presented in different
Turkish cities, including Antalya, İstanbul, and Bursa. Interestingly, he does not
only consider the Ottoman Empire as a period of visual opulence, but he also
130 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

claims that Turkey should take the Ottoman Empire as a model for democracy.
According to him, the Ottoman Empire was a democratic state in its own time,
and after the declaration of the Republic, the pluralistic social structure of the
Ottomans was lost as a consequence of state politics. He auto-identifies himself
as Ottoman, and not as Turkish. An example of this is when İpekçi remembers
an incident from his days in France:

When I was in Nice, Grace Kelly opened a music hall that was named after
her. At the opening ceremony, there was a recital by a Turkish pianist. I was
invited as a protocol member and I was sitting close to the first row. Grace
Kelly, Princess Caroline and Stephanie were sitting in the first row. I attended
the opening wearing my black şalvar, gown, long black boots and my jacket
embroidered with traditional motifs like a marshal. I will never forget how all
of them turned and looked at me and when they asked “Monsieur, where are
you from?,” I answered “I”m an Ottoman” and then I saw that they looked at
me in wonder. When you say you are Turkish especially in a Western vesture,
they think you are inferior to them.” (in Dirlik and Yaman 2011: n.p.)

This statement not only reflects the designer’s pride in being an Ottoman,
but also a longing for investigating and reintroducing Ottoman traditions. For his
fashion collection “Sait Halim Pasha,” presented in 2006, he redesigned traditional
Seljuk and Ottoman clothes by combining Western and Eastern clothing elements.
Blouses, loose fitting dresses, and jackets were combined with caftans, şalvars,
and sashes. Seljuk and Ottoman decorations, as well as precious stones were used
as supplements to the garments. This collection can be read as an investigation
of an intermediate-form, a sphere where boundaries between East and West are
challenged. Another interesting example from İpekçi is his 2010 collection, named
“The Ottomans.” This collection directly referenced both daily Ottoman clothes,
as well as attire worn by the palace, but represented modern interpretations of
them. Men’s wear, for example, consisted of entaris and şalvars. Paint, in various
colors, was sprayed on the clothes randomly like a tableau of action painting,
while sashes and military belts were used in harmony. Women’s wear consisted
of characteristic Ottoman clothes, such as şalvar, entari, and caftan, but were
combined with long dresses, trousers, bustiers, and balloon skirts, made of tulle,
and decorated with Ottoman motif prints. Another contrast in the collection was
the juxtaposition of characteristic men’s wear consisting of caftan, entari, and
şalvar with high-waist trousers and a transparent blouse for women. İpekçi keeps
the tension between East and West alive in his unique combinations. Regardless of
whether these creations are successful, it should be emphasized that his designs
represent an inter-zone between the East and the West.
Another Turkish fashion designer, Atıl Kutoğlu, was born in Istanbul, in 1968,
and studied in Vienna, where he graduated from the Department of Management.
OTTOMAN COSTUME IN THE CONTEXT OF MODERN TURKISH FASHION DESIGN 131

Although he did not study fashion, he was awarded “the best fashion designer
of Austria” in the WOOLMARK competition in 1993. Since 1994, he has been
presenting at fashion weeks in Milan, Paris, and New York, and also won the
famous “Salzburg Prize.” While living in Vienna, he has presented his collections
in different countries including New York, Milan, Paris, and İstanbul. Kutoğlu
calls his Ottoman-referencing-style “silent luxury,” and identifies it as a mixture
of architectural and geometric elements in an Oriental style. He stresses that
his main inspiration comes from Ottoman and Turkish culture, but translated
into modern and contemporary clothes (McLoughlin 2012: n.p.). In 1999, he
presented his “Ottoman Collection” in honor of the seventh centenary of the
establishment of the Ottoman Empire, in the Yıldız Palace, in İstanbul. Kutoğlu
argues that this collection was largely designed for Europe by applying Ottoman
patterns and motifs to European-style-clothes. His Ottoman–based inspiration
was mostly visible in modernized models of şalvar for men, as well as charac-
teristic patterns and decorations used in minimalistic ways. He says that after
the introduction of the modernized şalvar in “The Ottoman Collection,” foreign
fashion designers also started designing these forms:

John Galliano and Dolce & Gabbana have also featured the şalvar in their
collections. Of course, as a Turkish designer, I think I use the şalvar better.
I am a man of this culture and these lands. That’s why I reflect these motifs
more consciously and with more love in my creations (in Özarslan 2010: n.p.).

In addition, in 1999, Kutoğlu presented a collection in Vienna in support

of the earthquake victims in Turkey. In this collection, Ottoman clothes were
modernized, and accessories, such as bags and high heels, were used.
Nudity was emphasized by the use of wide décolletés, and transparent fabrics
in contrast with veiling. In his 2006–7 Autumn/Winter collection, which was
presented during the New York Fashion Week, he found inspiration in Mozart’s
Il Seraglio and its relation to the Ottomans. His collection was a mixture of
Ottoman motifs and Mozart’s baroque period, presenting asymmetrical caftans,
draped dresses, printed jackets, and şalvars decorated with prints of Ottoman
motifs. The designer’s 2006–7 Spring/Summer collection, named “Ottomania,”
was in the same spirit, including asymmetrical caftans made of silk and chiffon,
hooded tops, and long dresses, decorated with Ottoman motifs. “Ottomania”
refers to the easy and free spirit of rock ‘n’ roll, whereby Kutoğlu attempted to
convey an American lifestyle mixed with Ottoman clothing.
Kutoğlu is a member of the Turquality project, which was initiated in 2004
to strengthen Turkish firms’ competitiveness in the international market, and to
create brands that can establish international fame. The project aims to both
increase exports by supporting Turkish firms with an international reach, as well
as strengthen the image of “Turkish goods” and Turkey, in general (Turquality
132 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

2007: n.p.). Kutoğlu has been using inspiration from the Ottoman Empire in
his collections since the 1990s, but, unlike İpekçi, his designs have mainly
European silhouettes, and the Ottoman elements are only a visual vocabulary.
He aspires to be successful in Europe and the United States, and his use of
Ottoman inspiration is largely a promotional strategy (Özarslan 2010: n.p.).
His fashion show, during the New York Fashion Week, was supported by the
Turquality project and, after the “Ottomania” show, Kürşat Tüzmen, the Minister
of the State said that it not only promoted Turkish fashion, but also Turkey,
in general (Karaağaç 2005: n.p.). Similarly, Kutoğlu stated, after his 2006–7
Autumn/Winter collection show, that he wanted to represent the quality of
Turkish design to the whole world (Hürriyet 2006: n.p.). Kutoğlu embodies the
strategy of Turquality very well and his collections show how Ottoman heritage
can be reinvented and merged with European fashion aesthetics or vice versa
(see Figure 6.1).

Figure 6.1 A piece from Atıl Kutoğlu’s more recent fashion show, held on March 24,
2014, in İstanbul, Turkey. In this collection, he used printed abstract Ottoman floral
motifs on long dresses combined with boleros and jackets. Photograph: Vittorio Zunino
Celotto/Getty Images.
OTTOMAN COSTUME IN THE CONTEXT OF MODERN TURKISH FASHION DESIGN 133

Dilek Hanif, who started her fashion career in 1990, presented her fashion
collection “Ottoman Fairytale,” in 2009, during the Paris Fashion Week. She
portrayed the elegance of European women of the 1950s through silk-draped
dresses, boleros, waistcoats, and Ottoman decorations; long dresses decorated
with handwork strongly contrasted with evening gowns with large décollétes,
emphasizing the contradictions that lay behind the clothes. Decorative elements
of Ottoman dress were set against the plain and simple cut of European dress,
and the nudity of the models strengthened the tension between these two
clothing styles. In this collection, Ottoman clothing was merely treated as a
visual source embodying the Orientalist point of view from the West. Inspirations
coming from Ottoman clothing and combining with European fashion can be
traced to Hanif’s recent collections. For example, in her couture show, presented
during Paris Haute Couture Week in 2012, she showed a stylized caftan, cut in
European lines and decorated with tinsel floral motifs (see Figure 6.2).

Figure 6.2 A piece from Dilek Hanif’s Haute Couture Show held on January 23, 2012,
in Paris, as a part of the Paris Haute Couture Week. In this piece, tinsel floral motifs
were applied to a dress that seems to be an intensively stylized caftan. Photograph:
Victor Virgile/Getty Images.
134 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

The Turkish fashion designer Nedret Taciroğlu, who started in the 1980s,
describes herself as a “fashion ambassador of Turkey.” She, too, often uses
Ottoman motifs and decorations in her collections. In 2008, she attended the
New York Fashion Week with her collection “City of Sultans,” and according to
Taciroğlu, her inspiration for this collection came from the flamboyance of the
Ottoman Empire, combining the historical and the modern. However, it is difficult
to trace the “spirit” of the Ottomans in Taciroğlu’s designs for she uses tughras
of sultans and Ottoman jewels on European-style, loose-cut, and bright-colored
dresses. In the “City of Sultans” collection, she merely used Ottoman heritage
as a visual source, neglecting religious and political connotations.
The number of fashion designers who use Ottoman heritage in their collec-
tions has increased considerably since the 2000s, but these designers mainly
use it as a powerful marketing strategy in order to become successful in Europe
and the United States, as well as in Turkey. These newcomers include fashion,
jewelry, and hat designers, such as Merve Bayındır, Gülin Girişmen, Tuvana
Büyükçınar, and Sedef Çalarken. Like their predecessors, they do not neces-
sarily acknowledge the social, spiritual, and/or religious ideologies bound to
these vestimentary traditions. In Turkey, Ottoman clothing has had symbolic
values since the eighteenth century, signifying conservatism and Islamic values.
High-fashion designers mostly employ Ottoman heritage as a visual source
instead of its ideological and religious value. While Ottoman clothing is a
powerful tool for contemporary Turkish fashion designers by which to differ-
entiate themselves on the international fashion scene and in the media, its
socio-cultural, and political connotations are ignored.

Conclusion: self-Orientalism in Ottoman-

inspired fashion design
Inspiration from local/national and so-called traditional cultural heritage has
permeated the international fashion scene since the 1990s. According to
anthropologist Ted Polhemus (2005: 91), there are three reasons why local
clothing styles have appeared in global fashion. According to him, the foremost
reason is the increasing interest in cultural alternatives to the globalized world.
The second is the need to look at “the Other” after a long age of Western
arrogance. The third reason is the disappearance of Western dominance in
the fashion system. So-called “exotic, traditional, and authentic” cultures have
inspired European fashion designers since the nineteenth century. However,
contemporary fashion designers from different cultures have questioned and
rejected the dominant European fashion system and they mixed it with their own
design history (Teunissen 2005: 19–21). Nevertheless, the dominant fashion
OTTOMAN COSTUME IN THE CONTEXT OF MODERN TURKISH FASHION DESIGN 135

capitals of the West have maintained their positions. These capitals acknowl-
edged and allowed non-Western fashion designers to present their collections,
often if they merged characteristic local clothing styles with European fashion
aesthetics in their design approaches.
According to Yuniya Kawamura (2004: 97–100), who conducted ethno-
graphic research on the position of Japanese fashion designers in Paris, being
in the city strengthens the designer brand’s image among Japanese consumers
both in Japan and in Europe. Japanese fashion designers explain that the
reason why they run their business from Paris is because, in order to be interna-
tionally successful, it is a necessity to be successful in that city. Issey Miyake, for
example, explains that these designers are the first generation to grow up after
the Second World War with a true mixture of Japanese and Western culture,
the first generation that have had to look in another direction in search of a new
identity. Although they respect European fashion traditions, they believe they do
it better (Kawamura 2004: 97). For the European consumers and gatekeepers,
however, the most significant component of their image is their Japanese
identity. Consequently, being in Paris not only guarantees their cultural capital,
but also their symbolic and social capital.
According to Mike Featherstone (2007: 93), certain cities are accepted as
cultural capitals due to their rich artistic and cultural pasts, and these cities are the
places where cultural capital transforms into economic capital. Moreover, these
cities have great potential to gain social capital. Kawamura’s research shows
that Japanese fashion designers have a stake in being in Paris in that they can
reach the educated and skilled creative networks, as well as the international
fashion media. Besides which, newcomers can link themselves to established
and influential designers in Paris. On the other hand, although Japanese fashion
designers claim that their designs are not related to their Japanese identity
directly, and that they design in a universal manner, European media emphasize
their Japanese identity (Koren 1984: 80). As Lisa Skov (1996: 151) remarks,
“one of the meanings of ‘Japan’ in Western consumer culture seemed to be an
‘otherness’ inside people’s minds, made visible through austere dress.” In fact,
Japanese designer designs can neither be positioned in the European fashion
system, nor directly within Japanese vestimentary heritage. They have created
a hybridized form of European and Japanese fashion.
Yet, Aijaz Ahmad (1992: 68-69) states that proponents of cultural hybridization
ignore the economic power of Western capitalism. Under such circumstances,
the symbolic capital created by the French fashion system should be considered,
because the creators of the French fashion system designated the conditions
of acceptance to the system, and also accepted Japanese fashion designers
publicized by European fashion media. Therefore, it is not easy to claim that the
Western dominance of the fashion system has totally disappeared as Polhemus
(2005: 91) stated. Even now, accepting Japanese fashion designers, the French
136 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

fashion system opened itself to the Other while trying to assimilate the Other.
Through this process, the French fashion system became witness to the critics
and reinterpretations of itself. Jan Nederveen Pieterse (1994: 64) states that
hybridization is not a process that creates static hegemonic relations, but a
process in which these relations are restated continuously. In the context of
Turkish fashion, throughout Turkey’s Republican period, in which European
fashion has been implemented through state politics, debates on dress have
constantly taken place. In order to differentiate the new Turkish Republic from
its religious past, dress politics have been employed to turn European fashion
into a symbol of secularism and modernism. However, with the rise of fashion
designers and ready-to-wear consumption, Selcuk and Ottoman heritage have
become significant tools by which to differentiate Turkish fashion on the interna-
tional fashion scene. Thus, the relation with the past has shifted from rejection
to inclusion and acceptance in regard to its discursive and inspirational power.
Those Turkish fashion designers, who have showed in influential fashion
capitals, have incorporated references of characteristic Ottoman clothing in
their collections as a strategy to become successful in Europe and the United
States. The styles of these designers usually merge Ottoman iconography with
European-style dresses almost as collages, either as pastiches of the past, or
ultramodern forms in which the past is purely ornamental. In this respect, Dorinne
Kondo (1997: 58) uses the concept of the “auto-exotic gaze” for Japanese
designers who look at their culture and present their products by making them
exotic. This concept can also be applied to Cemil İpekçi’s designs, whereby, in
an interzone between the West and the East, Ottoman clothing elements are
transformed into a pastiche. While Japanese designers interrogate the European
fashion system aesthetically and structurally (Kawamura 2004: 164), clothing
elements that belong to the East and the West come together as if they unite
on a tabula rasa in Cemil İpekçi’s collections. In the interview mentioned above,
Cemil İpekçi emphasizes that his Orientalist approach is a deliberate choice
(Dirlik & Yaman 2011). He imagines a utopian democratic Ottoman Empire in
which all religious beliefs can exist and live in peace. In a similar fashion, in his
designs, all forms, colors and styles from Seljuk and Ottomans to European
fashions can be combined without any restraint. His images have been taken
from Turkish and European history randomly, and shaped in forms of historical
costumes or modern fashions. He erases the boundaries of time and place. Yet,
his ruling state is Ottoman, and he celebrates Ottoman glory and is proud of
being an Ottoman, at least in his discourse.
The work and discourse of İpekçi call into mind Ulrich Beck’s concept of
“cosmopolitanism.” According to Beck (2000: 88–9), in our times “everyone has
to locate himself in the same global space and is confronted with challenges,
and now strangeness is replaced by the amazement at the sameness.” Beck
poses the remarkable question about coexistence: “How can coexistence in
OTTOMAN COSTUME IN THE CONTEXT OF MODERN TURKISH FASHION DESIGN 137

multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies work?” As for institu-

tionalization of culture and cultural exchanges, Beck (2000: 98) implies that
cosmopolitanization does not indicate one cosmopolitan society, but an “inter-
active relationship of de-nationalization and re-nationalization, de-ethnicization
and re-ethnicization, de-localization and re-localization in society and politics.”
Through the hybridization of Ottoman, Seljuk, Arab, ethnic Turkish, and
European clothing styles, the work of İpekçi creates an imaginary cosmopolitan
zone where all historical connotations and cultural influences coexist instead of
dictating binary oppositions, such as West/East, traditional/modern, and so on.
Designs by Atıl Kutoğlu, Dilek Hanif, and Nedret Taciroğlu are mostly
dominated by European clothing styles with Ottoman motifs and decorations.
In their designs, oppositions between elements associated with respectively the
East and the West such as veiling/nudity, handcraft/industrial, and adorned/
plain are striking, and are clearly used in a “self-Orientalizing” way. Teunissen
argues (2005: 13) that in European fashion, designers first look at the history of
other cultures for inspiration instead of searching their own past. This, however,
applies just as much to the three designers mentioned above. Therefore, they
belong to the European fashion system, whereby they attend Western fashion
weeks in Paris, New York, and Milan, sell their products mostly to Western
consumers, and look at their past and cultural heritage through Western eyes,
as well as mythologizing it as such. According to the concept of “self-Orien-
talism,” the West not only creates an “exotic” image of the East, but the East
recreates this image and internalizes it (Dirlik 1996: 100–5). Thus, the West–East
binary is maintained just as much by the East, and operates in two ways: firstly,
the unique aspects of the East are mythologized into a national identity that is
then promoted on the global market. As Masafumi Monden (2015: 12) writes,
“‘us’ versus ‘them’ logic is often constructed in order to serve a particular
purpose, to define their identity and achieve a feeling of ‘superiority’ over other
cultures.” Simultaneously, this mythologized identity shapes “a form of collective
expression” (Mears 2010: 142). Secondly, cultural formations are transformed by
referencing the West, and once these cultural formations are shaped in Western
lines, old cultural formations are slowly effaced. Eventually, their cultural reper-
toires are transformed into new ones, but only as images and narratives (Yan &
Santos 2009: 298).
Although self-Orientalism is often presented as a way of accepting Western
hegemony and internalizing it, one should keep in mind, however, that the same
ideology could serve as a process of self-empowerment. While writing on exotic
appeal of Oriental luxury on Westerners since the Crusades, Getrud Lehnert and
Gabriele Mentges (2003: 7–8) emphasize that even though “in the 16th century,
Europeans started to imitate and copy the quality of the imported textiles,” and
“the knowledge about these objects increased,” the “fantastic images” of these
objects written by European travelers has remained. At the same time, these
138 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

“fantastic” images of the Other always have a strong impact. These images
can also serve as a platform of dialogue in/between cultures. Ignoring the fact
that Islamic fashion trends have been spreading among European middle class
women, as well as Turkish, Middle Eastern and African women (Abaza 2013:
72–3) this may result in overlooking multi-directional hegemonic relations and
hybridization processes between cultures and societies as Lehnert and Mentges
(2003: 9) ask: “what does oriental fashion mean to the European bourgeois lady
wearing a Turkish style head scarf or coat?” By imitating the look on himself/
herself, while creating his/her self-presentation and self-formulation, one can
reveal the unique sides of this self-presentation and self-formulation, and also
expose the hegemonic relations and exchanges between the seer and the
seen. As Nederveen Pieterse (2009: 140) puts it, “hybridities are braided and
interlaced, layer upon layer, to the point that it may be difficult to decide which is
which.” This understanding of self-Orientalism can protect us from a Eurocentric
conceptualization of fashion and present a way of exchanging glances.
The way those three designers have applied Ottoman heritage to their designs
has been a means to create a mythical Ottoman man/woman. Kutoğlu, for
example, revisits the imperialist politics of the Ottomans in Europe as a designer
living and working in Europe. Hanif, in her turn, presents the Ottoman Empire
as a fairy tale land by exoticizing it. Taciroğlu, then, claims that her inspiration
comes from the glory of the Ottomans, but she never explains what exactly
this (imaginary) glory means, or to what it refers. In these works, the Ottoman
Empire functions merely as a décor that is appealing to the international market
and fashion scene. As Ted Polhemus (2005: 93) puts it, to create a national
brand in the global village, design is the central element, and the most preferred
way of differentiating the Self from the Other seems to be through referencing
national identity and cultural history. However, in their way of referencing, the
Ottomans ignore the origins of the political and religious tensions between the
pro-modernists and Islamists and transform cultural and historical pasts into a
visual presentation aroused by an “exotic” Ottoman scene.
To sum up, for contemporary fashion designers in Turkey, referencing
Ottoman heritage has become a powerful marketing tool to gain recognition
in the international market. While referencing Ottoman heritage, the Ottoman
Empire is generally seen through Western eyes in a “self-Orientalizing” way.
These self-Orientalizing fashion collections not only provide recognition for
fashion designers, but also benefit the image of contemporary Turkey. In the near
future, the fashion scene in Turkey seems set to become a platform for symbolic
struggles between the Kemalists and the Islamists due to the shifting political
balance; and hopefully one can claim that upcoming fashion designers will show
us the new ways of interrelating the cultural and historical past by covering its
religious and political controversies and transforming them into new narratives.
These narratives can avoid utilizing the fashion phenomenon as “participatory
OTTOMAN COSTUME IN THE CONTEXT OF MODERN TURKISH FASHION DESIGN 139

narratives” of countries “in the light of recent socio-economic achievements,

their ‘convergence’ with the rich West and their successful engagement with
fashion as consumers and producers” (Riello and McNeil 2010: 5), and expose
unique local fashion developments independently or in-between exchanges of
cultures, even worldviews.

Notes
1 The author would like to thank Osman Şişman, İsmail Özgür Soğancı, A. Emre
Cengiz, and M. Angela Jansen for their helpful comments on the manuscript.
2 Although this description of Turkish clothing generally includes main clothing items
—caftans, headpieces, belts, etc.—used by Turks throughout the pre-Islamic period,
it fails to acknowledge the transformation in clothing between different Turkish states
and communities. It also fails to explain the differences between the local clothing
styles, so-called traditional clothes. It needs to be enriched by detailed historically-
and anthropologically-oriented studies in order to understand the effects of the
exchanges between pre-Islamic Turk communities and Asian societies and the rest
of the continent. As Jennifer Craik (1993: 4) states, fashion is not a phenomenon
that only belongs to Western modernism and capitalism. People live in either open or
closed societies, present themselves to others, and the ways of self-representation
and self-formation change in time. Susan Kaiser (2012: 173) claims that fashion has
been historically located all around the world, however “Euromodern representations
of hegemonic fashion” have marked European upper-class-women’s apparel as the
site of newness, since the rest of the world was described as static and fixed. Even
today, in Turkish cities, local clothing styles, so-called traditional clothes, change in
color, shape, construction methods and so on. I do not focus on these exchanges
in/between cultures and societies, since my aim in this chapter is to focus on the
relationship between Ottoman clothing and contemporary Turkish fashion design.
Hence, a historically anthropologically inspired study of this kind extends beyond my
thematic boundaries. Throughout this chapter, I refer to characteristic items of apparel
such as caftans, şalvars, headdresses, pants, jackets, skirts, and decoration by the
term “clothing.” And by the term “fashion,” I refer to the exchanging, borrowing,
merging, adopting, and mutating of these clothing items, and their materials, colors,
shapes, construction methods, etc., as well as their being as the site of newness and
transformation of them.

