Modern Fashion Traditions

Negotiating Tradition and Modernity through Fashion

M. Angela Jansen, Jennifer Craik, M. Angela Jansen, Jennifer Craik

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781474229500
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

Modern Fashion Traditions questions the dynamics of fashion systems and spaces of consumption outside the West. Too often, these fashion systems are studied as a mere and recent result of globalization and Western fashion influences, but this book draws on a wide range of non-Western case studies and analyses their similarities and differences as legitimate fashion systems, contesting Eurocentric notions of tradition and modernity, continuity versus change, and 'the West versus the Rest'. Preconceptions about non-Western fashion are challenged through diverse case studies from international scholars, including street-style identity in Bhutan, the influence of Ottoman cultural heritage on contemporary Turkish fashion design, and an investigation into the origins of the word 'fashion' in Chinese. Negotiating tradition, foreign influences and the contemporary global dominance of Western fashion cities, Modern Fashion Traditions will give readers a clearer understanding of non-Western fashion identities in the present. Accessibly written, this ground-breaking text makes an essential contribution to the study of non-Western fashion and will be an important resource for students of fashion history and theory, anthropology, and cultural studies.

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:

•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.

•to contest the idea that fashion outside of Europe and North America is a recent phenomenon and/or a result of globalization.

•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.

•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.

•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.

This is an ambitious remit as it seeks to challenge deeply held assumptions 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 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 advertised 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 of continuity and change, of tradition and modernity, of local developments and global influences. Both Western and non-Western fashions are continuously 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 revaluation of local cultural heritage as a counter reaction to cultural globalization. Consequently, the research cases in this volume contest the idea that globalization 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 categorized 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 categorized 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 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 counterbalance 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 hierarchical 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.

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 ...