The Palgrave Handbook of Fashion and Politics

Karen M. Kedrowski, Candice D. Ortbals, Lori Poloni-Staudinger, J. Cherie Strachan

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9783031570728
• eBook ISBN: 9783031570735
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Critical Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines how fashion intersects with political expression in the United States and across the globe. The chapters cover a diversity of perspectives, including experiences of men, minoritized people and women, and LGBTQ persons, as well as examining strategic choices by political actors ranging from dictators to elected officials and from protesters to mothers. Perhaps more importantly, this handbook allows chapters written about the US by mainly US-based academics to be in dialogue with scholarship about other regions of the world largely written by non-US and non-European scholars. Several chapters address regions of the world often understudied by political scientists, including Africa (Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Sudan, Liberia, Nigeria, and Cameroon); Asia (North Korea, Turkmenistan, Indonesia, and Pakistan); and Latin America (Argentina and Mexico). This work goes beyond the usual analyses that cast clothing choices as trivial or constraining and shows how political actors from dictators to elected officials and from citizen activists to social movement leaders incorporate strategic choices about their clothing – ranging from uniforms and business attire to hijab and traditional ethnic attire – in order to advance their political agendas. 

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction to Handbook
• 2. Section One Introduction: Using Fashion to Establish Credibility—Looking the Part—Comparative Perspective
• 3. Performing Dress on Political Campaign Trails: The Case of Raila and Ruto in Kenya
• 4. The Dictator Wears New Clothes: Authoritarian Home Style in Action
• 5. Merkel’s Non-fashion
• 6. Gender, Fashion, Politics and the Left-Right Divide in Spain
• 7. Section Two Introduction: Using Fashion to Establish Credibility: Looking the Part—United States
• 8. Power Dressing: Dress Codes in State Legislatures
• 9. Who Wears the Pants? Fashioning Politics on Capitol Hill
• 10. Looks on Trial: Fashion and the Double-bind among Female Supreme Court Justices
• 11. Michelle Obama and the Strategic Deployment of Fashion
• 12. First Ladies and Fashion Double Binds
• 13. Section Three Introduction: Women and Minoritized Bodies as Threats
• 14. The Symbolic Politics of Fashion: Using State Power to (ad)dress Threats
• 15. Sizeable Burdens: The Effects of Weight Stigma on Political Candidates
• 16. By the Looks of Her She Is Not Credible: Sanna Marin and Fashion’s Influence on Credibility
• 17. “Eh eh eh My Lord, Looking Dapper”: Rebranding the Speakership and Women’s Political Leadership in Uganda?
• 18. Traditional Attire and Political Statement: A Case Study of Indonesia’s First Female Speaker
• 19. Section Four Introduction: Wearing Identity
• 20. First Lady Fashion in Pakistan: Bushra Bibi’s Transcendental Style
• 21. The Political Importance of Fraternal Fashion
• 22. Tactical Is the New Black: Examining Gun Owner Fashion as Political Expression
• 23. Flying the Coup: American Flag Apparel and the January 6th Insurrection
• 24. Echoes of War: Body Armor for Safety and Fashion
• 25. Section Five Introduction: Fashion as Symbol and Critique
• 26. Activism Through Fashion: State Repression and the Politics of Fashion in Biafra Southeast Nigeria
• 27. Frida Kahlo’s “Tehuana” Attire: Ethnic Dress as Feminist Self-Branding
• 28. From Cover to Kaba: A History of Women’s Fashion in Cameroon
• 29. (White) Boys in White Dresses: Racial Capitalism and the Limits of Gender-Disruptive Fashion
• 30. Querying Radically Queer Political Fashion
• 31. The Symbolic Politics of Police and Military: Threat and Reassurance in Uniform
• 32. Conclusion
• Back Matter