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 7
BELDI SELLS: THE
COMMODIFICATION OF
MOROCCAN FASHION1
M. ANGELA JANSEN

Introduction
When my close friend Lina2 got married in 2006, she asked me to help her with
her wedding outfits. The fact that I was writing a PhD on the Moroccan fashion
industry automatically made me the authority on the latest fashion trends.
Although this was far from the case, I accepted her request with alacrity, for
it gave me the opportunity to take a closer look at the consumption process
of Moroccan fashion. Being from an upper middle-class family, it was out of
the question that Lina would order her outfits from a so-called traditional tailor
in the medina.3 As she explained it, the tailor would not be up-to-date on the
latest fashion trends, there would be no assurance that he would finish the
garments on time, and there would be no guarantee of quality. After extensive
enquiries among her female family members and friends, studying Moroccan
fashion magazines for months, and visiting a large range of Moroccan stylists
and designers in Rabat and Casablanca, Lina chose a young designer, a new
talent, who had just participated in the renowned yearly fashion event Caftan. The
showroom of this young designer was located in a stylish apartment building in
Agdal, a fancy suburb of Rabat, and we were received in a smart salon where
the international channel FashionTV was playing on a wall-mounted flat screen.
After the customary greetings and compliments, we were shown the Moroccan
fashion magazine Femmes du Maroc (also responsible for the event Caftan),
which featured the designer’s latest collection. However, it soon became clear
that this was not at all what my friend Lina had in mind; she had actually brought
pictures of designs by other designers that she had cut out of fashion magazines
144 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

to illustrate what she wanted. She had also brought her own fabrics, some of
which had been bought by her mother’s friend during her pilgrimage to Mecca,
and others which had been given to her by her future husband.4 Over the next
three months, we would come back four times for fittings and to supervise the
production process. Each time Lina would bring with her another set of female
family members, female friends, and future female in-laws who would vivaciously
contribute their opinions and suggestions (which did not necessarily benefit the
process). It became clear that these women played a crucial role in the negoti-
ation process of the price, which seemed to be an imperative part of the ritual.
Lina ended up ordering three outfits: a beldi-classique three-pieced white tekšit·a
to make her entrance on the maria, a beldi-modern three-pieced blue tekšit·a,
and another beldi-classique three-pieced lavender tekšit·a. Although she would
wear five outfits in total for her wedding, the characteristic wedding dress from
Fes and the final touche-marocaine style ivory wedding dress would be rented
from the neggafa and the fashion designer himself, respectively.5
What struck me most about the experience, was that Lina did not actually
choose the young designer for his work, but rather because of his reputation,
based on the fact that he had participated in the high-profile fashion event
Caftan, which I shall explain further below. She did not select any of his designs
for her own outfits, but rather imposed her own ideas, and even her own
fabrics on him. To me this felt like going to Karl Lagerfeld, bringing pictures of
Jean-Paul Gaultier’s work, and insisting he uses IKEA fabrics. Although Lina
favored a designer over a so-called traditional tailor, claiming that he would be
better informed on the latest fashion trends, two out of the three garments she
ordered were so-called “classic,” and only one so-called “modern” (see below
for a description of these different categories).
Based on extensive archival, collection, and field research between 2005
and 2012, this chapter deals with some of the complex consumption patterns
described above. It aims to illustrate that the introduction of foreign fashion
brands on a large scale in Morocco at the turn of the twenty-first century did
not threaten Moroccan fashion, but on the contrary, boosted its development
through the introduction of new consumption patterns and marketing strat-
egies. It mainly contests a false assumption, following early globalization theory,
that globalization leads to cultural homogenization, and rather to the contrary,
illustrates how globalization is contributing to a revaluation of Moroccan
cultural heritage, as materialized through fashion. Foreign fashion brands have
played a decisive role in the revival and commodification of Moroccan fashion,
resulting in a shift from anonymous tailors to glamorous fashion designers, from
consumption based on demand to consumption based on offer, from a craft
to an industry and from imageless workshops to luxurious showrooms and
boutiques that suggest services Moroccan consumers have grown accustomed
to through their shopping for European fashion.
BELDI SELLS: THE COMMODIFICATION OF MOROCCAN FASHION 145

From the traditional tailor to the fashion

designer
No more than a few decades ago, the majority of Moroccan urban garments
were produced by anonymous tailors in anonymous workshops in the medina.
Clients would be loyal to one tailor, who was usually a member of the family.6
New garments would be ordered once every two to three years, and used for a
specific set of occasions, such as weddings and religious celebrations (except
for the jellaba, a long outer coat with long sleeves and a hood, which is also
worn on a daily basis). Changes were slow, and were mainly dictated by what
fabric merchants and tailors had on offer. Cuts, colors, and decorations were
easy to determine based on age, marital status, and the occasion for which the
garments would be worn.

Figure 7.1 A so-called “traditional” tailor in the old Arab city center of Fes, Morocco.
Photograph by the author.
146 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

While European fashion was first adopted by the Moroccan elite in the
mid-1930s, it was only in the years after Independence (1956) that it became
truly part of Moroccan identity. European fashion became a symbol of (Euro)
modernity following its active promotion by King Mohamed V, who consciously
had his children portrayed wearing it, riding horses, swimming, driving a car—
living a (Euro)modern life (Daoud 1993: 245). Moroccan fashion, on the other
hand, became a symbol of Moroccan nationalism and tradition, especially
during the struggle for independence. And, while it was reduced to the context
of religious and social celebrations, European fashion became dominant in
everyday life. Simultaneously, the elite from Fes, in particular, traded their
Arab-style townhouses (ryads)7 in the old city centers for European-style villas
in the new French-built city centers of Rabat and Casablanca, which among
other things led to a shift from an extended family arrangement to a nuclear
family format. They were the first to send their daughters to school, and to
adopt a European lifestyle, including European fashion.8 However, this elite was
also strongly nationalistic, and highly valorized Moroccan fashion as a means of
distinguishing themselves from the foreign (European) oppressor (Rachik 2003:
91). Due to these rigorous lifestyle changes, however, Moroccan garments
were no longer considered suitable for an active and cosmopolitan life, as they
consisted of endless layers of heavy and rigid fabrics, wide cuts, as well as wide
brocade belts, which seriously restricted women in their movement.9 Therefore,
it is hardly surprising that the first generation of Moroccan fashion designers in
the mid-1960s were women of the elite.
Although they had little or no formal training in fashion design, these
women were knowledgeable in Moroccan handwork as part of their privileged
education,10 as well as in the latest European fashion trends.11 These ladies
“liberated” Moroccan women from their heavy vestimentary heritage by intro-
ducing fluid and light (French) haute couture fabrics, reducing the amount of
layers, as well as the widths of cuts, and giving Moroccan fashion a so-called
“modern” look.12 As members of the elite, they were well connected (interna-
tionally), which gave them the opportunity to present their work to an international
clientele. As this was also the time of the hippie spirit and ethnic chic in both
Europe and the United States, they soon acquired international fame and many
got to dress influential celebrities, fashion icons, and even royalty. Consequently,
their international success unquestionably contributed to their national success,
where for the first time, Moroccan women were given the opportunity to express
both their sense of fashion and modernity through Moroccan fashion.13 What
this generation of fashion designers probably did not realize, however, is that
by proposing their own designs to their clients (as opposed to clients dictating
their ideas to tailors), by presenting their collections in glamorous boutiques in
luxurious (international) hotels (as opposed to imageless workshops of tailors),
which were an important part of their (brand) image, and by signing their
BELDI SELLS: THE COMMODIFICATION OF MOROCCAN FASHION 147

collections with their (brand) name, they were the first to challenge the existing
consumption patterns of Moroccan fashion. Nevertheless, their collections were
limited to an exclusive group, since there was not yet a supporting industry to
disperse their designs to a larger audience.
It was not until the late 1990s that fashion was democratized in Morocco.
This happened particularly through the success of a national lifestyle press.
Under the influence of foreign lifestyle magazines available on the domestic
market, Moroccan lifestyle magazines started to develop in the mid-1990s,
meeting with remarkable success. As the first editor-in-chief of one of the first
Moroccan lifestyle magazines, Femmes du Maroc, Aisha Zaim Sakhri explains it,
this success largely resulted from the fact that Moroccan readers not only found
it difficult to identify with the topics presented in the foreign magazines, but also
had limited access to the consumption goods featured in them.14 Consequently,
these national magazines played an important role in giving Moroccan women
a new sense of identity (Skalli 2006: 61), their main aim being to promote “a
modern Moroccan woman in a modern Moroccan society.” As Aisha Zaim
Sakhri states:

[E]specially in the early years of the magazine, the idea persisted that every-
thing that was modern, was coming from Europe. In order to stay true to
one’s Moroccan identity, women thought they had to stay traditional. We
wanted to break with this idea by showing our readers that modernity could
come from within.15

Such magazines played an important role in the conceptualization of a

so-called Moroccan modernity. In order to illustrate their ideas, the magazine
focused on the modernization of Moroccan urban dress. According to Aisha
Zaim Sakhri:

Moroccan dress was something that was considered truly Moroccan and
purely traditional and it was playing an important role in society. But at the
same time, it was also considered to be a heavy load on the shoulders of
Moroccan women and therefore we believed that it had to be modernized.16

These magazines had limited access to European fashion, since only a

few boutiques in Casablanca were selling European fashion at the time. They,
therefore, literally had difficulties filling their fashion pages.17 It was, thus, only
logical that they turned to what was available on the local market, i.e. Moroccan
fashion, but even that proved to be problematic, since only a few Moroccan
designers were actually designing Moroccan fashion collections. The majority
were designing European fashion, due to the fact that the few fashion schools
that had opened up in Morocco in the mid-1980s, taught European fashion
148 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Figure 7.2 Cover of the Moroccan fashion magazine Ousra. Photograph by the author.

design, since they were catering to a Moroccan textile industry that was based
on subcontracting to a European market.18 Moroccan fashion was still a craft
that could be mastered by becoming an apprentice to a skilled tailor.
In 1996, Femmes du Maroc launched a yearly fashion event called Caftan,
to stimulate the design of so-called modern Moroccan fashion. As Lina’s case
testifies, this event grew to become Morocco’s most influential fashion event of
the year and many consumers await it to be informed on the new fashion trends.
Simultaneously, since the job options for Moroccan designers after graduation
BELDI SELLS: THE COMMODIFICATION OF MOROCCAN FASHION 149

were limited, and setting up a business in Moroccan fashion was much easier
than European fashion, increasing numbers of Moroccan designers switched
from European to Moroccan fashion design (or at least to some sort of hybrid
style). The problem remained, however, that they did not have the skills to actually
produce these garments and were, therefore, still largely dependent on specialized
traditional craftsmen.19 What they did possess, however, were the skills to design
European fashion, which they started to apply to Moroccan fashion, introducing
close-fitted silhouettes, revealing necklines, pants, skirts, corsets, etc. Due to
their formal schooling, they became the first Moroccan fashion professionals with
training in fashion management, marketing, and strategy, which had a significant
impact on the development of Moroccan fashion.20

From a craft to an industry

The introduction of foreign fashion brands on a large scale at the turn of the
twenty-first century democratized fashion in Morocco. Due to the liberalization
of the Moroccan textile market under European pressure, in particular, and a
steadily growing economy, Morocco was inundated by foreign fashion brands
in the form of franchises. Ranging from low- and middle-priced (French and
Spanish) brands like Zara, Massimo Dutti, Mango, Stradivarius, Bershka,
Promod, and Etam to high-end brands, such as Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Yves
Saint Laurent, stores opened in the economic capital of Casablanca, the tourist
center Marrakech, and the administrative city Rabat, in particular. The piece-de-
resistance of foreign fashion brands is without a doubt the MoroccoMall (2011).
With a total surface of 250,000 m², it is the largest shopping mall in North Africa,
offering over 600 brands, including the French Galeries Lafayette, Prada, and
Gucci, as well as the Hennes & Mauritz and GAP.21
The introduction and success of these foreign fashion brands in Morocco
can be explained through larger processes of globalization, whereby the
increasing encounter with foreign lifestyles through media, traveling, and
(temporary) migration accustomed Moroccans to foreign commodities. Many
of these brands were already familiar, particularly to the middle- and upper-
social classes, due to their studies and travels abroad. Progressively these
commodities were adjusted and integrated into Moroccan urban life. Although
official numbers are lacking, and it can only be estimated that merely 10 percent
of the Moroccan population can afford to buy products offered by these
foreign fashion brands (Vallée 2006: 33), their introduction has uncontestably
had a significant impact on consumerism in Morocco. For example, under the
influence of foreign fashion brands, the anonymous workshops of traditional
tailors and fabric merchants have become overshadowed by so-called modern
150 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Figure 7.3 The first Zara store on Massira El Khedra in the center of Casablanca,
Morocco. Photograph by the author.

fashion boutiques and showrooms of Moroccan stylists and designers. As Lina’s

case clearly exemplifies, their settings correspond more to an image that has
come to inspire client’ confidence, suggesting a range of professional services
and qualities Moroccan consumers have grown accustomed to through their
shopping for European fashion. The irony of the story, however, is that both
stylists and designers are still dependent on the skills of Moroccan tailors and
craftsmen to produce Moroccan fashion, resulting in large workshops, where
the “unstylish” craftsmen are hidden behind a stylish façade.
Furthermore, in the same way that Moroccan customers have grown accus-
tomed to shopping around for European fashion, they have started shopping
around for Moroccan fashion and, therefore, are no longer loyal to a particular
(family) tailor. And, under the influence of foreign fashion brands, Moroccan
fashion has become commoditized, whereby a shift occurred from consumption
BELDI SELLS: THE COMMODIFICATION OF MOROCCAN FASHION 151

Figure 7.4 A boutique selling Moroccan fashion in the shopping mall Twin Centre in
Casablanca, Morocco. Photograph by the author.

based on demand to consumption based on offer (Rasing 1999: 239). The

offer, in turn, has increased remarkably in the last decade through such factors
as the commercial exploitation of specific social and religious events like the
fasting month of Ramadan and the wedding season in summer. Since these
are traditionally two important occasions when Moroccan fashion is consumed,
the industry has become particularly focused on them, whether it is through an
array of fashion events promoting the latest fashion trends, fashion magazines
featuring special editions, or boutiques offering special promotions.22
Niche markets have been created and/or stimulated, like informal Moroccan
fashion for a wider range of occasions, and for men and children. For example,
two new hybrid-clothing categories that have developed in the last few years are
beldi wear and touche marocaine, which are suitable for informal occasions or
day wear. Beldi wear is less luxurious and elaborate Moroccan fashion adapted
for daily use, while touche marocaine is European fashion with characteristic
Moroccan iconography, mainly consisting of decoration techniques. Additionally,
the market is stimulating Moroccan men to consume by increasing the offer
of Moroccan fashion for men, with a particular success for Moroccan male
prêt-à-porter. Also, specific occasions in the year like cšura23 are commercially
exploited for children to consume Moroccan fashion, and the offer has increased
152 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

impressively, ranging from haute couture brands like Alrazal to prêt-a-porter

offered by Yousra.
An important characteristic of Moroccan fashion, however, is that consumers
continue to insist on the uniqueness of their Moroccan garments, as well as the
importance of handwork. Thus, it is difficult to industrialize or mass-produce
Moroccan fashion, and it demands a network of stylists and traditional tailors with
ateliers and craftsmen to translate the latest fashion trends into affordable wear.
This particular phenomenon has made it a very complex undertaking to charac-
terize the Moroccan fashion industry, since, on the one hand, “one-of-a-kind” and
hand-made are qualities of haute couture, but, on the other, the highly diverse
range of qualities of materials and handwork, as well as the level of creativity and
innovation have made it impossible to put everyone into one category.

From the local to the global (and back)

Since the 1990s, an increasing number of social scientists have challenged
the belief that globalization leads to cultural homogeneity based on a Western
format, insisting that receivers of cultural flows are not passive agents but
unravel, translate and customize foreign influences (Appadurai 1996; Inda
and Rosaldo 2002; Lechner and Boli 2008). As was clearly illustrated above,
instead of threatening the local market, foreign lifestyle magazines inspired a
wide range of successful Moroccan lifestyle magazines, whose added values
of proximity and identity rendered them more popular than foreign magazines
(Skalli 2006: 61). In the same way, the introduction of European fashion brands
on a large scale did not threaten the continuity of Moroccan fashion, but on
the contrary, set the trend for new consumption patterns and marketing strat-
egies applied to Moroccan fashion. As I have argued elsewhere (Jansen 2013:
14), an important reason why these two clothing styles do not threaten each
other’s existence is because they have different values, fulfill different needs,
and, therefore, represent different markets. Where European fashion represents
aspirations of change and progress, as well as global participation, Moroccan
fashion fulfills needs of continuity, cultural anchorage, and local distinctiveness.
As Susan Kaiser (2012: 2) argues, people do not want either/or but and/both.
They do not feel the need to choose, since both clothing styles are inextricably
connected (Eicher and Sumberg 1995: 303) in the construction of multiple
dynamic identities. Thera Rasing (1999: 238–9), in this respect, speaks of
interacting identities, explaining that people are dealing with processes that
go on simultaneously; on the one hand they adopt “new” ways of living under
external influences, and on the other, they hold on to “old” customs and beliefs.
This is not contradictory, she says, but shows interacting identities. Moroccans
BELDI SELLS: THE COMMODIFICATION OF MOROCCAN FASHION 153

are convinced they can have “the best of both worlds” and as the Moroccan
sociologist Fatima Mernissi puts it, drawing on the example of two widespread
commodities in Moroccan society:

Moroccans want to reconcile both realities by constantly traveling back

and forth between tradition and (post)modernity. [...] They want, as it were,
the mosque and the satellite without sacrificing the one or the other [...]
The mosque provides them with cultural anchorage and rootedness, while
the satellite seems to offer alternatives to some repressive mechanisms of
tradition (in Skalli 2006: 6).

Thera Rasing (1999: 238–9) argues that foreign commodities constitute a

significant nexus between the global and the local and that they are dominant in
cultural transformations. Fashion, in its turn, is a powerful commodity to negotiate
continuity and change, tradition and modernity as well as values of local and
global and is simultaneously ambiguous and contradictive. For example, during
my extensive interviewing of ninety respondents in Morocco’s three major cities
(Fes, Marrakech and Casablanca) in 2005–6, many respondents heavily criticized
the work of contemporary Moroccan fashion designers, saying that they are “not
Moroccan,” “too modern,” and/or “too European.” Nevertheless, the majority
agreed that it is due to the “modernization” introduced by fashion designers that
Moroccan fashion has become so successful today. Many acknowledged using
these collections as sources of inspiration for their own garments. Susan Kaiser
(2012: 45) notes in this respect that what contributes to fashion’s ambiguity
(mixed meanings) is its relation to ambivalence (mixed emotions). She argues
that fashion suggests what is to come and it is a process that allows articulating
abstract ideas and negotiating ambiguity. Both fashion and culture, she argues,
simultaneously undergo continual change and continuity, and these simulta-
neous processes are complex and even contradictory (2012: 12). For Kaiser:

fashion can best be understood as change within continuity, whereas culture

reveals practices that emphasize continuity within change. Each concept, in
its own way, offers a lens through which to make sense of simultaneity: how
different ideas or processes not only coexist but also interact dynamically
(2012: 13).

Fred Davis (1992: 18 and 43) argues that fashion articulates and represents
collective tensions and moods that it makes visual and material and that it sheds
light on potential meanings and opportunities for change. As Jennifer Craik
(2009: 234) formulates, fashion is a relentless cycle of anticipating the future yet
drawing on resonances of the past. This involves balancing the present with the
future and the past, she says. Potential clients may be frightened by trends that
154 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

are too different from what they wear now, she explains, but reject anything that
looks old fashioned or out of fashion, so a careful balancing act is needed to
predict a newness that is exciting but still has some familiarity.
It is not (any longer) a simple matter of Moroccan versus European fashion
since new hybrid clothing categories have been introduced over time. Fashion
in Morocco today roughly fits into five categories, ranging from beldi-classique
and beldi-moderne, to beldi-wear, touche marocaine, and mode Européenne,
whereby the first category is considered suitable for formal social and religious
occasions, and the second can be worn for less formal occasions, or for formal
occasions, but only by “young” (i.e. unmarried) people (Jansen 2014). The third
and fourth categories, in their turn, are informal Moroccan fashion due to their
(too) high level of European influences, while the last category is considered fully
European. These last three categories are suitable for so-called modern occasions
ranging from leisure and office activities to formal “foreign” contexts (receptions,
inaugurations, galas, etc) although it is hard to generalize and exceptions do occur.
Through the interviews with my respondents, it became clear that the catego-
rization of fashion reflects a constant negotiation process based on the degree
of “localness/traditonalness” and “foreignness/modernity” of a garment with
respect to its shape, cut, fabric, colors, and decorations. It is far from an exact
science and strongly influenced by personal opinion. What is considered beldi-
classique by one respondent, can be easily categorized as beldi-modern by
another. Again, what is really being negotiated, is continuity and change, tradition
and modernity, whereby the first is associated with the local, and the second with
the global, and especially with euromodernity. For example, Moroccan society
is, to a large extent, influenced by Arab culture through film, music, and Muslim
fashion, but this is never associated with modernity. The way Jonathan Inda and
Renato Rosaldo (2002: 3) explain this, ideologies related to modernity are in the
majority made up of elements of the Enlightenment worldview such as freedom,
welfare, human rights, democracy, and sovereignty. Many developing nations,
they claim, adhere to policies which at least ostensibly aim to “modernize” their
politics, infrastructures, and economies, but often their own prevailing ideologies
do not correspond with those proposed from “outside.” In this respect, a
“Moroccan modernity,” as first promoted by Moroccan fashion magazines, and
later by King Mohamed VI, has become a desirable alternative for euromodernity,
and is believed to be more in harmony with prevailing local ideologies and values.

Beldi as a brand
People in a consumer culture no longer consume for merely functional satis-
faction, but in order to give meaning to their lives (Richard Elliott & Andrea
BELDI SELLS: THE COMMODIFICATION OF MOROCCAN FASHION 155

Davies 2006). The consumption of commodities is an important aspect in the

construction of identities, or as Wendy Gordon and Virginia Valentine (2000: 12)
put it:

[T]he 21st century consumer shifts identities and uses a vast wardrobe of
brands to create herself into whoever she wants to be. Others construct their
own stories about her by decoding her brand attire at that moment within a
particular context.

They argue that people want to belong to something bigger than themselves,
and that they make sense of the world around them by creating stories and
clues (Gordon and Valentine 2000: 6, 10, 12). These clues, they say, are
communicated consciously and unconsciously, not only in the course of social
interaction, but also through overt brand communication and covert brand body
language. They explain that it is not the company that owns a brand, but rather
the consumers by giving meaning to a brand, “by owning it.” They argue that
customers create brands, while companies create brand identities. Also, the
relationship a consumer has with a brand is continually changing and, therefore,
the meaning of a brand can only be understood in the context of the discourse
in which the brand is being consumed.
A brand, as Benoit Heilbrunn (2006) formulates it in his article “Culture
Branding between Utopia and A-topia,” is no longer just a sign added to a
product to differentiate it from another product, but a semiotic engine whose
function is to constantly produce meanings and values. Brands create value
not just by the products or services they represent, but by the meanings they
generate (McCracken 2005). In the words of Clifford Geertz (1973), people are
creatures of meaning, and questions of meaning and identity are being primarily
answered by the culture in which they grow up. Cultures provide the symbolic
tools needed to create a sense of identity. The idea forwarded by ID Branding
(2010: 7–8) suggests that brands work in exactly this way, namely, in order to
be relevant to consumers and sustainable over time, brands must operate much
like culture, they argue. Consumers will embrace a particular brand as part of
their own identity, they say. Consumers thus, in essence, join the brand’s culture
and participate in that culture as a way of expressing to the rest of the world
(and to themselves) who they are and what they believe in.
The other way around, cultures are becoming more and more like brands.
Moroccan culture materialized through Moroccan fashion has become a brand
under the name beldi. As I explain in my book Moroccan Fashion (Jansen
2014), the term beldi—meaning “traditional/local/authentic” in Moroccan
Arabic, as opposed to rumi meaning “new/foreign/industrial”—has come
to represent everything that is “good” about Morocco, from grandmother’s
homemade cooking, to Moroccan handcrafts. Beldi allows people to dream of
156 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

the unique skilful crafts from Fes, which is considered the capital of Moroccan
civilization, where Moroccan handwork originated and was raised to perfection
in the course of centuries. Where beldi only a few years ago was still associated
with the countryside, backwardness, and old-fashionedness, today, in a rapidly
developing urban society, beldi allows people to escape for a moment and
dream about Morocco’s glorious past. This search for authenticity, as Marilyn
Halter (2000: 17) observes, is very much related to nostalgia for an idealized
and fixed point in time when folk culture was supposedly untouched by the
corruption that is automatically associated with commercial development.
Hence, she says, the more artificiality, anonymity and uncertainty apparent in
a postmodern world, the more driven are the quests for authentic experiences
and the more people long to feel connected to localized traditions seeking
out the timeless and true. Moroccan fashion sells a fantasy materialized by
Moroccan fashion designers through the skills of Moroccan artisans. According
to Loubna Skalli (2006: 56), an ideological “retraditionalization” refers to a
politicization of tradition to combat, in a self-conscious defense, traditional
norms that are threatened by others. While Moroccan fashion is considered
uncomfortable, expensive, and time-consuming to purchase by a large majority
of the respondents, both men and women, it is equally valued as “important,”
as “part of Moroccan tradition” and as indispensable for formal social and
religious occasions.

Conclusion
This chapter has tried to illustrate how a series of phenomena in post-colonial
urban Moroccan society have not threatened Moroccan fashion, but on the
contrary, boosted its development through the introduction of new consumption
patterns and marketing strategies. It aimed to illustrate how globalization has
contributed to a revaluation of Moroccan cultural heritage, materialized through
fashion. A first generation of Moroccan fashion designers, in the 1960s, revolu-
tionized the consumption of Moroccan fashion by proposing their own designs
in their own glamorous boutiques under their own (brand) name. By doing so,
they were the first to create and sell a brand rather than an imageless craft.
A second generation, in the late 1990s, through their professional training in
(European) fashion design, marketing, and strategy, pushed this development
even further. Supported by the success of a national fashion press and their
strongly mediatized fashion events, they were widely featured in glamorous
fashion spreads and broadcasted on national television, which not only enabled
them to reach a large audience, but also to position themselves as national
celebrities. This resulted in the popularity of the glamorous fashion designer over
BELDI SELLS: THE COMMODIFICATION OF MOROCCAN FASHION 157

the imageless tailor, who became associated with informality, low quality and
low social status, while fashion designers and stylists became associated with
luxury, glamor, and, most of all, professionalism. The Moroccan fashion press,
in its turn, also contributed to an important image change of Moroccan fashion
by taking it out of its “traditional” context of social and religious gatherings, and
putting it in a “modern” context of fashion magazines and shows; they turned it
into a desirable commodity.
The aim of this chapter was to show that the introduction of foreign
fashion brands on a large scale at the turn of the twenty-first century did not
threaten the continuity of Moroccan fashion. The anonymous workshops of
tailors and fabric merchants in the old city centers became overshadowed by
fashionable boutiques and showrooms of designers in the new city centers.
Thus, under the influence of foreign fashion brands, Moroccan consumers
are no longer loyal to one (family) tailor, but rather shop around for Moroccan
fashion in the same way they do for European fashion. In addition, under the
influence of European prêt-à-porter, Moroccan consumers no longer have
the patience and/or knowledge to order Moroccan fashion custom-made,
having to purchase the fabrics and garments separately, as well as knowing
about materials, qualities, and techniques. Today, stylists and designers are
offering their clients “all-in-one,” by proposing their own fabrics, designs, and
decoration techniques. Moreover, under the influence of foreign fashion brands,
Moroccan fashion is no longer consumed based on need, but rather on what
is being offered, and the amount on offer has increased dramatically in the last
decade. Particular annual events have become commercially exploited, with
Ramadan and the wedding season in summer as the absolute highlights. The
majority of the fashion events are organized prior to these two events, and a
large range of boutiques and shops, including supermarkets, feature Moroccan
fashion around these periods.
However, Moroccan fashion is limited to specific social and religious
occasions and contexts, which limits its consumption considerably. Therefore,
the industry has particularly focused on the market for so-called informal
Moroccan fashion for expansion in recent years, as well as Moroccan fashion
for men and children. Nevertheless, Moroccan consumers continue to insist on
two important characteristics when it comes to Moroccan fashion, and that is
handwork and exclusivity. So, under the influence of European fashion brands,
“modern” values like image and service have come to play important roles in
the consumption of Moroccan fashion, but without affecting so-called traditional
values of craftsmanship and exclusivity.
Finally, the growing impact of foreign (European) cultural influences, as a result
of globalization, did not in any way threaten local culture, but on the contrary,
resulted in a reevaluation of local cultural heritage as a means of local distinc-
tiveness. Moroccan fashion has never been this popular, and it is exploited to
158 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

a maximum, from advertising to entertainment on television. A wide variety

of companies, from telephone providers to tile producers, are using modern
Moroccan fashion in their advertisements to sell their products. In short, it has
become a brand under the name beldi, a symbol par excellence of a “Moroccan
modernity,” delicately balancing between tradition and modernity, between
continuity and change, and between the local and the global. Moroccan fashion
plays on people’s nostalgic longings for “nationalism,” “tradition,” and “authen-
ticity,” while simultaneously representing promises of change, progress, and
participation in global discourse.
As illustrated by Lina’s case, on the one hand, consumers are both attracted
and reassured by the modern fashion designer, as opposed to the traditional
tailor, who they believe will be able to advise them as a professional, and offer
them modern services relating to the timeframe and quality of the work, even
though the actual work is still, in fact, executed by a “traditional” tailor. Most
importantly, the designer provides prestige among family and friends. On the
other hand, Moroccan consumers are not willing to give up their “traditional”
privileges to impose their own fabrics, their own models, and, most of all, to
negotiate the price, as is done with a traditional tailor.

Figure 7.5 Modern Moroccan fashion used in a billboard advertisement of a telephone

provider. Photograph by the author.
BELDI SELLS: THE COMMODIFICATION OF MOROCCAN FASHION 159

Notes
 1 This chapter was presented as a conference paper for the 16th IFFTI Annual
Conference held on January 27–31, 2014 at Bunka Gakuen University, Tokyo, Japan.
 2 The names of respondents in this article were altered for privacy reasons.
 3 This is the old Arab city center, as opposed to the new French city center.
 4 This is a new interpretation of an old custom. Although it is not clear when this
change occurred, in the early twentieth century brides would receive fabrics from
their husbands as part of their wedding gift on the day of their wedding. Now,
since contemporary brides want to use these fabrics for their actual wedding
outfits, they often get them before the actual wedding.
 5 The tekšit· a is an outfit that consists of two long T-shaped garments, usually with
long sleeves, and held together with a belt. It is worn by women for formal social
gatherings. The maria is a heavily decorated platform that is used to carry in the
bride. This is also a new interpretation of an old custom, for the bride used to be
carried from her father’s house to her future husband’s house through the streets,
hidden from view by curtains. Now it is just a way to offer the bride a “grand
entrance.” The neggafa is the Moroccan version of the wedding planner. Beldi-
classique, beldi-modern, and touche-marocaine are newly introduced categories of
Moroccan fashion, as is discussed in more detail in the later paragraphs.
 6 Mainly for practical reasons because the contact between men and women who
were not related was problematic.
 7 This is a multi-level townhouse, based around a central courtyard, and usually
inhabited by an extended family.
 8 Zhor Sebti (Moroccan fashion designer from the first generation), interview with the
author, Casablanca, November 17, 2006; notes on file with author.
 9 Tamy Tazi (Moroccan fashion designer from the first generation), interview with the
author, Casablanca, July 9, 2004; notes on file with author.
10 Moroccan girls of the elite learned how to sew and embroider at a young age as
part of their respectful young girl’s upbringing.
11 Tamy Tazi (Moroccan fashion designer from the first generation), interview with the
author, Casablanca, July 9, 2004; notes on file with author.
12 Ibid.
13 Zhor Sebti (Moroccan fashion designer from the first generation), interview with the
author, Casablanca, Nov. 17, 2006; notes on file with author.
14 Aisha Zaim Sakhri (first editor-in-chief of the Moroccan lifestyle magazine Femmes
du Maroc), interview with the author, Casablanca, December 15, 2006; notes on
file with author.
15 Ibid.
16 Aisha Zaim Sakhri (first editor-in-chief of the Moroccan lifestyle magazine Femmes
du Maroc), interview with the author, Casablanca, December 15, 2006; notes on
file with author.
17 Ilham Benzakour (editor-in-chief of the first Moroccan lifestyle magazine Citadine),
interview with the author, Casablanca, December 27, 2006; notes on file with author.
160 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

18 Zineb Joundy (Moroccan fashion designer of the first generation), interview with the
author, Casablanca, November 21, 2006; notes on file with author.
19 Albert Oiknine (Moroccan fashion designer of the second generation), interview
with the author, Casablanca, July 9, 2004; notes on file with author.
20 For a third generation of Moroccan designers, emerging at the turn of the twenty-
first century, please see Jansen (2014).
21 www.moroccomall.net (accessed 27 January 2014).
22 Meryam Al Alami (director of the fashion department of College Lasalle), interview
with the author, July 13, 2006; notes on file with author.
23 This is a religious celebration that has been on the verge of disappearing for which
children are given sweets, toys and new clothes.

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Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002.
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Local and Global Identity.” In Fashioning Identities: Cultures of Exchange, ed. Sarah
Heaton, 161–80. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2013.
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Bloomsbury, 2014.
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Publishing, 2008.
McCracken, Grant. Culture and Consumption II: Markets, Meaning, and Brand
Management. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.
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Rachik, H. Symbolizer la nation: Essai sur l’usage des identities collectives au Maroc.
Casablanca: Editions Le Fennec, 2003.
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Skalli, Loubna H. Through a Local Prism: Gender, Globalization and Identity in
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Journal du Textile (Avril 2006): 33.
 PART IV

LOCAL
CONSTRUCTS OF
THE GLOBAL
 8
HISTORY, ART, AND
PLASTIC BAGS: VIEWING
SOUTH AFRICA THROUGH
FASHION
VICTORIA L. ROVINE

It can be that the simplest objects used by people throughout society

acquire, through their widespread use, the power to profoundly reflect
on the lives of the various members of that society. –Strangelove
(GIBSON AND PATER 2007).1

Introduction
Commodities, as Kopytoff and others have demonstrated, may have biogra-
phies as eventful as those of the people who use them (Kopytoff 1986). Even
the most prosaic goods may acquire dramatic biographies, as vividly illustrated
by the modest containers at the center of this exploration. Through the work of
two fashion designers, I explore the South African lives of the plastic containers,
often called “China bags,” though they have other names as well. The life stories
of these bags illustrate how fashion can be used to investigate local construc-
tions of modernity that emerge out of global markets and media, as these
humble containers defy their rootlessness to become deeply local.
My investigation also illuminates aspects of South Africa’s fashion scene,
which is exceptional in Africa. Like its fine art markets (which, as I will describe,
intersect with the fashion design industry), fashion’s education, production,
and marketing infrastructure resemble European and North American systems.
Although designers struggle to build careers there as elsewhere, the nation’s
166 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

fashion shows, journalism, and range of markets does provide opportunities for
unconventional work to find audiences, such as that of the two South African
designers at the center of my meditation on commodities and identities.
My exploration of China bags is inspired by the work of two South African
artists: Carlo Gibson and Ziemek Pater, fashion designers who worked collabo-
ratively under the name Strangelove from 2001–9. Using clothing as their
medium, Gibson and Pater animated China bags, enabling the objects to enact
their own life stories. They harnessed the bags’ potential to serve as containers
not for goods, but for identities, histories, and aspirations. Transforming China
bags into fashion, an art form that is inseparable from the bodies for which it is
created, Strangelove literalizes the roles of commodities and global networks in
the shaping of contemporary South African identities.
South Africa’s recent political, social, economic, and legal transformations
are reflected in virtually all of the nation’s creative industries, including fashion.
These transformations have included the final violent throes and the demise of
the Apartheid system, the implementation of the world’s most inclusive national
constitution, the dramatic growth of formal and informal urban populations, a
steep rise in crime, and the scourge of HIV/AIDS. While the work of many of
the country’s visual artists reflects the tensions between liberation and hardship,
continuity and transformation, national pride and xenophobia, Strangelove’s use
of fashion to interrogate historical and contemporary inequities sets them apart.
To pursue the biographies of China bag fashions, my analysis draws on several
influential works from a growing anthropological subfield focused on consumption
and commodities as windows onto social structures. Strangelove’s work vividly
enacts and extends Gell’s analysis of the absorption of commodities across
cultures, exemplifying the production of new meanings through consumption
(Gell 1986). Gell explores the functions of commodities in global networks, tracing
objects’ shifting significance, as they are adapted to diverse cultural and individual
identities. My analysis of the cultural weight of China bags in South Africa is also
informed by Jean Comaroff’s analysis of historical South African dress practices
at the intersection of cultures (Comaroff 1996). Through an exploration of Tswana
dress in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, she provides rich insights into the
contemporary worlds of China bags. Commodities were key to the negotiation of
power between European missionaries and Tswana communities.
Comaroff’s analysis of Tswana dress in historical perspective reminds us that
Strangelove—and all of Africa’s contemporary fashion designers—represents the
latest incarnations of long histories of innovative transformations of attire. While
attaining historical depth beyond the late nineteenth century is difficult, evidence
of African consumers’ interest in the new styles and creative adaptations is
evident in the Benin bronzes of the sixteenth century, and Kongo ivories of the
same era, which depict the incorporation of European forms into local styles
of dress. In South Africa, the brilliantly colored beadwork that has become a
History, Art, and Plastic Bags 167

hallmark of traditional dress in many Nguni cultures (Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, and
others) is the product of fashion systems; much to the chagrin of eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century European traders, consumers’ preferences for bead colors
and sizes changed from year to year. Sandra Klopper cites a vivid passage from
an 1854 letter by a British visitor to southern Africa: “the Natives […] are as capri-
cious in their taste for beads, as any English lady in the choice of her bonnet”
(Klopper 2000: 31). These past innovations may rightly be considered fashion,
the result of the desire for innovation and novelty; a reminder that South Africa,
like the rest of the continent, has long participated in global fashion systems.
Finally, Strangelove’s work with China bags evokes the paradoxical experience
of modernity in contemporary Africa, where the modern is for many an absence
and an aspiration, visible yet just out of reach. The China bag poignantly evokes
that absent or, as I will propose, failed modernity. Ferguson’s critique of the
model of “multiple” or “alternative modernities” provides the framework for this
analysis (Ferguson 2006). Rather than accounting for the vast disparities between
Africans’ and Westerners’ access to prosperity and material comforts as “alter-
native” versions of modernity, Ferguson calls for a reassessment of the meanings
of modernity. He considers it as an embodied experience rather than a temporal or
a theoretical status; Strangelove’s work literalizes this embodiment of modernity.

Strangelove’s fashion theater

From 2001–9, Ziemek Pater and Carlo Gibson worked together as the conceptual
design team Strangelove.2 Since 2009, the brand has continued to create
fashion and fine art under Gibson’s direction. From their earliest fashion shows,
Strangelove pushed the boundaries of fashion design, moving clothing into
fine arts contexts, as for the quality of their clothing design and production. A
2006 review described the brand’s reputation for theatricality: “Their shows are
characteristically, perhaps infamously, unconventional, and they have married
their penchant for beautiful clothes with a love for art and theatre.” (Buys 2006)
Strangelove’s performances are more than promotions of their fashion design.
Through their unorthodox approach to clothing design and presentation, Gibson
and Pater use the medium as a platform for explorations of culture and history
in South Africa, and, more specifically, in the distinctive urban milieu of their
home, Johannesburg. According to Pater, clothing is a means to an end, one
medium among many used to create a narrative: “We’ve discovered that the
most profound thing you can do with clothing is storytelling. Structurally, clothing
cutting is interesting but it has a limit” (Pater 2005). Gibson and Pater collaborated
with dancers, visual artists, musicians, choreographers, and actors, creating
works of art that explore multiple aspects of South Africa’s cultures and histories.
168 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Figure 8.1 Strangelove (Carlo Gibson, Ziemek Pater), in collaboration with Nelisiwe
Xaba, They Look at Me and That’s All They Think, 2007–8. Courtesy of Carlo Gibson.

A performance entitled They Look at Me and That’s All They Think (2007–8),
created in collaboration with choreographer/dancer Neliswe Xaba, featured a
dramatic costume made of white parachute fabric. Tailored above the waist, the
History, Art, and Plastic Bags 169

dress expanded to create a tent-like form with an enormous bustle extending

from the rear. This bustle makes reference to Saartjie Baartman’s physiognomy,
or, more accurately, the European fascination with her physiognomy. Baartman
was an indigenous KhoiKhoi woman who was taken to Europe, in 1810, to be
displayed as the “Hottentot Venus.” The garment is central to the work, for it
not only embodies Baartman; at some points in the performance it becomes
an element of the set, behind which Xaba dances in silhouette. Clothing, in
this collaboration of choreographer and designers, enables the body to narrate
histories and identities in multiple dimensions. The story told through image
and movement is richly symbolic of South Africa’s long history of racialized
oppression, restoring agency and dignity to its protagonists.
Along with their performance work, Strangelove is known for their ready-
to-wear garments, manufactured and sold from the company’s Johannesburg
boutique, located in the Parktown neighborhood. The China bag projects, which
are the focus of this exploration of Strangelove’s oeuvre, were manifested in
both realms of their production, prominently featured in several performance
pieces and subtly reflected in their ready-to-wear lines.

Taxi Rank: animated commodities

Pater and Gibson have employed China bags as both artistic media and
characters in dramatic narratives. Cheap plastic bags, ostensibly valued only for
the goods they contain, draw in associations and emotions, as they circulate
in global and local markets. China bags are foreign, even as they represent the
local; they signify prosperity in the context of poverty; they are omnipresent,
yet nearly invisible. Strangelove use the bags’ contradictory associations to
comment on the paradoxes that characterize their city and their country. One
performance that literally embodies these contradictions took place far from the
fashion runways and exclusive neighborhoods, where most fashion designers
promote and sell their work.
On an inner city loading dock in June 2003, a crowd gathered for a perfor-
mance created by Gibson and Pater. The event, entitled Another Day at the
Strangelove Taxi Rank, was planned to coincide with South African Fashion
Week, a major event that attracts the country’s large fashion community. Instead
of gathering at Sandton, the upscale suburban shopping and convention center,
at which nearly all of the fashion week events were taking place, Strangelove
brought its audience to a loading dock in the Carfax neighborhood, an industrial
area in downtown Johannesburg, where their studio was then located.3 In the
middle of the loading dock sat several large, striped bags, made of white, red,
and blue plastic fibers. Audience members moved around and between the
170 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

bags as they found places on the cement floor that would become the stage.
While they waited, cardboard shadow puppets performed on a makeshift
screen, portraying taxi vans, street signs, and people waiting for rides, all
accompanied by the sounds of honking cars, chugging engines, and travelers
hailing drivers.4
As audience members found places to stand, the bags began to move.
Arms and legs emerged and the bags began to interact. First, two of the bags
got to their feet, revealing tall rubber boots. The bags then began to dance,
performing in the style known as gumboot dancing, a distinctively South African
form of entertainment (Erlmann 1989: 262; Gillespie 2008: 84).5 Although it has
become a tourist attraction today, gumboot dancing emerged out of the painful
history of migrant labor, in which the horizons of workers were limited by their
race in the Apartheid system. It was an outlet for creativity and means of covertly
preserving the dances that were one aspect of the migrants’ cultural heritage.
On the loading dock in Johannesburg, the rubber boots worn by the bags could
not help but evoke these associations.
As the two bags danced, a third began to move. This bag wore no boots
and, it soon became clear, was a female character. One bare leg emerged from
the bag, toe pointed elegantly. Slowly, deliberately, two hands appeared and
began carefully unrolling a long stocking, beginning with the toes, pulled over
the curving ankle, stretched along the smooth calf, suggestively lingering. The
crowd hooted as the hands stroked the stocking-sheathed leg, a clear allusion
to the use of a condom. In South Africa, where HIV/AIDS has thoroughly infil-
trated public consciousness, references to condoms are intensely meaningful as
part of widespread public discourses on safe sex.6
A birthing scene followed, in which the female bag lay on the ground, legs
spread uncomfortably wide. The birth produced a group of small bags tied
to a string of bag handles—a plastic umbilical cord. In the final element of
the performance, the female bag slowly climbed to the top of a set of stairs,
awkwardly moving on all fours. The audience and the gumboot-wearing bags
cheered her on, as she pulled herself to the top where she stood, exhausted
and triumphant. In this pantomimed drama, China bags were transformed
into characters that struggled and triumphed, reproduced and entertained, all
without escaping the restrictions of their lives by unzipping their bag bodies.
Through these humble plastic bags, the designers created narratives and
personalities as well as subtle social commentary on globalization by evoking
the country’s history of migrant labor, economic inequity, and the struggle to
survive against immense odds.
The plastic bags that were their medium for Taxi Rank appear elsewhere in
Strangelove’s work. They used China bags as props in a series of photographs
called Johannesburg Walkabout, created in collaboration with photographer
Hannilie Coetzee. These were fashion photographs of a kind, because the
History, Art, and Plastic Bags 171

Figure 8.2 Strangelove (Carlo Gibson, Ziemek Pater), in collaboration with Hannelie
Coetzee, from the series Soweto Walkabout, 2005–6. Courtesy of Carlo Gibson.

models wore Strangelove clothing, yet the city was as much the focus of
the images as the fashions. Each image is set in unusual urban landscapes,
in empty fields and beside highways. The models are engaged in ordinary
activities—buying fruit from a stand, eating fast food from a paper bag, even
urinating on a highway embankment. A China bag appears in each image; in
some scenes the humble containers appear prominently, in others they are
nearly absorbed by the barren urban landscapes. But their constant presence,
once noted, lends them significance.
Strangelove also used China bags to show and to create fashion, sending
models holding China bags down the runway at a 2005 fashion show. At the
same event, they presented clothing made of the bags. These garments made
use of the bags as textiles, disassembling the containers to tailor the plastic
fibers into dresses, shorts, and other forms. In late 2008, the designers won a
fashion competition in which they used a China bag to create a wedding dress.7
The clothing made of China bags was never sold, largely because the work of
disassembling and reworking the bags was labor intensive, but the garments
dramatically enacted the bags’ reach deep into people’s daily lives.
172 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Gibson and Pater’s use of the bags depends upon the form’s familiarity for
diverse audiences. Initially, Gibson had worked with China bags as a student at
the Johannesburg Technikon, where he and Pater met. Like many designers, he
regularly used them as containers to transport his fabrics and other materials.
Though they are made elsewhere, Gibson found that the bags “gave him the
feeling of being African.” He wondered how he could animate the bags, “to make
them full of the life they carry” (Gibson 2009). The containers draw their local
meanings from their presence in markets, where merchants and consumers use
them to transport food, clothing, and other products. China bags also provide
insights into circuits of labor migration, where they carry personal belongings
rather than products for sale. And they link the intensely personal economy of
an individuals’ struggle to survive with networks of industrial mass-production
and global merchandizing, dominated in recent decades by China, the country
that lends the bags their name.
Strangelove’s description of the bags’ significance is founded in the containers’
central yet unheralded role in countless lives, as illustrated by excerpts from a
2007 conference presentation by the designers (Gibson and Pater 2007):

These bags are used by hawkers and street vendors to transport goods
daily, products ranging from fruit and vegetables to cheap Chinese imported
clothes and shoes. These bags also carry home the acquisitions of migrant
workers from Zimbabwe, Malawi, and other countries when they pay return
visits home after their stints of working in the City of Gold [Johannesburg].

Looking more deeply into the bags’ contents, Gibson and Pater have found
that the containers evoke profound sentiments:

this seemingly basic item begins to represent emotional content […] the
association of the return of a father from a long working stay in the big city;
the pride a parent feels having returned home from working in a faraway
place bearing vital consumable items: mielie meal, sugar and, if all has gone
well, perhaps a few items of luxury.

In addition to their emotional significance, China bags can stand in for the
ironies of local consumption practices within a global economy:

Thanks to its low price the China bag has, in its own way, colonized most
continents of the globe. Ironically, thousands of subsistence traders in Africa
carry the very goods in those bags that indirectly undermine any possibility
of the growth of a stable manufacturing sector in this continent’s economies.
History, Art, and Plastic Bags 173

Fashioning modernity in South Africa

Strangelove’s animations of China bags, in their many manifestations, both
illustrate and extend theorizations of the traffic in commodities and identities
across cultures. Appadurai’s analysis of the cultures of globalization addresses
the diffusion of commodities and cultural practices, noting that these potential
agents of homogenization may paradoxically enhance cultural differentiation:
“globalization itself is a deeply historical, uneven, and even localizing process”
(Appadurai 1996: 17).8 He describes clothing as one such localizing commodity.
Indeed, clothing is exceptionally nuanced, mobile, and accessible—amenable
to the subtleties of shifting identities. Far from homogenizing, Strangelove’s
intervention into the circulation of an emblematically global commodity draws
out distinctively local meanings.
Jean Comaroff’s assessment of dress as a tool for conversion, colonization,
and resistance in nineteenth-century South Africa offers a historical instance
of this localizing process, as non-local clothing forms were transformed into
markers of local identities. Using the example of a British missionary society
among Southern Tswana communities, Comaroff’s analysis exposes the ironies
and innovations of consumption. She describes the unintended outcomes of
missionary efforts to deploy clothing as a means of reforming the “heathen”
Tswana. The re-imagined meanings of global commodities produced new
manifestations of “traditional” culture. Comaroff explores how imported garment
styles, instead of bringing the Tswana closer to European culture, were
combined with indigenous elements to create “rural folk dress” that marked
Tswana women’s identities. Ironically, she notes, “significant features of this style
would endure for decades—or rather, be actively reproduced as “tradition””
(Comaroff 1996: 37). Fashion, fueled by the introduction of new forms, was an
ideal tool for the Tswana to reinforce a sense of ethnic identity that had been
destabilized by missionary pressures, for fashion “epitomizes the power of the
commodity to encompass the self” (Comaroff 1996: 21).
The textile known as shweshwe or isishweshwe offers another South African
example of this declaration of local identities through imported forms, implicitly
pushing back against homogenization. This cloth has become an icon of South
African identity despite its history as an imported form (Leeb du Toit 2005).
Isishweshwe is characterized by small, neatly ordered geometric patterns, and
a limited color palette of blue, brown, occasionally red, maroon, or brown. The
cloth was originally made using indigo dye, but since the late nineteenth century,
it has been made using a synthetic form of indigo developed in Germany.
In South Africa, its status as imported (arriving with German settlers in the
nineteenth century) long precluded its inclusion in conventional conceptions of
“authentic” South African attire.
174 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Since the late 1990s, however, isishweshwe has become a symbol of national
identity. South African manufacturer Da Gama Textiles is the only producer
globally still using the nineteenth-century process associated with “authentic”
isishweshwe: copper rollers etched with patterns that are used to apply an acid
solution to blue dyed cotton percale, bleaching out white patterns. Numerous
South African fashion designers have made use of the textile, including Amanda
Laird Cherry, Bongiwe Walaza, David West, and Ephymol. In the words of one
young design student, “shweshwe is the celebration of a cultural heritage that
embraces the new” (Counihan 2005: 63). Or, as cultural critic Adam Levin notes,
the cloth has been transformed from the attire of matrons who have little access
to fashion into the garb of choice for trend-setters: “Shwe-shwe fabric—once
the domain of overweight aunties—is now a favorite of young black and white
women” (Levin 2005: 173).
Like the Tswana dress analyzed by Comaroff, and the isishweshwe that
has been adapted to youth markets, Strangelove’s use of China bags vividly
enacts Gell’s analysis of consumption across cultures. Gell documents how
the Muria of India create cultural meanings for objects, transforming them
from uninflected goods into symbolic forms that articulate their own identities:
“What distinguishes consumption from exchange is not that consumption has a
psychological dimension that exchange lacks, but that consumption involves the
incorporation of the consumed item into the personal and social identity of the
consumer” (Gell 1986: 112). Those forms that are consumed become elements
of “personalia,” the complex of attributes by which people are located within
social networks (Gell 1986: 113).
That some commodities are imbued with meanings as part of their
consumption, signifying relationships and histories, is not the most provocative
aspect of Gell’s analysis. The commodities in question, which are central to
Muria personalia, have non-local origins. The Muria employ non-local commod-
ities, including most notably clothing and jewelry, as markers of local identity.
Further, Gell notes that “the Muria have imposed their own set of social evalu-
ations on them [non-Muria prestige goods], which are quite distinct from the
ones operative among the groups with whom these goods originated” (Gell
1986: 121).
This conception of commodities as elements of personal identities, absorbed
from outside one’s self as well as outside one’s culture, is dramatized and
expanded by Strangelove’s China bags. The translation of bags into clothing,
shown on runways or worn for performances, makes them into personalia—
elements of personal identity—and further into personalities themselves. In the
Taxi Rank performance, Strangelove draws the China bag deeper still into social
and individual identities by animating the forms, literally making commodities
into social actors.
History, Art, and Plastic Bags 175

China bags: local everywhere, global at

home
The container at the center of these explorations of identities and consumption,
the China bag, is made of polypropylene fibers, woven into a fabric that is both
light and strong, as well as inexpensive. While the bags appear in many colors
and patterns, the most common style is red, blue, and white plaid. The bags
may also be adorned with woven or printed images and patterns. My recent
observations in a random assortment of locations—Mali, Peru, South Africa,
France, Niger, and the United States—indicates that the most common China
bag motifs include names of cities and countries, along with iconic images from
those locations (Eiffel Tower, London Bridge), cartoon characters, and animals.
The bags are made in a variety of sizes, but always in the same rectangular
shape, with no interior pockets or dividers, two simple, strap-like handles, and a
zipper closure. Their lack of structure makes the bags extremely versatile—they
conform to the shape of whatever they contain, and when partially full they can
be wedged into corners in the backs or on the tops of taxis and buses (Klopper
2010). When not in use, they can be neatly folded flat, the size of a newspaper.

Figure 8.3 China Bags and other products for sale, Bamako, Mali, 2008. Photograph
by the author.
176 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Their origins are obscure—their omnipresence makes tracing their moment of

inception exceptionally difficult. What matters most is that they are everywhere,
and that they are useful in every context.
Eminently practical, these containers seem to leave little room for symbolic
or emotional baggage, for irony or humor. In markets, bus stations, and airports
the world over—indeed, nearly anywhere people and goods converge—China
bags can be found, filled with recent purchases, goods for sale, all sorts of
possessions on the move. The China bag’s global circulation and its role in
contemporary South Africa make it a window onto the ways in which commod-
ities and globalization have been theorized as elements of modernity in Africa.
Because it is defined by change from what has come before, fashion is inextri-
cably connected to chronology. Even when clothing trends reach into the past
for sources of inspiration, their focus on innovation gives the past “the scent of
the modern” (Benjamin 1999: 252). A constant drive to leave the present behind
binds fashion to a constantly changing modernity. Strangelove’s China bags play
with this expectation of modernity, implicitly challenging its assumptions.
Strangelove’s work is elucidated by Ferguson’s critique of models of “alter-
native,” or “multiple” modernities, used (primarily in academic circles) to describe
contemporary non-Western cultures. He asserts “the alternative-modernity
formulation misses what may be most important about the current mutation in
the meaning of ‘modernity’ for Africans” (Ferguson 2006: 185). Theoretically,
modernity replaces tradition; it is marked by cultural practices that share more
with other “modern” societies than with long-standing local practices. But this
is not the lived expectation of modernity in much of Africa. Instead, “modernity”
means economic and personal security, access to funds, goods, and services
that ensure a good life. Ferguson describes the irony of underdevelopment in
many African communities that are increasingly marginalized by global markets.
For people whose standard of living is declining, who are denied access to the
trappings of modernity, aware of yet experiencing only vicariously its comforts
and privileges, the modern may be a remembered past rather than a promised
future. Ferguson describes the attitudes of Zambian mineworkers: “We used
to be modern—or, at least, well on our way—but now we’ve been denied that
opportunity” (Ferguson 2006: 186). Jean and John Comaroff encountered a
similar perception in South Africa, where a Tswana farmer described modernity
as a status that is nearly but never quite achieved: “things modern […] seem
always to be in the next village” (Comaroff and Comaroff 1993: xii).
The China bag is a distinctively modern product, yet it emerges out of a
modernity that might also be past, or just out of reach. It is perfectly designed
for this failed modernity. Its production and its use emblematize the alienation
of industrialization, one marker of modernity. The name of the bag signals this
distant manufacture, and it calls to mind the changing meanings of China in
Africa today. China is neither the remote, exotic “Other” nor the Communist
History, Art, and Plastic Bags 177

behemoth that used to represent a strategic alternative to South Africa’s alliance

with the Soviet Union (Taylor 2000). Instead, China is now a dominant player in
the same global capitalist arenas as other market economies. According to a
recent analysis of South Africa’s clothing economy by the Trade Law Centre for
Southern Africa, “The overwhelming features of clothing imports […] into South
Africa since 1996 has been the dramatic increase in these imports and the
dominance of China in these imports” (Sandrey and Fundira 2008). The tensions
surrounding China’s threat to domestic textile and fashion markets is apparent
even to the casual observer. During a visit to Durban, in the upscale Gateway
Mall, I visited a Young Designers Emporium, a chain of stores that feature
garments by young South African designers. In the window, a large and brightly
colored sign proclaimed: “Cheaper than China […] 100% South African.” In
her presentation at a business seminar, during the 2005 South African Fashion
Week, fashion consultant Rhona Carter decried China’s dominance, calling it a
“monster” that would undersell and out-compete national manufacturers (Carter
2005). The China bag represents this dominance.
The bags’ modernity is further dramatized by their medium: they are made
of a substance that is entirely disconnected from the natural world, made of
“polymers” rather than any recognizable raw materials. Yet, despite its global
reach and synthetic materials, in many ways the bag is remarkably low tech.
The polypropylene of which it is made can be transformed into any shape, any
texture. In most of its uses, polypropylene is molded or extruded; the weaving
technique used to create China bags seems positively quaint, an anachronistic
reference to the limitations imposed by conventional textile production. The
design of the bags is also dramatically low tech—little more than a box with
handles, all right angles with no additional pockets or stylistic embellishments.
As noted earlier, China bags are most commonly striped or plaid, in red,
white, and blue, or other primary colors. These unremarkable abstract motifs
offer little fodder for interpretation. The bags adorned with place names, such
as Paris and New York, in contrast, may bear symbolic weight in the many
of the economies where China bags circulate. They seem to underscore the
failure of the modern in the places where many Africans live. Their romantic
representations of these world cities and sites contrast dramatically with their
environments, in crowded markets, strapped to the tops of buses and informal
taxis. Strangelove’s use of these humble, utilitarian containers in the rarified
field of fashion design creates a similar frisson, drawing attention to the cultural
associations borne by this inconspicuous object.
178 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Fashion: identity and industry in South

Africa
“Every 1 million rands of sale in the clothing sector creates 11 jobs compared
with five jobs in gold mining for the same amount of sales.”
—Etienne Vick, organizer of the 2008 SA Clothing and Textile Workers’
Union.9

The medium that lies at the heart of Strangelove’s production—fashion—is a

particularly rich field of creativity in South Africa, and one with broad implications
in light of the country’s history. Labor organizer Etienne Vick’s comparison of job
production in the gold mining and the clothing industries, asserting that clothing
is a more effective engine for employment, brings together two realms in which
the differential treatment of races was vividly enacted under Apartheid. Both
also represent sites of control over indigenous bodies. The need for a readily
controllable labor force for the gold mines around which Johannesburg was
founded in the late nineteenth century drove many of the early manifestations of
Apartheid. Mbembe describes this system of embodied racism: “In relation to
blacks, both the techniques of power and profit were, ever since the founding
of Johannesburg, centered on the body: the individual body of the migrant
worker and the racial body of the populace” (Mbembe 2008: 52). While mining
controlled bodies in order to extract value from the land, dress offered a means
of shaping identities to enforce or resist social control.10 Personal identity—
primarily racial but also ethnic and regional identity—was the central determining
factor in the system that developed out of this drive to control the lives and labor
of South Africans before and during the Apartheid period (1948–1994).
In a reflection of this history, bodies and the clothing that adorn bodies have
been central preoccupations for South African creative expression in the years
since the end of Apartheid. In her discussion of the prominence of the body as
subject matter in contemporary South African studio art, van der Watt notes:
“For it is on the body more often than not that identity seems to converge
[…] often the visible part of identity, such as race, is taken to stand in for the
whole…” (Van der Watt 2004: 49). Klopper’s analysis of clothing and politics
in the post-Apartheid era demonstrates that the clothed body has been a key
site for the negotiation of complex new identities: “New and reviewed visions of
fashionableness have played a central role in these recent attempts to develop a
post-Apartheid identity, in part because dress provides unlimited possibilities for
the renegotiation and performance of notions of self” (Klopper 2000: 216). That
bodies and the clothing that adorns them have become key elements of the
cultural symbolism in South Africa should not be surprising, given the country’s
recent legacy of oppression. In light of this history, Strangelove’s use of clothing
History, Art, and Plastic Bags 179

as their medium of expression adds another layer to their engagement with the
legacy of South Africa’s past.

May 2008: another connotation of China

bags
In the summer of 2008, Strangelove’s adoption of China bags as an icon
of South Africa’s cultures of migration, globalization, and the struggle to get
by collided with another, tragic aspect of the bags’ significance. The bags’
association with migration took an ominous turn that summer, as economic
disintegration in South Africa’s northern neighbor Zimbabwe sent desperate
refugees fleeing from poverty and near-starvation across the border into South
Africa. The association of plastic bags with migration and dislocation is evoked
in the names by which they are known for some South Africans: Mashangani11
and khonza ekhaya. Khonza Ekhaya, a Zulu term for the bags, literally means
“goodbye at home,” a reference to the expectation that people who leave home
with a packed bag are leaving forever (Klopper 2010).
Mashangani refers to the Shangani or Shangaan people, from Tsonga-
speaking communities in the northeast of South Africa, as well as in Mozambique
and Zimbabwe. The term also signifies non-local identity, used in reference to
people of Zimbabwean and Mozambican origins, often carrying negative conno-
tations (Ashforth 1998).12 The bag is associated with their migration into South
Africa from homes across the border in search of employment and goods. In the
fraught environment of contemporary South African identity politics, immigrants—
specifically immigrants from other African countries—are blamed for “stealing”
jobs from South Africans.13 A range of other social ills are attributed to those
identified as foreigners, as Simone notes in his discussion of Johannesburg: “a
large measure of xenophobia prevails, where foreign Africans are blamed for
an overcrowded informal trading sector, the growth of the narcotics trade, and
the general deterioration of the inner city” (Simone 2000: 434). In the summer
of 2008, as Zimbabwe continued its tragic descent into chaos, the influx of
Zimbabwean migrants became the central element in an explosion of xenophobic
violence across South Africa. According to a May 2008 article on the events in the
Mail and Guardian, more than sixty people were killed and thousands displaced;
government sources estimated the number of people displaced by the violence
at 30,000, while some NGOs placed the number at 100,000.14
The news was filled with stories of brutal beatings, burning of houses, and
random interrogations of Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, and others who had
lived in South Africa for decades but whose names indicated roots elsewhere.
News photographs of refugees fleeing the country vividly illustrate the desperate
180 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

conditions these people faced. China bags appeared repeatedly in the scenes at
border crossings and in the churches and other locations where Zimbabweans
sought refuge, underscoring the omnipresence of these plastic bags, which were
pressed into service as beds for some. I was in South Africa at the time, and my
discussions about fashion were tinged with the bewilderment and repulsion so
many South Africans felt at the sight of this ethnic violence, a horrible echo of
the Apartheid era. For Strangelove, two white South African artists whose own
biographies include immigration from Poland and Italy, the violence spawned
doubt about the future of the country, and thoughts of departure. For them, the
China bag has, unfortunately, still more layers of meaning now, as a symbol of
violence, fear, and the failure of global markets.

Coda: China bags in Chinatown

This analysis of an ostensibly unremarkable commodity’s rich symbolic potential
ends with a brief introduction to further twists in the China bag’s biography,
absorbing new meanings in markets that are worlds away from the struggles
of South Africa’s migrants and immigrants. In 2006 and 2007, Jack Spade
(the men’s line of the well-known bag designer Kate Spade) and Louis Vuitton
each created high fashion versions of the China bag. For Jack Spade, the bag
and associated accessories were marketed as “The Chinatown Collection,” a
reference not to the bags’ country of origin, but to Chinatown in New York. This
was an ironic spin on the phenomenon of counterfeit designer bags, associated
with the shops in Chinatown that skirt the law to sell Gucci, Louis Vuitton,
Kate Spade, and other brands’ knock-offs. A year after the Jack Spade bags,
Louis Vuitton produced a “street bag” that appears to be indistinguishable from
cheap China bags—the same size, shape, standard red, white, and blue-plaid
pattern. These bags, however, are made of leather rather than plastic, and they
are embossed with a large Louis Vuitton logo. The China bag reproduction
phenomenon inspired one observer of fashion and counterfeit designer bags to
summarize the absurdity of this strange fashion loop:

Any day now, if it hasn”t happened already, I expect copies of the Louis
Vuitton Street bag to turn up in Manila’s [or New York’s] bazaars, transported
in the same plastic shopping bags it stylishly parodies. The luxury house rips
off the counterfeiters, who then rip off the luxury rip-off. At which point we
wander into the realm of meta-fashion. (Zafra 2007).

Strangelove’s China bag garments might be viewed as ironic meta-fashions,

toying with the lowbrow associations of their material. But in South Africa today,
the China bag is inextricably knitted into the struggle to get by—they are the
History, Art, and Plastic Bags 181

luggage used by migrants who seek a livelihood yet risk becoming targets
of others’ frustration; the containers for goods whose acquisition marks the
success of a returning family member; the products of distant manufacturers
whose cheap goods put South Africans out of work. These bags are neutral
sounding boards, sensitive to the reverberations of the lives around them, a
powerful medium for art, fashion, and social commentary.

Notes
 1 Many thanks to Carlo Gibson and Ziemek Pater for their time, good humor, and
wonderful work. I thoroughly enjoyed all of our conversations, in South Africa and
the United States.
 2 Carlo Gibson continues to direct the Strangelove brand, producing clothing and
collaborating on a range of art-related projects. Ziemek Pater is working in other
aspects of the fashion industry.
 3 The event was conceptualized in response to an invitation from the French Institute
of South Africa, the French embassy’s cultural agency, to participate in events
surrounding Bastille Day. Ziemek Pater, interview by the author via email, July 27,
2009.
 4 The screen was made of sheets of pattern-making paper, the puppets of
cardboard, and lights were inexpensive lanterns mounted onto long, handheld
poles. Carlo Gibson and Ziemek Pater, interview by the author, Johannesburg, July
29, 2005.
 5 Erlmann speculates that gumboot dancing originated among stevedores on the
docks of Durban; Gillespie locates the origins of the practices in the mining camps
of the Johannesburg region.
 6 The deficiencies in South Africa’s past national HIV/AIDS policies, including most
notably former president Thabo Mbeki’s denial of a causative link between HIV
and AIDS, have been much discussed and deservedly condemned. Safe sex was,
however, endorsed and promoted by governmental policies during the Mbeki era,
and increased condom distribution has been assessed as one positive element of
HIV/AIDS policies of the period. See, for instance, Mbali 2003: 315.
 7 The event, called a Style War, was sponsored by the Tropika fruit juice company.
 8 Of clothing, Appadurai notes: “The globalization of culture is not the same as its
homogenization, but globalization involves the use of a variety of instruments of
homogenization (armaments, advertising techniques, language hegemonies, and
clothing styles) that are absorbed into local political and cultural economies.” (42)
 9 “Fashion Unions Take to the Street,” Design Indaba 3rd Quarter (2008), 5.
10 Nelson Mandela’s strategic use of clothing exemplifies the power of dress as a
means of resistance. In his autobiography, Mandela described his choice of attire for
his first court appearance in the trial that sent him to Robben Island: “I entered the
court that Monday wearing a traditional Xhosa leopard-skin kaross [cloak] instead of
a suit and tie […] I had chosen traditional dress to emphasize the symbolism that I
182 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

was a black African walking into a white man’s court. I was literally carrying on my
back the history, culture and heritage of my people” (Mandela 1995: 384–5).
11 Gibson and Pater had heard this name used for the bag, and I have also found in
use on some South African blogs. I have located no published documentation of
the term.
12 In his investigation of spiritual belief and social anxiety in Soweto, Ashforth
elucidates an informant’s reference to Mashangani, noting that the term refers to
“the most despized ethnic group in South Africa concentrated on the border with
Mozambique and consisting of large numbers of immigrants to South Africa from
that country” (Ashforth 1998: 50).
13 Neocosmos convincingly argues that while poverty and high unemployment may
partially explain this xenophobic tendency, one must also look to South Africa’s
public policy on immigration, to discourses on national identity, and to media
coverage of immigration-related issues as sources of prejudice and violence.
(Neocosmos 2008: 586–94).
14 “Toll from xenophobic attacks rises,” Mail and Guardian (May 31, 2008). http://
www.mg.co.za/article/2008-05-31-toll-from-xenophobic-attacks-rises (accessed
20 December 2010).

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 9
CONSTRUCTING
FASHIONABLE DRESS AND
IDENTITY IN BHUTAN1
EMMA DICK

Introduction
While working as Head of Fashion in LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore
(2007–10), I was approached by Singapore International Foundation (SIF) to act
as a Specialist Volunteer Overseas to co-develop a tailoring curriculum for the
Ministry of Labour and Human Resources in Bhutan, in an international devel-
opment project funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
in 2008–9. In this chapter, I present a critical reflection on our curriculum and
broadly situate the role of international development projects focused on textiles
and dress within discourses of globalization. I examine how the interaction
with non-governmental and inter-governmental agencies may combine with
ideas about dress and identity within the recipient country. I wish to personify
the processes through which these “hybrid” identities are constructed, both
physically and metaphorically, through ideas about fashionable dress present
in garments and online discussions about them to challenge simplistic essen-
tialist thinking about the ways in which “fashion” is adopted by a “non-Western”
culture.
As a small developing nation, Bhutan may seem an unlikely location to situate
a discussion of fashionable dress and identity. There exists a popular consensus
that fashion is a modern cultural practice that evolved through the emergence of
capitalism and consumer culture and exists in modern cities in the “developed”
world. Scholarship offers a variety of opinions. Craik (2009: 19–20) suggests
that:
186 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

There is a powerful perception and myth that non-Western cultures have

stable and unchanging clothing codes, perhaps driven by the synchronic
approach to ethnographic case studies and an apparent desire to cleave
discernable differences in taxonomy between artificial binary categories of
“us” and “them.”

Such binary categories are made even more emphatic in the case of “devel-
oping” countries, variously orientalized as “exotic,” “ethnic,” or “wild” backdrops
for photo shoots, and as open sources of “authentic” inspiration for designers in
the international fashion press. References to Bhutan in American Vogue assert
a mythical association with Shangri-La, an imagined utopia presented by James
Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon, which describes a pristine medieval Buddhist
culture, somewhere in the high Himalayas. The Vogue discourse about Bhutan
is evident from the 1960s onward, as the country was beginning to engage
actively in international socio-political networks. Bhutan is described as “one
of the magic words […] organized around castle-strongholds (like mediaeval
Scotland)” (Vogue, June 1963), ruled by “a charming family from a small,
imperilled kingdom in the Himalayas” [whose name translates as] “Fearless
Thunderbolt, Master of Cosmic Power” (Vogue, July 1967). The narrative
continues, practically unchanged, to the present. In 2005, U.S. designer Jane
Mayle described Bhutan as a “mythical, magical land almost untouched by
the modern world” (Vogue, June 2005). Condé Nast Traveller magazine, in
October 2008, lavished an eight-page editorial on Bhutan entitled, “Flying
Tiger, Thundering Dragon,” featuring images of Asian supermodel Ling Tan,
juxtaposed beside masked Buddhist dancers, a prayer wheel, an archer, and
Buddhist monks. These fashion editorials echo exactly the phenomena Niessen,
Jones, and Leskowich (2003: 18) suggest:

Contemporary ways of knowing and representing the Oriental Other as

timeless, exotic, untouched, dangerous, passive, inscrutable, or oppressed
are the legacies of earlier Orientalist frameworks developed to understand
and subjugate Asia.

The enduring Condé Nast discourse on Bhutan acts as a driving force

to impel the fashionistas of the world to make pilgrimage and transform the
Shangri-La myth into reality. Designer Derek Lam holidayed in Bhutan in 2011.
Polymath businessman Sir David Tang, founder of Shanghai Tang, reportedly
celebrated his fiftieth birthday there in 2004. Christina Ong, founder of worldwide
fashion distributor Club 21 owns a luxury hotel there. For Autumn/Winter
2012, Proenza Schouler captured the “magical beauty of Bhutan,” along with
a self-confessed pastiche of “everything Asian” (i-D online, 2012). Diane von
Furstenberg and Christian Louboutin traveled to Bhutan in May 2012 to stock
Constructing Fashionable Dress and Identity in Bhutan 187

up on items, including an embroidered vest for Louboutin to wear to the Met

Ball. Diane’s Diary conveys a well-meaning, yet rather patronizing rhetoric of the
“Other,” as she describes meeting the Bhutanese Royal Family:

It is like being in a fairy tale. They look and behave like a fairy tale King and
Queen. They are so incredibly nice, simple and caring about their lovely
Kingdom (von Furstenberg, 2012).

Due to the country’s physical inaccessibility in the high Himalayas, accessed

by only the national airline, Drukair, and a deliberate low-impact, high-yield
tourism policy, which sets a minimum daily cost for tourists of US $200,
Bhutan manages to embody the Shangri-La myth, and attains a level of cultural
distinction by association with the rich and successful who can afford to
holiday there.
However, this imagined Shangri-La land is in sharp contrast to the economic
daily reality of Bhutan, termed one of the world’s smallest and least developed
economies by OECD, eligible for official development assistance, and tabulated
by The World Bank to have an average annual gross national income per capita
of US $2,370 (World Bank, 2014). Bartering for basic foodstuffs is practiced,
and the average life expectancy is calculated within the lowest 30 percent of
the world. Money played virtually no role in Bhutan until the 1960s, when tax

Figure 9.1 Mount Everest’s summit seen from above the clouds through the window of
a Drukair flight to Bhutan, June 2009. Photograph by the author.
188 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

could still be paid in the form of textiles (Pommaret, 1994: 174). Little private
enterprise exists, and employment opportunities are precarious, especially for
the burgeoning young population. The median age of the country is twenty-five
years (CIA, 2012). Public concern is expressed in the national press about the
dangers of drug abuse and the violence simmering among a disaffected youth,
who have limited future prospects locally, but are now connected to images of
the material wealth and opportunity of the “outside” world, since television was
introduced to the country in 1999, to broadcast the fourth King’s silver jubilee.
It is against this backdrop of economic uncertainty that our tailoring curriculum
was developed, to provide a possible career path and creative opportunities
for future generations. Developing nations such as Bhutan may adopt certain
elements of the “historically and geographically specific system of dress” (i.e.
“Western”) that Entwistle (2000) identifies, during encounters with interna-
tional development agencies and individuals. This is how the hybrid identities,
theorized by Appadurai (1990), begin to emerge in the discussion of globali-
zation. Current Anglophone-centric scholarship offers a range of definitions for
theorizing “fashion,” which broadly agree on its ephemerality; its fundamental
need for continual changing of styles; and its geographical, historical, and
cultural locus of power in the post-industrial cities of Paris, London, New York,
and their descendants in the second- and third-tier global network of cities now
staging “Fashion Weeks” as a powerful indicator of national economic, cultural,
and creative success.
I do not believe that it is particularly meaningful to try to enforce one universal
definition of “fashion,” and, from the evidence presented by Bhutan, I would
suggest that multiple world fashion “systems” exist in chaotic and variously
changing relationships to one another (see, for example, Craik, 1993; Riello
and McNeil, 2010; Kaiser, 2011). By looking at the production of garments in
Bhutan, through the example of our curriculum, and the production of ideas
about what constitutes fashionable identity by a local Facebook group called
Bhutan Street Fashion, I offer, here, a preliminary suggestion of how people
within Bhutan actively engage with, and construct, their own ideas about
fashionable dress and identity.

Driglam namzha: a national dress code

The historical and cultural context of dress in Bhutan is framed by the existence
of a Buddhist monastic dress code, following models established in the seven-
teenth century, which since 1989 has been fairly rigorously applied as mandatory
in civil society. Driglam namzha is an important example to emphasize that what
constitutes “traditional” dress is hardly traditional, authentic, or static, but in this
Constructing Fashionable Dress and Identity in Bhutan 189

case has been adopted for very particular political and social impact. Bhutan was
never colonized, thus, the internal socio-political, cultural, and economic struc-
tures evolved without undue external influence. The insistence on strict codes of
public behavior and dress forms part of a conscious agenda of nation building by
the Royal Government of Bhutan, to avoid any threat of internal political fragmen-
tation into different factions based along ethnic lines, which, it was feared, could
cause Bhutan to become subsumed into its neighboring Hindu states, as had
happened to Sikkim, in 1975. The official dress code is based on the traditional
dress of the Ngalop ethnic group, the dominant social and religious group within
Bhutan, said to descend from the earliest bearers of Tibetan Buddhism into
the country in the ninth century CE. The national dress code, rigorously applied
since 1989, tightly regulates public attire at all official sites, but does not apply
to Hindu priests or foreigners, an exception which, in itself, promotes potentially
problematic ideas about national and ethnic identity within an otherwise relatively
non-hierarchical society (Pommaret, 1994: 173). Shortly after the institution of
the strict dress code in 1989, an estimated 80,000 Hindu Lhotshampas of Nepali
origin from the south of Bhutan fled as refugees from Bhutan, not wishing to be
assimilated into the dominant ethnic-political group.
The national dress for men, gho, is the same garment as worn by most Tibetan
males, but is hitched up to the knees to give greater freedom of movement. The
word gho literally means “garment,” while the Tibetan equivalent item of dress
is called chuba. The togo is a shirt with long white cuffs worn underneath the
gho, the term borrowed from an item of monastic dress. In addition to the gho,
the national dress code requires men on official business to wear a kabney, a
large scarf of a specified color, according to their rank in civil or religious society.
This is wrapped around the body from the left shoulder to the right hip. A red
kabney indicates male members of the royal family or higher-ranked officials in
the civil service. White is the color worn by ordinary citizens, and saffron yellow
may be worn only by the King and the chief abbot, or Je Khenpo. As Bhutan is
one of the world’s youngest multi-party democracies, modern color codes have
been created for kabneys worn by members of the new National Assembly and
National Council, and established by the constitution in 2008 (Bhutan Observer,
2011). The wearing of kabney is said to have begun in the time of Gautama
Buddha, and the exchanging of scarves with all official communication was
observed by the few Europeans who visited Bhutan in the eighteenth century
on diplomatic and trade missions, such as George Bogle, who visited Bhutan on
behalf of the East India Company, in 1774, and Captain Samuel Turner, in 1783
(Turner, 1800; Stewart, 2009; Teltscher, 2003).
For women, national dress consists of a kira, a rectangle of cloth, usually
about three meters in length of hand-woven textile, which is wrapped around
the body, folded into a wide pleat in the front, fastened at the shoulders with
brooches, called tinkhup, or koma, and secured with a tight narrow cloth,
190 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

or kera, wrapped around the waist. The kira is worn on top of a loose long-
sleeved Tibetan-style blouse, or wangu, and the look is completed with a short
wide-sleeved jacket, or tego. The jacket sleeves are aligned with the blouse
sleeves and folded back with them into cuffs worn a little above the wrist. A
shoulder cloth, or rachu, is worn draped across the left shoulder (Myers and
Bean, 1994).
In private, Bhutanese people often wear “Western-style” clothing, of “pants”
and “shirts,” but anyone engaged in public life must abide by driglam namzha.
This means all civil servants, students, people engaged in the tourism industry, or
those who represent Bhutan officially, in any context, must follow these rules and
regulations, even though they are perhaps inevitably at odds with the everyday
dress practices of some Bhutanese, some of whom prefer Western dress:

I like wearing my tracksuit or my jeans. But I know I will get stopped by the
police […] then I just say that I am on my way to play football. They can’t fine
me since they can’t prove I am not (Whitecross, 2009: 67).

Fines enforced for breaking the drighlam namzha amount to approximately

three days’ wages for the average Bhutanese, so the incentive to dress within
the law is quite strong. The young Bhutanese people whom I interviewed seem
to have no problem in following drighlam namzha, where required, and dressing
in “pants and shirts” when off-duty. The imposition of conformity through dress
and appearance, propagated through the newly codified Dzongka national
language section of Kuensel, the state newspaper, also diminishes the potential
applicability of dominant “Western” theories about fashion to accurately describe
the current practices of everyday dress in Bhutan. The two contexts of “official”
and “off-duty” allowed the Bhutanese to hold both sets of values in their mind
simultaneously, to exhibit a dual-consciousness of dress.
A definition often quoted for the term “fashion” is from Joanne Entwistle
(2000), who determines it as, “a system of dress found in societies where social
mobility is possible.” This concept does not correlate with Bhutanese ideas
of state sovereignty, which are fundamentally different to those presented by
European history. Furthermore, fashion is overwhelmingly construed as a materi-
alistic and superficial field of practice, which seems difficult to reconcile with the
non-materialistic philosophy of Buddhist culture. Changes in style may happen
more subtly and at a slower rate in Bhutan than in a highly developed economy,
but an alternative system of social identification through dress and appearance,
governed by its own logic of temporality and location is visible in the traditional
dress practices of people throughout Bhutan and exists alongside a range of
influences from encounters with the development agencies, celebrities, tourists,
and media influences present in the capital city, Thimpu, and other urban
centers throughout the country.
Constructing Fashionable Dress and Identity in Bhutan 191

The national press regulates and mediates local concerns about how to
interpret driglam namzha correctly (see, for example, Yeshi, 2008) alongside an
emergent discourse of nostalgia for the loss of authentic national dress practices
as older styles of garments become superseded by modern hybrid garments
with stitched elements to emulate the appearance of wrapped and folded cloth,
and modern closures and fastenings adopted for reasons of practical wearability:

Today, it is very rare to see Bhutanese women wearing the complete National
Dress. With the hook, half-kira and the jacket-tego, kera and wangu may
soon also be heading for the museum like the thinkhab (BBS, 2007).

Parallel to this narrative of nostalgia and cultural loss, reports appear in

the same newspapers encouraging readers to wear stiletto gladiator sandals
with their kira, adopt Korean style spectacles, and tweed jackets that emulate
characters in the Twilight movie franchise, and how to style cardigans, imported
from Bangladesh. The seeming contradictions of change and continuity,
tradition, and modernity are encapsulated by the dual consciousness of dress.
Alongside the Royal Family, who are almost universally admired within Bhutan
as equitable forward-thinking bearers of modernity, one of the most revered
and recognisable figures actively shaping Bhutan’s contemporary culture on
the domestic and international scene is the incarnate lama and movie producer
Khyentse Norbu, also known as Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rimpoche, who
offers a view that supports Entwistle’s belief that social mobility and fashion
are in some way connected. He clearly understands the politics of fashionable
dress and the need to equate ideas of modernity with those of “traditional”
culture, to give it currency among the youthful population of Bhutan. He advises
that Bhutanese people should be looking to practice elements of the ancient
culture in ways that are relevant, vibrant, alive, dynamic, inspiring, modern, and
even “fashionable” to combat increasing problems arising during the transition
through elements of development, modernity, and increased urbanization. One
specific example which he offers is to “eliminate clothing items that embody
class distinctions, such as scarves and robes showing rank” (Walcott, 2011:
257). One of the most respected Buddhist masters in the world is also encour-
aging a paradigm shift in the way that Bhutanese culture and society is visibly
embodied through the dress code. He understands and believes that the right
to enjoy a culture is not “frozen” at some point in times past, when culture was
supposedly “pure,” or “traditional.”
Multiple parallel examples exist worldwide which illustrate similar tensions in
the process of economic and social development in the pursuit of modernity,
a result of anachronistic notions of the “authenticity” of the culture (see, for
example, Gilbert, 2010: 38). Choosing which aspects of traditional culture to
keep, which to discard, and which to update in what ways, is an extremely
192 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

problematic area for governmental authorities and inter-governmental agencies

to decide. Such evolution is by nature an ongoing, fluid, contradictive, and
never-ending process. Time-limited policy-driven grant-funded development
programs based on deliverables might interfere with cultural evolution that would
otherwise take years to emerge.
Such anachronistic notions of “authenticity” are significant in the analysis of
the driglam namzha and the discourse of cultural loss expressed by the national
press. This is where I begin to situate my own contribution to the construction
of ideas about fashionable dress and identity in Bhutan, through my participation
in the co-development of a tailoring curriculum for Chumey Vocational Training
Institute in Bumthang, Central Bhutan.

The construction of hybrid dress styles:

tailoring curriculum for Chumey Vocational
Training Institute, Bumthang, Bhutan
The demand for a curriculum directly addressing the perceived skills gap in
tailoring in Bhutan had emerged through a series of events implied in the
process of nation-building through dress code and appearance. A national
design competition coordinated by UNDP Bhutan to design and manufacture
uniforms for the Drukair female cabin crew (UNDP, 2007: 16) had highlighted
the difficulties of manufacturing standardized garments in Bhutan. The wish
to supply uniforms for the military and police out of local manufacture, rather
than outsourcing production to India, and the growing demand for quality items
of national dress to clothe the civil service, contributed to the formulation of a
development project to request capacity building training in garment design
and manufacture through UNDP in Bhutan. Singapore International Foundation
responded to the call for proposals and identified LASALLE College of the
Arts Singapore as the appropriate academic partner to provide expertise in
curriculum development and technical skills training in tailoring. Regional
geographies of development may be influenced by a number of personal and
professional networks, with Bangkok and Singapore viewed as particularly
powerful hubs of global aka “Western” expertise and technological innovation
within the South East Asia region.
The scope and framework of the curriculum was established by the Dean
of Design in a preliminary needs assessment exercise in 2008. In that year and
2009, my colleague, Peck Leng Tan, and myself made a series of missions to
Bhutan to develop content, and deliver a structured vocational curriculum and
a training program for those who would go on to become the trainers in the
final iteration of the Tailoring Program at Chumey Vocational Training Institute.
Constructing Fashionable Dress and Identity in Bhutan 193

The mode of delivery was based on the “Training of Trainers” facilitation model,
designed to produce a sustainable cascade of knowledge, learned through
active participation, which can be passed onto the next cohort of trainees. This
approach is used widely throughout the development sector, and it is thought
that skills learned through such methods survive long after the initial trainer has
delivered the first iteration of the course, and moved on.
Through a series of discussions with a range of stakeholders from Chumey
Vocational Training Institute, private tailors already established in Bhutan,
the Ministry of Labour and Human Resources, UNDP Bhutan, Singapore
International Foundation, and many other agents of development whom we
encountered in Thimpu during that period, we agreed to develop a curriculum
that would enable the tailors and new trainees to produce high-quality garments
for the internal market, and also create innovative garments from traditional
textiles using Western-style tailoring methods and quality standards.
These “hybrid” garments were perceived to be in demand among the wealthy
tourists who visit Bhutan, and are seen as a good opportunity for developing
enterprise, entrepreneurial skills, and personal creative outlets for the aspiring
fashion designers whom we met among, and alongside, the cohort of trainees.
The gradual evolution of traditional dress codes to include items targeted at
wealthy tourists existed prior to the development of our curriculum, which may

Figure 9.2 Emma Dick and Peck Leng Tan with Staff and Trainees on Tailoring
Curriculum at Chumey Vocational Training Institute, Bhutan, September 2009.
Photograph by Peck Hoon Tam.
194 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

now have in some small part contributed to the technical innovations and further
moves away from any anachronistic notions of “traditional” dress, frozen at a
fixed point in time somewhere in the imagined seventeenth century.
The final curriculum consisted of six modules, distributed over two years
of full-time study. In line with the vocational training framework that was being
developed for Bhutan at the same time, the practical to theory ratio was estab-
lished as 80:20, although these figures may have evolved since the first iteration
of the program was established.2 The six modules were as follows:

Module 1: Production Methods and Introduction to Flat Pattern-Making

Module 2: Understanding Fabric
Module 3: Understanding Garment Construction: Womenswear and
Menswear
Module 4: Design Detailing and Garment Construction
Module 5: Production of Small Products
Module 6: Introduction to Production Chain Management

With the introduction of Helen Armstrong’s comprehensive manual

Patternmaking for Fashion Design as one of our core texts, our curriculum
aimed to introduce trainees to the fundamentals of hand and machine sewing
and the basics of constructing garment blocks by hand to understand and
develop the fundamental aspects of “Western” techniques of garment design
and production from the very start of Module 1. Pre-existing knowledge and
skill was variable among our first cohort of trainees. Some had little experience
but demonstrated tremendous commitment to learning when applying to join
the project by competitive entry. Others had been practicing as tailors for many
years, using a combination of techniques evolved and created locally through
encounters with experienced tailors from neighboring India, or picked up from
previous training courses variously organized by different disparate development
initiatives. There had been no systematic structured delivery, development
or assessment of tailoring knowledge and skills within Bhutan prior to our
curriculum, and formalizing the current state of knowledge and practical skill
would be one of the key indicators of our success.
We encouraged trainees to experiment with locally available textiles, closures,
and fastenings to enhance the functionality and wearability of garments
designed for working in. As already mentioned above, such simple innovations
in production had already caused the lamenting of cultural loss in the national
press, a fundamental agent in mediating, constructing, and maintaining a sense
of national identity (Crane, 2008: 364). The hook fastening is gradually replacing
the kera belt in some garments in Bhutan. The half-kira is a stitched form of the
lower half of a kira, sewn to emulate the correct folds and pleats of a “traditional”
wrapped kira. This garment closely resembles “Western” notions of a “skirt.” The
Constructing Fashionable Dress and Identity in Bhutan 195

jacket-tego is a hybrid garment with contrasting collar and cuffs stitched directly
inside the openings of a “traditional” style tego, to emulate the full appearance of
wearing a wangu underneath, but without the need for the additional garment.
Further embedded in the hybrid language of UK-centric curriculum design
and standards codified by Bhutan Department of Trade, two of the learning
outcomes the trainee should demonstrate on successful completion of Module
4 of the curriculum are listed thus:

Identify and select details that are traditional and non-traditional. Apply these
details in traditional and non-traditional context (Curriculum, 2010: 35).

This binary categorization between the traditional and non-traditional is

present also in Module 5, which links quality control to “appropriate commercial
standards e.g. Bhutan National Seal” (Curriculum, 2010: 39). The Bhutan
National Seal is aimed at:

Establishing national quality benchmark standards for Bhutanese handicraft

products and encouraging the producers/ artisans to be more innovative and
creative in their designs, while preserving the age-old traditional craft skills
and knowledge (Bhutan Department of Trade).

The judging criteria for the Bhutan National Seal are divided into the same
two words referenced in our curriculum. Products classified as “traditional” will
be judged on their “authenticity, design and finishing skills, technique, material
and marketing,” and for items deemed as “non-traditional,” the first judging
criterion is changed to “innovation,” while all the rest remain the same. The
criteria of “innovation” and “authenticity” may be read as well-intentioned anach-
ronisms, further preserving the mythical authenticity of Bhutanese dress, while
also legitimating designed products wholly derived from the same semi-mythic
traditions as driglam namzha.
Technical innovation that enhances creative possibilities available to aspiring
designers creates a further blending of the distinctions between the “tradi-
tional” and the “non-traditional.” Synthetic and processed yarns have become
prevalent in Bhutan, through trading links with India, Bangladesh, and Thailand.
A frame loom introduced from Tibet has “augmented the existing technology
of back-tension looms and sparked the creative development of brocaded
wool twill weaves” (Myers and Bean, 1994: 18). Article 27 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights highlights the difficulties of trying to codify
legal frameworks to protect indigenous cultures, while at the same time trying to
anticipate to what extent modern technology could form part of such traditional
activities and how these could be defined and protected legally as a part of
“traditional” culture (Gilbert, 2010: 37). Joseph Lo, chief technical adviser for the
196 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Culture Based Creative Industries project for UNDP Bhutan 2004–9 confirmed
similar difficulties in the Bhutan context, in trying to define markers of authenticity
within cultural production, how to innovate within those boundaries, and how to
measure indicators of success:

It is really problematic trying to codify skills and abilities which are really tacit
knowledge and trying to get them to fit into a structured framework (Lo, 2012).

Lees (2011) suggests that some inter-governmental organization-authored

projects become limited by definitions, caught up in documenting the “authentic”
to the detriment of supporting new ideas and innovations. One school of
thought would suggest that ordinary individuals are disempowered, rather than
empowered, by the intervention and activities of international inter-governmental
agency-driven development projects:

Global NGOs come in from the outside very often armed with their own
ideas of what is wrong and what should be done to remedy the situation. At
precisely this point the issue of representativeness arises to bedevil thinking
on civil society (Chandhoke, 2002: 46 cited in Crane, 2008: 374).

This logic should perhaps be applied to issues of representation in its

broadest sense, and in our case to the political, aesthetic, and cultural sover-
eignty governing self-representation through fashionable dress and identity
construction. The context of our curriculum project should be framed within
these broad concerns about cultural autonomy and representation, although
the active role, which the Royal Civil Service of Bhutan takes in ensuring
self-negotiated ideas of traditional culture, is significant, and our curriculum
was developed through a process of genuine stakeholder engagement and
collaboration.
These examples from our curriculum may be implicated within the construction
of hybrid dress practices and notions of fashionable dress and identity now
evident in the national press in Bhutan. The impossibility of unadulterated
cultural neutrality on the part of development agents, including myself, may
connote diffuse transnational cultural imperialism on the part of global devel-
opment agencies. These inter-agency encounters underscore the anachronistic
logic presented in a false dichotomy between categories of “traditional” and
“non-traditional.” Such binary logic presents an approach markedly different
from the holistic ideas expressed by incarnate lama and movie producer
Rimpoche, who aims to reconcile tradition and modernity, as one universally
understood language. Few ordinary people, however, possess the transcul-
tural omniscience represented and suggested by Rimpoche. He presents
the same universal philosophy beautifully in his film Travellers and Magicians
Constructing Fashionable Dress and Identity in Bhutan 197

(2003). The central character, Dondup, performed by non-actor and prominent

BBS journalist Tshewang Dondup, dreams of escaping to America, smokes
cigarettes, listens to rock music, and wears a denim gho. Dondup represents
the frustration of the present-yet-absent hybrid modernity of contemporary rural
Bhutan, existing at a further area of remove from the hub of development agents
and cultural intermediaries congregating round inter-governmental agencies
based in Thimpu, the capital city.
The production of garments through our curriculum presents a narrative
of institutionally measurable modernity in dress emerging through structured
encounters between agents of inter-governmental development in vocational
education. A complementary and related example is unfolding online via the
pages of the Facebook group called Bhutan Street Fashion (BSF). BSF has
emerged as an active trend discussion forum, and was established by Karma
Wangchuk, whom I worked alongside in 2009, while I was developing the
Tailoring curriculum, and he was working for UNIDO in Bhutan. It is interesting to
compare a different set of ideas about fashionable dress and identity in Bhutan,
quite distinct from the ideas of cultural nostalgia for the loss of traditional
heritage reported in some of the mainstream print media in Bhutan. BSF offers
an opportunity both to view the construction of ideas about fashionable identity
by documenting and discussing what is worn by people on the streets, and to
understand the range of people within and outside Bhutan who are driving, and
contributing to, this active and energetic discussion in virtual space.

Bhutan Street Fashion (BSF)

The STREETS is where the inspiration is. Masses r the new CLASSES.
showing the fashion on the street …we show you like it is…no pretensions
and no wannabe Mother Teresa promises, no HIDDEN agenda, no moral
policing… Everyday life FASHION on the street (Bhutan Street Fashion,
2010).

Bhutan Street Fashion (BSF) was established on Facebook on June 19,

2010, and, at the last count, had 41,095 followers (March 7, 2016). Founder
Karma Wangchuk studied Fashion Design in India, and lives in Thimpu. He
describes himself as a:

Design student and Fashion Illustrator at the start of my journey […] I am an

accidental photographer with no formal training. I am more a visual person
and therefore my blog has more images n sketches and less writing but I
promise to write more (Wangchuck, 2012).
198 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Figure 9.3 Bhutan Street Fashion Facebook group example page from July 2010.
Image with permission from BSF.

BSF began as a location for candid street-style photography shots of people

“spotted” in their daily lives in Bhutan.3 As Rocamora observes in her discussion
of fashion blogs, such images overwhelmingly attract positive comments by
the online community of followers (Rocamora, 2011). Encouraged through the
“like” function, group members engage in communal online discussions usually
expressing support and admiration for the subjects’ sartorial choices and to
Karma for his innovation in starting up the group.

Miaka Wangmo Go Bhutan street fashion.. :) CLICK CLICK CLICK ♥ :) i offer

ma services :) LOL
21 July 2010 at 12:16 · Like · 1

[…] actually its always been there people just didnt notice it i guess =)
28 July 2010 at 07:26 · Like · 2

Jiwan Gurung indeed it is true...glad dat v r catchin up wid d world..BSF..u

all r doin a gr8 job...kudo’s 2 u all...
29 July 2010 at 05:16 · Like

[…] i should have put both the pics tiogether n made the fans choose the
look .. tuff dude Vs Chic dude
20 August 2010 at 13:21 · Like
Constructing Fashionable Dress and Identity in Bhutan 199

[…] actually both these pics are the same kid […] its amazing what clothes n
a haircut can do […] pretty boy to macho =)
20 August 2010 at 13:32 · Like

Karma Kaso Sonam great collection...luv d pics..guess our country is rele

developin si...
21 September 2010 at 12:01 · Like

The fluent use of informal “text speak” abbreviations throughout the

participants’ conversations highlights the widespread ease of expression in
English—and not Dzongkha—as the language of dedicated followers of street
fashion in Bhutan. This makes the group widely accessible on the global
Facebook network, which does not yet offer a version in Dzongkha. It also
highlights the gap between official language policy and everyday language
usage in, and about, Bhutan. Throughout the photo comments for the album
“Street Trend in Bhutan 2010” emerges a collective sense of what “Bhutan
Street Style” means to the participants in the discussion. Gentle jokes are
made about each other’s style preferences, but Karma is usually present in
the discussion, marshalling potentially offensive comments with direct remarks
such as,

[…] ‎ @KYT .. agree .. Stereotyping is equivalent to racism ...

14 October 2010 at 05:58 · Like · 1

Taking on the role of “moderator,” Karma manages an extremely fluent

dialogue about the consensus of meanings and derivations of the various
ensembles represented in his and other members’ photographs. Information is
passed on about popular fashion ideas from Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, and
about how places like Mongar, the fastest growing region in Eastern Bhutan,
compare to these East Asian countries. Shopping tips are shared about where
to get the best fake Converse-style shoes in Bangkok, and how to make your
own T-shirts, clothes, and accessories, using simple DIY techniques. At one
stage, Karma enters into a definition of fashion terminologies to correct what
he views as misunderstandings about the meanings imparted by the words
“Chanel,” “Marc Jacobs,” and “vintage,” related to an image of a girl with a
handbag he has taken:

belle époque era mens beautiful era . …VINTAGE is a terminology used

noadays for second hand clothes n BTW the clothing from the 1920s to
1980s is considered vintage so there u go ...
11 October 2010 at 08:31 · Like · 2
200 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Over the six years since the group was founded, the regularity of the postings
and volume of commentary has increased and the range diversified. Karma and
his collaborators have gained in confidence and are in demand as photogra-
phers, stylists and people to be talked about in fashion related projects across
emerging print magazines, including Yeewong, launched in September 2009
and Bhutan Time Out, launched in April 2012. BSF has amassed followers
from all over the world, and regularly posts photographs of readers in front of a
range of global mythic locations, such as New York Fashion Week, the Houses
of Parliament, in London, and the Merlion in Singapore, carrying a hand made
sign of allegiance to BSF. References made in international media about BSF,
such as Cartner-Morley’s (2011) article about the royal wedding of the fifth King,
and Marie Claire writer Fabrizio interviewing favorite TV personality Namgay
Zam, are also posted on the page. This demonstrates a self-awareness of the
positioning BSF commands in reference to the global fashion media, attracted
in some measure by the exotic Otherness of Bhutan, established by the
Shangri-La myth, and echoed in the pages of mainstream fashion media, such
as Vogue. The page has become a dynamic discussion forum for a virtual global
community of more than 41,000 people interested in Bhutan Street Fashion,
and also contributing to its future ontology.
BSF has been successful in captivating the minds of a virtual worldwide
community beginning to actively construct the rhetoric of fashionable dress
and identity in Bhutan from observation, documentation, and representation
of the people on the streets, and how this relates to global online social media
visual culture. Images of people “Style Spotted” on the streets of Thimpu show
them wearing a multi-colored array of gho, kira, pants, and shirts, stylishly
accessorized with “geeky” glasses, “Aviator” sunglasses, and small purses
crafted out of hand-woven kira fabric, for example. The King and Queen are
frequently cited as style icons, both in their national dress and in pictures of
them traveling overseas in “Western” dress. The written comments show a wide
variety of opinions and perspectives on fashionable dress and identity, but the
overwhelming attitude of users of the site is positive toward drighlam namzha,
even though the visuals demonstrate a sophisticated awareness and practice of
a whole world of clothing styles that exist outside the official dress code. Where
users celebrate Western clothing styles through imagery, they are often quick to
balance this with a positive comment about national dress:

Aernest Tree‬‬ mind you the gho loks allways the best haha‬
14 August 2010 at 16:27 · Like · 3

Aernest Tree‬‬ gho dang kira for ever

14 August 2010 at 16:28 · Like · 4
Constructing Fashionable Dress and Identity in Bhutan 201

[…] we know that showing a lil appreciation for our Western cousins the fact
is we wear them too
15 August 2010 at 14:00 · Like · 2

The dual consciousness present in everyday people’s attitude toward drighlam

namzha is present in the pages, images, and commentary evolving through
the online community. Rimpoche stands as the ideal candidate to legitimize
a similar process from within the official structures of the Buddhism-based
constitutional monarchy. As incarnate lama and movie producer he embodies
an extremely powerful balance between the same realms of “authenticity”
and “innovation” signified in the Bhutan National Seal judging criteria. His
dual role has captivated journalists worldwide, but has also attracted some
disbelief that one person can actually perform two such differently perceived
functions in realms usually presented as mutually exclusive. He counters these
suspicions thus:

It indicates to me that from certain standpoints working in film is viewed

as almost sacrilegious, like I am breaking some kind of holy rule […] Film
is a medium and Buddhism is a science. You can be a scientist and at the
same time you can be a filmmaker […] Buddhism is not against idolatry—it
uses statues as representations […] Film could be seen as a modern day
Thangka (traditional Buddhist painting or cloth banner) (Prayer Flag Pictures,
2002: 13).

If film is viewed by some as a sacrilegious medium, fashion would almost

certainly be seen by the same people as profane. There is so far very little written
about the relationship between fashion and inter-governmental development
initiatives. Such a body of work may begin to emerge, given the growth of
the ethical fashion sector and the range of organizations promoting equitable
trade alliances, in preference to unilateral or bilateral aid, and enabling market
linkages between producers and consumers. Figures like Rimpoche act as a
cultural catalyst in this process. The popularity of online groups such as BSF
allows almost unrestricted non-hierarchical and intercultural dialogue between
multiple stakeholders to take place. Such forums will inevitably begin to generate
even more complex multi-layered forms of hybrid fashionable identity to emerge
in Bhutan and elsewhere in cyberspace. Future iterations of development
projects such as our Tailoring curriculum could easily draw upon the rich market
insight, sub-cultural capital and trans-national awareness that BSF possesses.
All of these qualities are significant in the process of constructing fashionable
dress and identity in Bhutan, and should serve to clearly challenge simplistic
binary thinking about how the West and the non-West engage in discourses
about dress.
202 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Conclusion
The geographical inaccessibility and the psychological “Otherness” of Bhutan,
formed through the myth of Shangri-La, derive in part from the semi-mythical
foundation stories of the unification of the country and reassertion of driglam
namzha to the present day. A discourse about fashionable dress and identity formed
in Bhutan exists in the international fashion press that retains these metaphors
of inaccessibility and authenticity. Within Bhutan, this nebulous discourse has
become reified through real hybrid garments, constructed through arenas such as
our curriculum, and also generated a discussion of fashionable dress and identity
in the pages of Bhutan Street Fashion. Translation between these different ways
of systematizing knowledge creates a clash of structural logic in the way that
these ideas about Bhutan are conceptualized and held together in the competing
languages of fashion journalism, international development and Facebook.
The belief in systematizing knowledge is deeply linked to ideas forged by
the European Enlightenment, “the ‘modern’ subject manages to control ideas,
classify objects, produce knowledge about identities, and, thus, secure meaning
about them” (Constantinou, 1998: 29–30). It is not meaningful to impose such
values on a culture that independently developed its own entirely different
logic of enlightenment. In Buddhist terms, to be “enlightened” means to have
woken up and to understand the world, so that the mind and the body are not
separated, but are in perfect harmony with one another. Thus, binary systems
that exist to impose “rational” order on the world are deeply unenlightened from
this perspective. Rimpoche echoes beautifully the complexity with which we
should frame the study of non-Western dress, when he says:

I believe that all these systems [of global governance] are well-intended but
I don’t believe that one particular system can work for everyone. In fact I
don’t believe that every human being on Earth has to learn one particular
system […] Buddhism is a wonderful philosophy. It’s a wonderful system.
But Buddhism is different from Buddhists. Within Buddhist institutions we
see downfalls, corruptions. No system has worked thoroughly in this world
(Prayer Flag Pictures, 2002: 19).

Roland Barthes (1992 [1967]: 300) said that fashion is an order made into
disorder, the conversion of reality into myth, blurring the memory of past
fashions to make the current “euphoric.” There are multiple fashion systems
operating under different logics and notions of temporality, all of which are
perpetually being reconsidered and constructed in complex hybrid encounters
with each other through globalization. The construction of fashionable dress and
identity in Bhutan is just one such encounter that demonstrates the complexity
and richness of the many fashion discourses present in the non-West.
Constructing Fashionable Dress and Identity in Bhutan 203

Notes
1 The author would like to thank the following individuals and organizations who
made this research possible: Joseph Lo (PhD candidate at Heriot Watt University,
and formerly of UNDP Bhutan), Karma Wangchuk (Bhutan Street Fashion), Pernille
Askerud, Karma Lhazom (MOLHR), Peck Hoon Tam (formerly of SIF), Tan Peck
Leng, Nur Hidayah and Emily Wills (LASALLE College of the Arts Singapore),
Phuntso Norbu (The Institute of Zorig Chosum, Thimpu), Sangay Dorji, Kinley
Wangdi, and all the private tailors and students who took part in our Tailoring
Curriculum at Chumey Vocational Training Institute, Bumthang, Bhutan.
2 It has not been possible to establish the ongoing status of the tailoring program as
this chapter goes to press and as a precarious environment, it is possible that the
delivery of the course has evolved further since the last mission Peck Leng made
with another colleague, Emily Wills, in 2010. This is one of the challenges of funding
for development. When the funding finishes, it is sometimes difficult to ensure the
future sustainability of the project.
3 See the photo album, “STREET TREND IN BHUTAN 2010,” available online at:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.140021779348778.20328.132246
446792978&type=3 (accessed June 30, 2014). Please note that comments from
BSF have been recorded and reproduced exactly as they were posted online. These
quotes have been used on the basis of fair dealing/use for the purposes of criticism
and review only.

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 PART V

CONCLUSION
 10
AFTERWORD:
FASHION’S FALLACY
SANDRA NIESSEN

A cohort of scholars has decided to meet regularly to address the Western

bias in fashion studies. This volume is one of the results of that decision; the
authors have pooled their efforts to write revisionist fashion. Much work is
needed to rectify terminologies and perceptions that have been constructed
on a false socio-politically constructed West/Rest dichotomy. Nevertheless,
the fact that these meetings are necessary gives pause. Has it not already all
been said? Fashion studies are Eurocentric, evolutionary, Orientalist, and in
urgent need of review and revision. But the cry has not been sufficiently taken
up. To be sure, revisionist fashion studies have made headway in the dominant
fashion discourse, but not enough. Where recently endorsed, this is often
because of current attention to so-called fashion globalization, which is being
held up as proof of fashion’s universality. However, this perception constitutes
a confusion that is symptomatic precisely of the persistence of the West/Rest
dichotomy in the study of fashion.
In the middle of the last century, Simmel (1957) pointed out that fashion
was found in the West and not in non-Western contexts. Scholars continue to
reiterate his claim whether directly or indirectly. Surely what his writing did was
to issue an invitation to scholars to test his claim cross-culturally and not to sit
cozy with it as a safe mantra. Had empirical testing indeed followed, the study of
clothing/fashion in a global context would have taken a different course because
the dichotomized thinking would have been put to rest. On the other hand, in
Simmel’s day and even before (and certainly since), there were generally known
examples of intercultural interactions in the development of Western fashion that
flew in the face of his dichotomous characterizations: tales of the silk road and
derring-do related to the spread of natural color materials and recipes from India
and South America, the development and spread of Chinoiserie and chintz, the
importation of beaver pelts for European top hats, and the European fascination
210 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

with the Cashmere shawl, to cite but a few, all of which showed the interna-
tional participation in the development of Western fashion. However, even such
commonly known examples have not dislodged the conception of fashion as
an originally and exclusively Western phenomenon. Simmel’s fashion theory was
—and remains—an expression of an entrenched bandwagon fallacy predicated
on a Western understanding of the Other (Niessen 2010).
Toby Slade’s chapter in this volume especially adds to the arsenal of proof
that the global interplay in the clothing domain is complex, age-old, and flies
in the face of a West/Rest discourse. Will his contribution make a difference?
Will the scales drop from the eyes of fashion conservatives who will then
stand back and say, “My goodness, we clearly have to rethink fashion and
cross-cultural clothing systems!”? It is enticing to conceptualize a world in
which that would be the case, but currently that is only ridiculously naïve. The
fashion world turns on a different axis. It is not looking for truth and analyses
to find it. Instead it plays with myth and appearance in its commitment to
obtaining profits and is thus incontrovertibly vested in its Western ideological
stronghold. It is clear that the weight of additional historical evidence of global
linkages will not transform the fashion world. Not only for this reason, there
needs to be a strict(er) separation between analytical writing on fashion and
the fashion process (including the textual component). The two have different
goals and priorities.
The central tenet of Simmel’s characterization of fashion is rate of style
change, fashion purportedly changing relatively quickly and non-fashion, by
definition, depending on stability. Fashion continues to be characterized in
this way even in the latest fashion textbooks. This is highly problematic if only
because it perpetuates the “rate of change” myth for a new cohort of students.
At the very least it needs to be logically discredited as a delimiting charac-
terization. It implies a cross-cultural framework but this claim has not been
specifically tested using comparative data. Since Simmel’s day there has been
time to do systematic cross-cultural survey work, but it has not been a priority.
On the grounds of scientific method alone, as a delimiting characterization it fails.
Furthermore, when rate of change is invoked in fashion textbooks (one
senses a grasping at straws to try to come-up with something that will support
the position that fashion is found only in the West), this is simultaneously
problematic because the characterization does not delimit and it is untrue.
Today’s increasingly fast-changing world has emptied it of any definitional value
that it might have had. Given this, in addition to the absence of comparative data
to substantiate the claim, the only function that allegiance to this “distinguishing
property” can serve is to perpetuate the illusion of a West/Rest dichotomy. As
such, it is a cog in the wheel of the bandwagon West/Rest fallacy.
Another frequently used textbook definition of fashion is “non-localized
changing styles.” This definition is safely neutral and implies no West/Rest
Afterword: Fashion’s Fallacy 211

dichotomy. It is interesting, therefore, to note the inconsistencies with which it

cohabits. I am referring here to the depictions of fashion history as a parade of
Western dress styles, starting with Greek and Roman times, and, following the
example of the conservative “old” art history, working up to the present. A recent
addition to the fashion history literature, entitled Fashion, the Whole Story (Fogg
2013), incorporates a selection of dress forms from a handful of cultures in the
American Southwest, Africa, and Asia, by way of enlightened acknowledgment
that fashion has been found elsewhere in the world and not just in the West. The
illustrations from these other cultures are situated in the book at the beginning
of the historical parade of Western fashion. The fashion history was not adapted
to accommodate a broader, multicultural definition of fashion; rather the Other
was admitted in a cursory way without any clear criteria of selection and no
cross-cultural analysis. First giving lip service to the idea that fashion may not
be exclusively Western, the layout of the book then situates these exceptions
within a Western evolutionary/historical framework. This treatment of fashion
history only serves to reveal, yet again, the underlying West/Rest dichotomy.
The token additions make it painfully evident that the critique of fashion has not
been integrated thoroughly and that the dominant framework of fashion history
persists unrevised. Fashion history is presented as Western history a priori. This
is a co-opted conventional understanding of fashion posing as fashion analysis.
It may seem unduly pedantic to spend on such definitions when an exciting
and burgeoning fashion literature, including the chapters in this volume, apprise
the reader of a dynamic global fashion development against which these
definitions seem only to call up yesteryear. Nevertheless, this problem is so
prevalent in fashion textbooks that it is necessary to continue to address them.
Moreover, as I point out at the outset, unless we understand why this fallacy is
so persistent, it will continue to inform present and future fashion studies. This
can be demonstrated with respect to fashion globalization.
Until now, fashion studies have been co-opted, at least partially, by the
ideologies of fashion and the entrenchment of the West/Rest dichotomy in
the study of fashion serves as proof. As critical academics whose job it is to
probe and see through fallacies, many of us also bear the burden of preparing
students to work in the fashion industry. This can lead to conflict of interest.
Moreover, trying to escape the ideologies of fashion is a tall order when it is the
fate of all of us, academics or not, to wear clothes and in our everyday lives,
to sartorially negotiate the social markers of status and power. In this sense,
“seeing through clothes” is like trying to kick a food addiction, while still needing
to eat to survive. Regardless of the great strides that have been made in fashion
research, these circumstances may at least partially explain why the distinction
between fashion analysis and the fashion process is still insufficiently clear. It
also explains why so few have chosen to examine the global power relations
embodied in clothing systems.
212 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

These failings are perhaps our strongest evidence of the need for solid
and systematic enquiry into why the well-formulated and exceptionally serious
criticisms of the bandwagon West/Rest fallacy in fashion studies have had insuf-
ficient impact. This same fallacy has been exposed in the studies of history, art
history and anthropology, but they remain inextricably entrenched in fashion
studies. Unless the perniciousness and the extent of the dichotomous West/Rest
bias are thoroughly understood and the criticisms generally acknowledged and
integrated, the dichotomized notion of dress (fashion/non-fashion) will persist as
a skewed foundation for fashion studies. Every analytical structure that we build
atop it will reflect, to a greater or lesser extent, the original fallacious imbalance.
A veritable fashion syndrome has grown up around the dichotomy.
An example of this is the problematic term “world fashion.” The term was
coined to designate the “dress of ordinary people,” including apparel items,
such as jeans, sweatshirts, T-shirts, trousers, skirts, blouses, shirts, blazers,
business suits, and the like” rooted in Euro-American heritage, but now found
“across the globe” (Eicher 1995: 4; Eicher and Sumberg 1995: 300). The term
emphasizes the similarity in appearance of items of clothing, but does not take
account of the meanings associated with the clothing. We know that these
outfits have a different meaning in different cultures (see for example, Hansen
2000). The spread of “world dress,” if we apply sociologist Georg Simmel’s
observation that people dress according to their aspirations, speaks volumes
about where the dominant centers of global power are located. The standardi-
zation of appearance thus simultaneously reveals and masks political relations,
an ambiguity that the term “world fashion” does not convey because it desig-
nates only sameness in appearance, and obfuscates inhering power differences.
The contributors to this volume have taken it upon themselves to operate
within a new fashion paradigm, a very tall order. They must perforce make do
not only with concepts but also with terminologies that are already enmired in
conventional conceptions.
A disruptive (non-dichotomous) fashion discourse begins with the recog-
nition that the systems of dress anchored in all cultures around the world
(body decoration is a human universal) have their own distinctive features and
dynamics (though they may be inter-related to a greater or lesser extent) and
that this diversity has been obscured by the dichotomous study of dress in
which the Western dress system (Western fashion: a system rooted in Western
capital dynamics) has been given a privileged position while “the rest” have
been lumped together, more or less undifferentiated, as a consequence of
ideological, untested and unverified assumptions and characterizations. The
fashion/non-fashion dichotomy suggests a difference in clothing kind and
process ignoring and denying the dense historical connections in production
and trade between the different parts of the world to which the terms are
ascribed, and fails to ascertain what is universal, and what distinct in the various
Afterword: Fashion’s Fallacy 213

systems spawned by human creativity throughout the world. The goal of a

renewed and disruptive discourse is to critique the fallacies in this ideologically
based study of universal dress, revise skewed understandings and accepted
wisdom about fashion and thereby rewrite fashion in its broadest cross-cultural,
not-exclusively Western sense.

Fashion’s fallacy on the global stage

The emergence of so-called “fashion globalization” adds a particularly complex
and confusing layer to the West/Rest issue. This is exacerbated because we
have not yet completed the project of explaining the fallaciousness of the West/
Rest dichotomy in fashion studies. It is (too) easy to point to the mushrooming of
Fashion Weeks, as many do, as proof that the West/Rest dichotomy is receding
into the past. The traditional centers of fashion hegemony appear to be eroding
as multicultural design themes proliferate. This evokes the triumphant response:
“See!”, “‘They’ do have fashion! The proof is available all over the world!” The
implication is that fashion is no longer Western and its study no longer ethno-
centric. The term “fashion globalization” is misleading, however, in the same
way as the term “world dress” is misleading; it also veils the same power
relations. “Fashion globalization” is an expansive step in the socio-economic
development of Western fashion. To hail “fashion globalization” as proof that the
“rest” also has fashion, is to dwell in appearances and, ironically, to continue to
privilege the Western clothing system, in fact side lining other fashion/clothing
systems, while purporting to finally recognize them. Although there is overlap;
there is especially difference between documenting the process of “fashion
globalization” (the emergence of/(the appearance of) the local indigenous on the
fashion stage), and rewriting the study of fashion to do away with the false West/
Rest dichotomy by acknowledging the unique dynamics in local clothing/fashion
systems found throughout the world throughout time.
It is difficult to even discuss this issue because of terminological entrenchment.
For example, to refer to the dynamics in local, indigenous clothing systems
throughout the world as “fashion” subversively de-privileges the conventional,
exclusive Western “right” to the term but also serves to confuse the reader who
does not know which “fashion” is being referred to: the Western kind that is
proliferating on a global stage, or the localized, indigenous forms that are disap-
pearing as rapidly as the first is expanding. To refer to the former as fashion and
the latter as non-Western fashion settles us back into precisely the dichotomy
that we are trying to escape. The matter is all the more pernicious and confusing
because the global economy reifies Western fashion dominance in real and not
just ideological terms.
214 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

In this volume, Şakir Özüdoğru wrestles with the problem of ascertaining

what is really going on when Turkish designers take a position in the global
fashion parade. He cites Polhemus’ prediction that “Western dominance in the
fashion system” will disappear but he, nevertheless, also has doubts arising from
his observation that “the dominant fashion capitals of the West have maintained
their positions” (pp. 84–87) despite the entry of non-Western newcomers on the
globalized fashion stage. Where lies the truth? Why this ambiguity?
We live in baffling times. The global economic system, a social construct,
has grown not only out of control, but also beyond our ken. Economist Joseph
Stiglitz (2012) crunched the numbers to ascertain that in 2012, 1 percent of the
population of the United States held 40 percent of the wealth while 80 percent
of the population holds only 7 percent, a trend that has continued apace. When
physicist, James Glattfelder (2011), tried his hand at developing mathematical
models to determine who controls the world, his answer was: shockingly and
increasingly few. When we know that the United States holds 20 percent of
the wealth of the entire world, and we juxtapose that fact with how wealth is
distributed in that country, the global ramifications of this distribution are mind-
boggling. And the tide has not yet changed.
There is no reason to assume that fashion economics are exempt from this
trend. Despite fashion globalization, there are indications that the West has
never held the reins of fashion economics more tightly. A group of holding
companies are disproportionately large players in the field. It is no longer the
styles that reveal the social ladder. If fashion once trickled down that ladder
to reveal the social pecking order, the game is now about manipulating
the system to suck capital upward. The most powerful wealth is no longer
manifest through opulent display, it is behind the scenes manipulating the
production and marketing of opulence. In all of its manifestations, opulence
is a marionette. The game is about the essentially invisible power pulling its
strings.
Many scholars have noted that fashion is economics. What would a fashion
system that reflects these extreme global power and economic relations look
like? The answer would inevitably be—if it is true that fashion is a mirror of the
times: what we know as fashion globalization, the system in all of its facets and
not a particular “look” or “looks.” Not fashion houses, as they no longer vie
independently for the top; they are owned by holding companies. Not the work
of particular fashion designers as they are hired and fired at will. Not fashions
as these are plucked from London, Milan, Deli, Jakarta, Marrakech, Sydney,
and just as easily dropped (a recent, purportedly analytical, fashion publication
characterized Western styles as the result of free and unencumbered creativity
in contradistinction to clothing systems limited by tradition and social meaning.
Meanwhile, another variation on the West/Rest theme underscoring the need
to explore the political economy of global fashion influences, style creation, and
Afterword: Fashion’s Fallacy 215

marketing). Fashion globalization is the distribution of the steps of fashion’s

ladder all around the globe engaging the participants in variations on the same
marketing game and the same upward capital flow.
If we claim that fashion globalization is eroding the original Western centers
of fashion it behoves us to support this conclusion using empirical data, but
the finances of fashion are currently also beyond our ken. What percentage of
fashion’s wealth is held by whom? What role does fashion globalization play
within these fashion economics? How do the dynamics of fashion globalization
intersect with the structures that channel power and wealth? What latitude
do designers throughout the world have within this global system? Do we
need to add the prediction of the erosion of Western fashion to the heap of
fallacious, untested fashion wisdom based on appearances and ideologies?
Unapprised of the economic data, we remain mystified and in the realm of what
Sakir Özüdoğru, citing Yan and Santos, called “images and narratives” (2009:
86), co-opted by fashion’s own story and lacking an analytical framework to
document fashion dynamics and expose the fallacies in global fashion analysis.
There is evidence to suggest that if fashion globalization is not eroding
the original Western centers of fashion, the emergence of a global fashion
phenomenon does correspond to the decline of local cultural/clothing systems.
In 2003, I described what I referred to as a “trajectory of fashion” among the
Batak people of North Sumatra, Indonesia. The historical progression began
more than a century ago when the Batak lived in relative isolation. During the
early stages, they selectively incorporated exogenous novelties, “Batakizing”
them, while building their unique, local aesthetic. External pressures expanded
during the colonial era, reducing their latitude for selective incorporation of
external elements. The unique features of Batak clothing and textiles went into
decline, as weavers were pressed to imitate external fashion trends in order to
compete for a segment of the market pie and wearers were pressed to demon-
strate their participation in their expanded social environment. Today, the Batak
textiles most desirable and thus viable on the national market display the now
fully fledged national fashion aesthetic. To make them, the unique features of the
Batak aesthetic were pushed aside or into the background. More recently, local
designers have started to use archival images of the Batak in their villages as a
marketing tool to give their individualized fashion creations the aura of cultural
authenticity. The self-Orientalized, folklorized, mythologized, and objectified
result is successful on the fashion stage. In the meantime, the once-dynamic
indigenous clothing tradition of the Batak people is on the brink of extinction
(the few remaining elderly weavers have few successors), leaving only the
“appearance” of Batak in the form of fashion creations manipulating images and
myths for marketing purposes. The work of the indigenous fashion designers
is far from a symptom of revival or even maintenance of a local tradition even
though it is often perceived and promoted as such.
216 MODERN FASHION TRADITIONS

Fashion dynamics are universal, but the emergence of globalized fashion

around the world is not sui generis. Far from rendering the West/Rest dichotomy
a historical artefact, understanding globalized fashion requires dissection of
the global relations built into Western dress and the implications of the global
economy for clothing traditions everywhere.
The disappearance of indigenous culture is one of the most pressing and
simultaneously most neglected (also by fashion studies) issues of our time.
The global economy grants little room for the survival of alternative cultural and
economic systems and globalized fashion, because of its focus on profits, can
do little for the well-being of indigenous fashion systems. Şakir Özüdoğru’s
conclusion that “globalization is not leading to cultural homogenization but,
on the contrary, stimulates cultural heterogenization through the (re)invention
of and emphasis on local cultural heritage” does not constitute an answer
to his question about whether fashion globalization engenders cultural loss.
It only constitutes an acknowledgment of complex plurality in the process of
fashionalization.
The interface between the dominant Western fashion system and indigenous
fashion systems is where the negotiations about identity and power take place,
and where meaning is constructed and lost. It cannot be surprising, therefore,
that most of the contributions to this volume focus on that dynamic nexus. A
balanced approach to fashion writing would do justice not only to the process
of entry into the global system but also to the departure from local, indigenous
(disappearing) fashions/culture. A degree of co-optation is implied when the
story of global fashionalization is focused on the entry, particularly when framed
in terms of success, and when a struggle for the maintenance of an indig-
enous system is deemed anachronistic. It is also a symptom of the West/Rest
dichotomy when only half of the story is told. The other half has never been fully
attended to in conventional fashion analysis. Lumped as “the rest,” it is largely
unknown and not understood. Indeed, in this sense, fashion theory parallels the
process of fashionalization illustrated In this volume by the chapters by Jennifer
Craik and Janaki Turaga. Visual elements from their culture of origin, where they
have deep, mystical meanings unknown except to those steeped in the culture,
are extracted from those dense meaning systems and then paraded as commod-
ities down fashion street cloaked in new mythologies and exogenous narratives.
Longitudinal, two-sided studies of wide scope are needed to show the
impact of fashionalization on the longer term. Only then can the answers to the
questions “What is being lost?” and “what is being gained?” and “By whom?” be
answered. Without critical frameworks to situate what is happening at the macro
level in the fashion globalization process, we run the risk of being seduced by its
delicious visuals on the runway level, co-opted like fashion consumers.
To conclude, embarking on a corrective, disruptive, non-co-opted history of
fashion is a long-term project. It must include a self-reflexive critical evaluation
Afterword: Fashion’s Fallacy 217

of the development of the concept of fashion to explain the current vestedness

in fashion’s conventional definition. Only this will provide a firm foundation for
rewriting fashion history so that it rests on a non-dichotomous understanding of
global dynamics rather than privileging the dynamics of the fashion process in
the West. Fashion globalization will be unmasked as a Western phenomenon,
with deep historical roots, and a capacity to transform fashion systems
throughout the world.

References
Eicher, Joanne B., ed. Dress and Ethnicity. Oxford: Berg, 1995.
Eicher, Joanne B., and Barbara Sumberg. “World Fashion, Ethnic, and National Dress.”
in Dress and Ethnicity, ed. Joanne B. Eicher. Oxford: Berg, 1995.
Fogg, Marnie. Fashion: The Whole Story. London: Thames and Hudson, 1013.
Hansen, Karen Tranberg. Salaula: The World of Secondhand Clothing and Zambia.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Niessen, Sandra. “Afterword.” In Re-Orienting Fashion: the Globalization of Asian Dress
by S. Niessen, A. Leshkowich, and C. Jones. Oxford: Berg, 2003.
Niessen, Sandra. “Interpreting ‘Civilization’ through Dress.” In Encyclopedia of World
Dress and Fashion, Vol 8: West Europe, Part I: Overview of Dress and Fashion in
West Europe, 39–43. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2010.
Simmel, Georg. “Fashion.” The American Journal of Sociology 62 (6) (1957): 541–58.
Stiglitz, Joseph. The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our
Future. W.W. Norton & Co., 2012.
 INDEX

Aboriginal 17, 99–103, 106, 108, appropriation 10, 16–17, 91, 99, 102, 114
112–13, 116–17 Arab 129, 137, 139, 145–6, 154, 159
accessory 125 Arabic 14, 155
adorn 124, 178 aristocratic 36
adornment 8, 124 army 38–9, 44, 124, 128
advertisement 61, 89, 158 art 13, 28–30, 33–4, 38, 40, 46, 49, 64,
advertising 102, 158, 181 68, 78, 95, 98, 101–3, 105–6,
aesthetic 4, 6, 9–10, 21, 48, 56–8, 77, 111–14, 116–117, 123, 126–7,
83, 85, 90, 98, 102, 104, 108, 122, 129, 165–7, 178, 181, 183, 204,
126, 129, 132, 135–6, 196, 215 211, 212
agenda 32–3 artificial 25, 58, 186
choice 36 artificiality 11, 18, 25, 156
consideration 58 artist 101, 108, 113
dimension 32, 39 Asia 4, 48–9, 104–5, 114, 127, 186,
fashion impulse 17 192, 204–5, 211
impulse 15, 26, 47 Ataturk, Kemal 125–6, 128
modernity 27 attire 3, 77, 124–6, 128, 130, 155, 166,
pattern 33 173–4, 181, 189
sensibility 90 Australia 48–9, 97, 101–2, 104–10,
system 7 112–13, 115–17
theory 32 Australian Indigenous Fashion Week 109,
value 27 111, 115, 117
Africa 4, 7, 10, 12, 18, 149, 165–7, 172, Australiana 17, 98, 101–3, 111, 116
176–7, 179, 211 authentic 1, 11, 13–14, 18–19, 31,
consumer 166 99–100, 134, 155–6, 173–4, 186,
designer 18 188, 191, 196
fashion 10, 166 experience 11
North 4 authentication 11, 29
South 12, 165–7, 169–70, 173–81 authenticity 11, 14, 18, 115, 122, 156,
women 138 158, 191–2, 195–6, 201–2, 215
agency 169, 196 avant-garde 17, 29, 31, 101, 116
AKIN 107–10, 113, 115, 117
Alrazal 152 Baartman, Saartjie 169
analytical, framework 7, 215 Balarinji 101, 112
anonymity 11, 18, 79, 156 Bamako 175
anthropology 7, 59, 212 Bancroft, Bronwyn 101
Apartheid 166, 170, 178, 180, 182–3 Bannister, Jenny 101
apparel 49, 60–1, 106, 123, 139, 212 Batak 215
220 Index

batik 100 caftan 123, 128, 130, 133

Bayındır, Merve 134 Çalarken, Sedef 134
beading 104 Cameron, Shea 107, 109, 115
beadwork 166 capitalism 6, 36–7, 52, 58, 135, 139,
beauty 32, 35, 47, 98, 186 185
beldi 14, 18, 143–4, 154–6, 158–9 capitalist 5, 60, 177
classique 144, 154 Casablanca 4, 143, 146–7, 149–51, 153,
modern 144, 154 159–61
wear 151,154 chador 123, 125–6
Belgian Six 14 Chanel 199
Benin 166 China 16, 18, 29, 47, 52–4, 57, 60–70,
Bershka 149 97, 99, 122, 141, 165–7, 169–77,
bespoke 39 179–80, 183
Bhutan 7, 19, 185–205 bags 18, 165–7, 169–77, 179–80
Bhutan Street Fashion 188, 197–8, 200, Chinese, v, xi 4, 9, 16, 21, 38, 41,
202–3 51–70, 140, 172, 183
Bhutan Time Out 200 chinoizerie 9
Bima Wear 101 chintz 209
Binary 2, 10, 17, 137, 186, 195–6 choreographer 168–9
opposition 92, 137 Christianity 91
system 12, 202 Chunlan, Zhao 53–4
thinking 201, 209 cloth 19, 38, 43, 45, 74, 76, 92, 94,
biography 180 173–4, 189–91, 201
body 6, 8, 12, 16, 20, 27, 32–4, 39, 42, clothing 13, 16–18, 25, 27, 29, 32–8,
54, 56, 58–9, 65–8, 84, 94, 102, 41–3, 47–8, 51–7, 59–62, 74,
115, 124, 169, 178, 189, 201–2, 77–8, 83, 85, 89, 100–1, 105,
204 122–6, 128–9, 131,133–4, 136,
adornment 8 139 n.2, 166–7, 169, 171–4,
art 78 177–8, 190–1, 199, 209–10,
decoration 212 212–13, 215
language 155 adaptation 19
bourgeois 3, 54, 138 category 151, 154
boutique 61, 79, 83, 101, 144, 146–7, code 59, 186
150–1, 156–7, 169 design 167
brand 14, 18, 21, 107–8, 113, 122, 129, elements 122, 130, 136
138, 154–5, 156, 158, 160, 167, fashion 25, 41, 47, 51, 54
181 history 129
identity 155 industry 54, 178
image 146 manufacturing 126
name 147, 156 regulations 124
branding 17, 108, 122, 127 style 16, 25, 51–3, 62, 74, 121, 129,
Brennan, Mia 113 133–5, 137, 139 n.2, 152, 200
Brisbane 105, 108–9, 115–17 system 19, 210–11, 213–15
brocade 146 tradition 9, 79, 128, 215–16
Buddhism 189, 201–2 trend 14, 176
Bumthang 192, 203 Club 21 186
Büyükçınar, Tuvana 134 Coetzee, Hannilie 170–1
collective 13, 41, 106, 108, 137, 153,
Caftan 143–4, 148 199
Index 221

identity 13, 41 cotton 15, 26, 37–8, 43, 45, 47, 75–6,
College Lasalle 160, 185, 192 79, 84, 92–3, 174
colonial 10, 156 counterfeit 180
discourse 10 craft 35, 74, 79, 83, 98, 102–4, 106,
era 215 111–12, 116, 144, 148–9, 156, 195
colonialism 6 craftsmanship 14, 18, 104, 157
commercial 113, 151, 195 creative
development 11, 18, 156 design 122
exploitation 151, 157 development 195
strategy 18 entity 107
commodification 18, 74, 78, 90, 144 expression 79, 178
commodity 18, 38, 153, 157, 173, 180 industry 166, 195
conceptual network 135
design 167 opportunity 188
diversity 57 outlet 193
fashion 6–8, 74, 138 possibility 195
framework 2 potential 112, 114
Other 16, practice 112
Self 86 cross-cultural 7, 209–10, 213
Condé Nast 114, 186 analysis 19, 211
confection 121 comparison 3, 58, 178
constructed perspective 1, 7
identity 91 Culley, Steve 113
narrative 98 cultural
consumer 9, 47, 56, 76–9, 83, 85, 91–2, anxiety 13, 31, 35, 182
135, 154–5, 174, 185 appropriation 10, 16–17, 91, 99, 102,
consumerism 86, 129, 149 114
consumption 5, 18, 36, 42–3, 45, 74, assimilation 106
77–9, 81, 85, 87, 126, 136, 144, authentication 11
150–1, 155, 157, 166, 173–5 authenticity 215
base 76, 78 belonging 11, 35, 64, 76, 85, 87
culture 128 bias 209, 212
good 147 capital 135, 201, 212
pattern 10, 29, 45, 86, 144, 147, conservatism 79
152, 156 context 1, 13, 15–16, 52, 75, 86, 188
practice 172 development 39
process 143 flows 152
contemporary globalization 4, 14, 121,
culture 191, 197 heritage 14–18, 91, 104, 221–2, 134,
design 55, 102, 112, 122, 127, 134, 137, 144, 156–7, 170, 174, 216
138, 153, 166 heterogenization 4, 121, 216
fashion 2, 4, 9, 14–15, 18, 74, 103, hybridization 135
122, 127, 134, 138, 153, 166 identity 35, 97, 102, 111, 123
identity 166 imperialism 196
theory 25, 48 loss 191–2, 194, 216
cosmetics 27, 36 meaning 89, 174
cosmopolitan 81, 137, 146 neutrality 196
costume 26, 41, 54, 60, 102, 104, 111, purity 31
121, 123, 125, 136, 168 relativism 8
222 Index

restriction 9, 84 Europe 4
Revolution 54 influences 125, 129
rules 78 economic 4–5, 12,15, 26, 29, 47–8, 87,
symbolism 178 113, 166, 187, 188, 189, 214–15
tolerance 81 achievement 3, 139
transformation 153 boom 42–3
trope 98 capital 135, 149
cut 38, 54, 57, 64, 125, 133–4, 143, 154 context 8
cutting technology 62–4 current 29
depression 126
Da Gama Textiles 174 development 4, 39, 213, 191, 213
decoration 58, 99, 102, 105, 129, 139, disintegration 179
151, 157, 212 inequity 170
Desert Designs 101, 112–13, 116–17 model 33
design power 135
authenticity 122 reform 13
identity 17, 122 security 176
process 98 situation 19, 86
dichotomous 2, 114, 209, 212, 217 status 85
dichotomy 19, 196, 209–13, 216 system 8, 214, 216
Dior, Christian 149 elegance 5, 133
dominant elite 5, 16, 26, 29, 31, 34, 42, 79, 146, 159
centre 212 Elsaesser, Hayley 110
cultural transformation 153 emancipation 27, 124
fashion 3, 134, 209, 214, 216 embellishment 105
form 33 embroidery 79, 84, 104
framework 211 ephemerality 7, 188
group 189 Ephymol 174
player 177 Ernabella 101
tendency 29 essentialist
theory 190 thinking 1, 18, 185
trend 29 Etam 149
dress ethical 6, 106, 108, 115, 201
code 19, 98, 188–9, 191–3, 200 ethnic 5, 11, 33, 60, 137, 186, 189
development 32 chic 100, 146
form 27, 189, 211 design 122, 129
modality 26 dress 5, 7, 129
performance 10 fashion 2, 4
politics 136 group 189
practice 5, 7, 19, 29, 114, 166, identity 6, 11, 173, 178, 189
190–1, 196 people 2
regulation 41 violence 180
style 89, 192, 211 ethnicity 11, 103, 123
system 212 ethnocentricity 1
driglam namzha 190–2, 195, 202 euromodernity 12, 25, 47, 124, 154
Durban 177, 181 Europe 1, 3–4, 10, 15–16, 26, 34, 36,
38–9, 42–3, 63, 93, 104, 121–5,
Eastern 73, 128–9, 138, 199 127–8, 131–2, 134–6, 138, 146–7,
clothing 128, 130 169, 217
Index 223

European 3, 34, 36, 38, 39, 41–3, cities 5, 61

45, 60, 98, 121, 123–7, 128–9, community 169
131–8, 146, 148–9, 153–4, 157, designer 18, 60–1, 78, 84, 89, 94,
165–7, 169, 189, 209 98, 101, 103–6, 108, 117, 122,
culture 5, 31, 173 127–31, 134–5, 138, 140, 143–5,
designer 9, 14, 128 156, 158–60, 180, 186
Enlightenment 12, 202 discourse 1, 3, 5, 9, 202, 209, 212
fashion 1, 2–3, 6, 9–10, 12, 16, 26, dynamic 16, 81, 215–16
41, 48, 52, 121, 122–9, 132–7, fallacy 210–13, 215
144, 146–7, 149–52, 154, 156–7 fusion 2, 6, 10, 103–4
history 7, 9, 26, 48, 136, 190 globalization 3–5, 26, 209, 211,
influence 5, 154, 157 213–17
invention 25, 48 history 9, 13, 19, 26, 43, 48, 211, 217
nation 14, 47 identity 178
phenomenon 1, 16 industry 4, 53, 105–6, 143, 152, 211
power 42 journalism 202
Union 121 loop 180
everyday magazine 64, 143, 147–8, 159, 186
culture 17, 100 market 4, 15, 121, 177
dress 190 media 135, 200
life 125, 146, 197, 211 model 61, 85, 91, 112
exogenous 215–16 narrative 98
exotic 3, 5, 97–103, 105–6, 111, paradigm 212
114–15, 134, 136–8, 176, 186, press 156–7, 186, 202
200 research 2, 56, 59, 211
culture 13 scene 18, 122, 134, 136, 138, 165
fantasy 15 school 61, 147
image 100, 137 show 61, 106, 127, 129, 132, 166,
inspiration 103, 106 167, 171
motif 98–100, 103, 115 studies 1, 19, 57, 121, 209, 211–13,
narrative 17, 97 216
Other 176, 200 syndrome 19, 212
reference 98, 102, 105 system 1–3, 6–8, 19, 25–6, 42, 61,
exotica 17, 97–100, 103, 111 114, 134–7, 167, 202, 213–14,
216–17
fabric 64, 84, 100, 124, 145, 149, 154, theory 25, 48, 55–6, 210, 216
157, 168, 174–5, 200 tradition 1, 135
Facebook 188, 197–9, 202 trend 2, 36, 61, 73–4, 77–9, 85, 87,
factory 35, 44, 51, 60, 106 89–91, 114, 124–5, 127–9, 138,
failed, modernity 18, 167, 176 143–4, 146, 148, 151–2, 215
fair trade 106, 115 week 4–5, 61, 79, 109, 111–12,
fairy tale 138, 187 114–15, 131–4, 137, 169, 177,
fantasy 15, 101, 156 188, 200, 213
fashion fashionable 2, 4, 8–9, 16, 19, 47, 53,
aesthetic 4, 10, 122, 126, 129, 132, 61, 73, 77–8, 83, 90–1, 114, 125,
135, 215 157, 185, 188, 191–2, 196–7,
anthropology 7 200–2
brand 10, 144, 149–50, 152, 157 fashionableness 15, 74, 178
capital 61, 136, 214 fashionalization 216
224 Index

FashionTV 143 Grainger, Georgia 107, 115

Femmes du Maroc 143, 147–8, 159 Gucci 149, 180
fixed 3, 11, 13, 18, 139, 156, 194 gumboot dancing 170, 181
folded 19, 175, 189–91
folk culture 11, 94, 156 Han Dynasty 5
foreign handwork 133, 146, 152, 156–7
clientele 15 Hanif, Dilek 122, 133, 137–8
clothing 25 hat 126, 134
contact 26 haute couture 9, 61, 122, 127, 146, 152
element 11 Hawaiian 100
fashion 10, 16, 26, 131, 144, 149, 157 headscarf 99, 123–4, 126
guest 31 hegemonic 5, 9
(cultural) influence 10–11, 25, 31, 45, fashion 3
91, 152, 157 relation 136, 138
power 16, 26 Hennes & Mauritz 149
France 122, 129–30, 175 Heteroge 4, 33, 37, 89, 121, 216
French 9, 39, 63, 135–6, 146, 149, 159, Himalayas 186–7, 203
181 Hindu 74, 78–9, 92, 189
fashion 9, 135–6 Hinduism 74, 83, 87
Furstenberg, Diane von 186 hippie 77, 146
Hottentot Venus 169
Gaawaa Miyay Designs 113
Galeries Lafayette 149 icon 173, 179
Galliano, John 4, 131 iconic 104, 175
GAP 149 iconography 74, 136, 151
garment 37–8, 43, 60–1, 76, 79, 84, identity crisis 129
93–4, 102–3, 106, 123–5, 154, ideology 35–6, 137
169, 173, 189, 192, 194–5 imperial 39, 124
Gaultier, Jean-Paul 111, 144 imperialist 138
gender 35, 45, 55 imported 16, 19, 27, 29, 34, 38, 42, 47,
relations 48 137, 172–3, 191
Gibson, Carlo 182–3 independence 6, 146
Girismen, Gülin 134 India 73–9, 83, 85–6, 88–94, 97, 105–6,
global 122, 174, 189, 192, 194–5, 197,
discourse 158 209
fashion 2, 4, 19, 114–15, 134, 167, Indian 4, 15, 73, 77–9, 85–7, 89–90,
200, 211, 214–16 92–5, 99–100, 105–6
influence 4 individual 32, 39, 88–91, 104, 172, 178,
perspective 1 188, 196, 215
politics 4 design 79
power 211–12, 214 freedom 58
globalism 6 identity 13, 41, 166, 174
globalization 1–6, 9–10, 14–15, 26, 48, Indonesia 109, 100, 215
73–4, 85–6, 121, 144, 149, 152, industrial 86, 137, 155, 169, 172, 188
156–17, 170, 173, 176, 179, 181, industrialization 10, 14, 47, 127, 176
185, 188, 202, 204, 209, 211, industry 4, 38, 44–5, 53–4, 63–4, 105–6,
213–17 112–13, 116, 143–4, 147–9,
era 73, 85 151–2, 157, 165, 178, 181, 190,
theory 6, 121, 144 211
Index 225

innovation 5, 8, 14, 114, 128, 152, 167, Kongo 166

176, 192, 195, 198, 201 Korea 41, 99, 199
innovative 1, 4, 79, 97, 104, 122, 128, Kutoğlu, Atıl 122, 130, 137
166, 193, 195
inspiration 4, 9, 14, 16–18, 34, 97–8, Lagerfeld, Karl 144
102–6, 108, 112–14, 121–2, Laird Cherry, Amanda 174
128–9, 131–2, 134, 137–8, 153, Lam, Derek 186
176, 186, 197 landscape 3, 34, 101, 113
international 31, 55, 60, 62, 91, 101, Latino 7, 63
105, 108, 111, 122, 123, 127, leather 54, 113, 180
131, 135, 143, 146, 185–6, 188, lebensangst 87–8, 91
191–3, 195–6, 200, 202, 210 lebensraum 87–8
audience 17 Lee, Grace 113
domain 61 legacy 5, 122, 178–9
fashion 2, 4, 15, 18, 19, 61, 73, lifestyle 17, 44, 58, 73, 87–91, 101, 126,
121–2, 134, 136, 186, 202 128, 131, 146–7, 152, 159
market 108, 122, 127–8, 131, 138 linen 37–8
Internet 26, 79, 86, 92 local 1–2, 8, 14–15, 16, 18–19, 39, 45,
invented 4, 11, 18, 156 79, 85, 91, 102, 114, 123, 126,
heritage 132 128, 134–5, 137, 152–5, 158,
tradition 11 165, 172–5, 188, 191–2, 194,
∙
IpekçI, Cemil 122, 129, 136 210, 213, 215–16
isishweshwe 173–4 consumption 172
Islam 91, 123–4, 127, 129 culture 4, 89, 98, 157, 215
Islamic fashion 138 development 2, 4, 10,
Islamist consumerism 129 distinctiveness 14, 152, 157
Islamists 138 dress 7, 126, 166
Isogawa, Akira 104 fashion 10, 124–5, 139, 213
Istanbul 129–30 heritage 4, 14, 16, 121–2, 157, 216
identity 4, 128, 173–4, 179
Jackson, Linda 101, 108, 111 market 76, 104, 147, 152, 169
Jacobs, Marc 199 practice 12, 176
Jakarta 214 tradition 11, 14, 18, 75–6, 156, 215
Jamyang Khyentse Rimpoche, Dzongsar location 7, 85, 185, 190, 198
191 Louboutin, Christian 186–7
Japan 15–16, 21, 25–7, 29, 31–9, low-cost 122
41–2, 44–5, 47–50, 99, 104, 135, luxurious 144, 146, 151
140–1, 159 luxury 37–8, 52, 75, 92, 131, 137, 157,
Johannesburg 167, 169–70, 172, 178–9, 172, 180, 186
181, 183
Joundy, Zineb 160 magical 17, 100, 186
mainstream 3, 89, 101, 106, 113, 197
Kantian 27, 29, 33 fashion 2, 36, 99, 102–3, 113, 200
Kee, Jenny makeup 16, 52–3
Kemalist 126 Malawi 172
KhoiKhoi 169 Mali 175
KickArts 108 Mandela, Nelson 183
kimono 25–6, 34, 37–9, 42–5, 47–8, 100 Mango 149
kitsch 111 manufacturer 122, 128, 174
226 Index

manufacturing 107, 121, 126–8, 172, Morocco 14–15, 125, 144–5, 147–51,
192 153–6
Mao 21, 54, 62 MoroccoMall 149
marginalized 6, 112, 176 Mozambique 179, 182
Marie Claire 200 multicultural 59, 104, 211, 213
marketplace 108 multiculturalism 6
Marrakech 149, 153, 214 multiple modernities 86, 91
mass Muria 174, 182
produced 76 museum 8, 191
production 172 Muslim 99, 126, 128, 154
Massimo Dutti 149 mutation 12, 176
material culture 6, 45, 58, 102 mythical 101, 138, 186, 195, 202
Maya 5 mythologized identity 137
Mayle, Jane 186, mythologizing 137
Mbeki 181
Mecca 144 narrative 33, 90, 167, 186, 191, 197
Meeks, Arone 109, 115 national 4, 6, 17–19, 34, 39, 41, 43, 48,
Meiji 15, 25–6, 29, 31, 34–6, 38–9, 45, 61, 101, 121, 126–7, 134, 137–8,
47, 49 146–7, 156, 166, 177, 187–8,
melancholy 13–14 190, 192, 194–6, 201, 215
merchant 36 culture 17, 104
middle class 74, 83, 85–7, 91, 93, 138 design identity 14
Milan 4, 131, 137, 214 dress 7, 19, 98, 189, 191–2, 200
military 29, 34, 38, 47, 124, 130, 192 fashion 13–14, 156, 215
Mimi Designs 113 identity 14, 18, 33, 37, 98, 101–2,
modern 10, 12, 14, 17–19, 29, 31–3, 111, 115, 137–8, 174, 189, 194
35–7, 42, 44, 60–2, 73–5, 78, symbol 17
86–7, 90–1, 102, 109, 112, 121, pride 101, 166
125–6, 128, 130–1, 134, 136–7, nationalism 8, 14, 41, 146, 158
144, 146–9, 153–4, 157–9, 167, nationalistic 17, 101, 146
176–7, 185–6, 189, 191, 195, Ndebele 167
201–2 negotiation 3, 25, 74, 89, 91, 144, 154,
age 35 166, 178
boy (mobo), 29, 32 neo-spiritualism 90
culture 17, 102 new age 74, 83, 85, 87, 93
dress 10, 42 New Delhi 4, 74, 79–81, 92, 94–5
fashion 2, 61, 78, 91, 112, 121, 136, New York 4, 131, 137, 177, 180, 188
149, 158 Fashion Week 131–2, 134, 200
girl (moga), 29, 32, 35–7 newness 3, 13–14, 37, 139, 154
space 35 Ngalop 189
world 11, 18, 156, 186 Nguni 167
modernists 128, 138 niche 75, 83, 91–2, 103, 111
modernity 1–2, 4, 8–16, 18–19, 25–7, Niger 175
29, 31–7, 39, 43–4, 47–8, 52–3, non-governmental 185
58, 74, 86, 126, 146–7, 153–4, non-historical 6
158, 165, 167, 173, 176–7, 191, non-West 14, 202
196–7 non-Western 1–4, 6, 9–10, 12–13,
modernization 10, 12 15–17, 25, 97, 99–100, 121, 135,
Mongar 199 176, 185–6, 202, 209, 213–14
Index 227

fashion 2–4, 9, 13, 15, 25, 97, 99, photography 98, 107, 109–10, 198
135, 213 physiognomy 169
Norbu, Khyentse 204 Pike, Jimmy 112–13,
North Africa 4, 149 Plunkett, Anna 111
North America 1, 3 political 8, 13, 29, 31, 34, 39, 106, 126,
nostalgia 11, 13, 18–19, 156, 191, 197 128, 134, 138, 166, 186, 189,
nostalgic 8, 14, 158 195–6, 209, 212, 214
novelty 127, 167 development 4, 39, 73
nudity 133, 137 emancipation 27, 124
system 8
object 8, 57, 59–60, 74, 177 Polynesian 100
occidentalism 6 polypropylene 175, 177
Oiknine, Albert 160 popular 11, 17, 35, 38, 44, 51–2, 55–6,
old-fashion 9, 15, 156 60, 78–9, 81, 83–4, 88–9, 101–2,
Ong, Christina 186 152, 156–7, 185, 201
oppositional thinking 1, 18 culture 17, 74, 76, 78, 85, 87–91, 98,
opulence 129, 140, 214 101–3, 111
oriental 137, 186, 215 fashion 34, 199
design 100 style 16, 52, 54, 57
fashion 138 populist 85, 91
practice 6 post
style 131 colonial 156
Orientalism 6, 15, 17–18, 137–8 industrial 188
Orientalist 122, 133, 136, 186, 209 modern 2, 6, 11, 18, 86, 89, 102, 156
Other 2, 5, 12, 16–17, 19, 21, 58, 61, Prada 149
63, 89, 101, 134, 136, 138, 176, primitive 5–6, 10
186–7, 210–11 print 108, 111, 113–14, 130–1
otherness 6, 135 production process 104, 144
Ottoman 15, 17–18, 122–5, 127–34, profane 99, 201
136–41 professional 86, 150, 156, 158, 192
Oui, Napoleon 107 progress 2, 13–14, 33, 42, 152, 158
ownership 5, 99 progressive 27, 29, 34, 48
Promod 149
paradox 27 prosperity 167, 169
Paris 34, 61, 105, 122, 131, 133, 135, provincial 9, 45
137, 140, 177, 188 provocative 174
Pater, Ziemek 183 proximity 105, 152
patronizing 187 public space 35
Pau, Tommy 109, 115
Pearson, Easton 105 Rabat 20, 143, 146, 149
Pearson, Lydia 105 Ramadan 151, 157
Pemmaraju, Roopa 103, 105–7 reactionism 123
performance 10, 27, 111, 168–70, 174, ready-to-wear 122, 127, 129, 136, 169
178 reflexivity 13
personalia 174 religion 59, 74, 78, 84–8, 87–90, 93
personality 200 religious 8, 13, 16, 74–6, 79, 83, 86–91,
Peru 175 124–5, 134, 136–8, 145–6, 151,
Phineasa, Sharon 110, 115 154, 156–7, 189
photographer 170, 197 belief 15, 123, 136
228 Index

development 4, 73 Silk Road 26

heritage 89–90 Simpson, Lucy 113
occasion 154, 156–7 Singapore 185, 192–3, 199–200, 203
symbol 73–4 smocking 104
resistance 89, 126, 173, 181 social 4, 5, 7, 8, 15, 26, 29, 32, 35–8,
rest 2, 5, 19, 73, 86, 106, 125, 155, 41–2, 44–5, 47, 52, 55, 57–60,
209–14, 216 74, 78, 85, 88–90, 100, 124, 126,
retail 113, 128 128, 130, 134–5, 146, 151–2,
rhetoric 187, 200 154–7, 166, 174, 178–9, 189,
rip-off 100, 180 190, 211, 214–15
ritual 11, 29, 75, 94, 144 behavior 37
Romance Was Born 111, 117 change 6, 85–6
rootedness 153 class 47–8, 52, 85, 125, 149
rootlessness 18, 87, 165 commentary 170, 181
roots 179, 217 Darwinism 5
runway 171, 216 development 4, 73, 191
rural 101, 197 media 200
area 78, 81, 125 mobility 7, 27, 48, 190–1
dress 98, 173 reform 13
South Africa 165–7, 169–70, 173,
sacred 15–17, 73–9, 83, 85, 91–2, 99 175–83
Saint Laurent, Yves 4, 149 Fashion Week 169, 177
Sales, Luke 111 souvenirs 77, 102
samurai 15, 26, 29, 36, 38, 41, 47 Spade, Kate 180
sartorial 6, 25, 27, 29, 31–4, 39, 48, 73, spiritual 16, 57–60, 73–4, 76–8, 83,
91, 198, 211 86–91, 112, 134
custom 41 belief 15
expression 35 symbol 73
modernity 25–7, 31–3, 42, 47 tourist 76
reform 39 values 60
Schouler, Proenza 186 spiritualism 17, 74, 83, 85, 87, 89–90
Sebti, Zhor 159 sport 98
secular 74, 83, 86, 90, 128 state-controlled 127
self, the 6, 12, 15, 17, 86–7, 89, 91, 138, static 1, 3, 6, 10, 25, 48, 59, 121, 136,
156, 173, 178, 196, 200, 216 139, 188
definition 16 stereotype 93
empowerment 137 stiletto 19, 191
identification 34 stitched 19, 76, 79, 93–4, 191, 194
presentation 138, 196 Stradivarius 149
sexual 35, 89 Strangelove 18, 165–74, 176–81
Shangri-La 186–7, 200, 202, 205 stylistic
Shaw, Letticia 113 change 7,
shifting identities 173 embellishment 177
shizhuang 16, 51, 53–7, 59–62 evolution 34
shoes 27, 99, 123, 172, 199 hybrid 43
shopping 144, 149–51, 169, 180 register 97
showroom 143 sub
silk 15, 26, 36–8, 42, 52, 75–6, 92, 106, contracting 148
113, 131, 133, 209 culture 77
Index 229

suit 2, 16, 26–7, 45, 48, 94, 114, 181 traditional 2, 4–6, 9–10, 13–17, 19, 25–7,
Sumatra 215 29, 34–5, 37, 41, 43, 45, 47–8,
sumptuary 51, 54, 73–8, 84, 89–91, 102,
law 15, 26, 29, 36, 47 106, 113–14, 126, 129–30, 137,
regulations 38 143–4, 147, 149, 151–2, 155–8,
superficial 7, 45, 190 188, 190, 193–7, 201, 213
superiority 2, 6, 127, 137 culture 91, 134, 173, 191, 195–6
supermodel 186 dress 2, 7, 9–10, 13, 25, 27, 29, 43,
sustainability 114–15, 203 45, 61, 99, 104, 121–2, 130, 167,
sustainable 106, 155, 193 188–9, 193–4
swimwear 98, 100, 113 heritage 10, 134
symbol 13, 42, 59, 74, 88, 93, 99, 123, transform 122, 127, 138, 186, 210, 217
126, 136, 146, 158, 174, 180 transformation 90, 123–4, 128, 139, 166
symbolism 97, 104, 114, 178, 182 transnational
synthetic 173, 177 culture 196
dynamic 10
taboo 54, 62 fusion 115
Taciroğlu, Nedret 122, 134, 137 Tswana 166, 173–4, 176
tailor 54, 143–5, 148, 150, 157–8, 171 Turkey 121–2, 125–32, 134, 136, 138–9
tailoring 19, 26, 39, 108, 126–7, 185, Turquality 131–2, 141
188, 192–4, 201, 203
Taisho 29, 32, 35, 37, 47 United Nations Development Programme
Taiwan 51, 199 (UNDP), 185
Tang dynasty 52 United States 63, 67, 122, 132, 134,
taste 44, 90, 167 136, 146, 175, 181, 214
Tazi, Tamy 159 universal 8, 19, 32, 87, 135, 188, 196,
temporality 7, 190, 202 212–13, 216
terminology 1, 5, 19, 199 untouched 11, 18, 156, 186
textile 16–17, 44–5, 60, 78–9, 98–106, upper-class 3, 83, 122, 139
108, 111–13, 122, 126–7, 137, urban 29, 35, 73–4, 77–9, 81, 85–7, 90,
149, 171, 173–4, 177–8, 185, 145, 149, 166–7, 169, 171, 190,
188–9, 193–4, 215 culture 5, 17, 102
design 100–1, 112, 129 fashion 52, 74, 147
fashion 79 identity 86
industry 45, 148 society 15, 156
sector 127 space 81
tradition 79, 84 urbanization 86, 191
Thimpu 190, 193, 197, 200, 203 utopia 186
Tibet 195, 204–5
Ticia 113 veiling 99, 124, 126, 131, 137
Tiwi Designs 101 versatile 59, 175
Tokyo 39, 41–4, 48–50, 140, 159 vestimentary
tourism 98, 187, 190 behavior 27, 48
tourists 76–7, 79, 82–4, 102, 187, 190, heritage 15, 123, 135, 146
193 model 29
tradition 1–2, 4, 10–14, 18–19, 29, 33–4, modernization 33
36–7, 39, 74–9, 81, 84, 92, 94, tradition 4, 121, 134
106, 129, 146, 153–4, 156, 158, Vienna 130–1
173, 176, 191, 196, 214–15 vintage 199
230 Index

visual 36, 78, 105, 113, 126, 129, influence 45

133–4, 138, 153, 197, 200, 216 modernity 35, 53
artist 34, 78, 83, 85, 166–7 philosophy 13
characteristic 18 westernization 4, 31, 35, 39, 42–4, 47,
language 9, 103 128
newness 37 westernizing 45
source of inspiration 18 White, Monique 109, 115
style 36 Wild Barra 113
vocabulary 132 women 3, 16, 27, 31, 34–6, 38, 44,
Vogue 20, 65, 186, 200, 205 52–4, 60–2, 83, 94, 100–1, 123–6,
Vuitton, Louis 37, 149, 180 128–30, 133, 138–9, 144, 146–7,
156, 159, 173–4, 189, 191
Walaza, Bongiwe 174 ’s wear 54, 61–2
Wangchuk, Karma 197, 203 wool 38, 42–4, 75, 92, 94, 101, 195
weave 76, 106 workshops 144–6, 149–50, 157
weaver 76 World Bank 187
weaving 10, 92, 177 world fashion 2, 5, 7, 188, 212
wedding 143–4, 151, 157, 159, 171, 200 wrapped 19, 39, 129, 189–91, 194
West, the 1–5, 12, 17, 19, 26, 34, Wroth, David 113
36–7, 52, 56, 62, 83, 123, 128,
130, 133, 135–7, 139, 209–14, Xaba, Neliswe 168–9
216–17 xenophobia 166, 179
West, David 174 Xhosa 167, 181
western 3–7, 9–10, 12, 15, 17–19, 26–7,
31, 33–5, 41–5, 47, 51–4, 59–60, Yeewong 200
62, 73, 89–90, 99–100, 125, Young, Lyn-Al 113
128–30, 134–5, 137–8, 152, 167, Yousra 152
188, 190, 192–4, 200–1, 209–17 youth 29, 73, 78–9, 83, 174, 188, 191
capitalism 6, 135 culture 17, 102
culture 2, 5–6, 17, 52, 100 fashion 100
fashion 2–4, 6, 8–9, 13, 19, 25, 31,
43–4, 54, 62, 89, 97, 99, 137, Zam, Namgay 200
209–13, 215–16 Zambia 217
gaze 17 Zara 149–50
history 6, 211 zeitgeist 104
hegemony 137 Zimbabwe 172, 179
ideology 17 Zulu 167, 179