Clothing Cultures - Volume 6, Issue 2, 2019

This study explored the symbolic meaning of modest dress, generally referred to as hijab, to Egyptian Muslim women living in the United States. In the diaspora, women need to integrate the requirements for religious modesty when shopping for western apparel that is not designed to align with their values of modesty. Face-to-face, in-depth interviews with photo-elicitation were conducted with ten veiled Muslim women to explore the symbolic meaning of hijab and their views on modest clothing as it relates to religiosity. Three themes surfaced as the participants discussed their experiences: (1) intrinsic and extrinsic values of hijab – adapting to US norms, (2) the accessibility and attributes of modest clothing and (3) defining modest hijab based on religiosity – three types. The findings of this study may help non-Muslims understand the symbolic message of hijab and the different types of modest clothing related to religiosity.

Since their invention in the 1930s, t-shirts have become one of the most common styles of casual clothing in the United States – worn by all ages, genders and social classes. Although ‘graphic’ t-shirts have existed for decades, twenty-first-century technologies have made them much faster and easier to produce. Students protesting the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s wore black armbands and grew their hair long; today, students (and activists of all ages) are more likely to wear political t-shirts. In a time when anyone with modest computer skills can design a graphic and get t-shirts professionally printed and shipped in just two or three days, this medium for self- and group-expression is well-suited to the turbulence of politics. This article explores the recent history of political t-shirts in the United States in two parts. The first focuses on legislation and legal rulings, including a case heard by the US Supreme Court in 2018 regarding whether activists can wear political t-shirts in polling places (a space where any kind of campaign activity is generally forbidden). The second part explores the definition of a ‘political’ t-shirt. This section is grounded in a study of t-shirts that are currently turning up in thrift shops in Bloomington, IN – a small, politically active community in a conservative state that voted for Obama in 2008 and then Trump in 2016.

This article discusses the clothing choices of Theresa May as a female Member of Parliament (MP) and as the second woman prime minister of Great Britain. A Conservative MP since 1997 with a conservative background growing up a Vicar’s daughter and grammar school education, Mrs May’s sartorial choices have evolved to conform with an understanding of female MP’s as proxy men and to reflect British national dress as defined by tradition. However, within this conservative persona, a discordant note is struck by her choice of shoes. Not always neutral, in this article, her choice of fabric is examined as a form of ‘everyday resistance’. Compromised as these choices are, her choice of leopard print kitten heels is suggested as a form of subaltern resistance.

Clothing communicates our attitudes and positions in the world, particularly when a dress is used as a vehicle for protest. This article has two goals. First, it analyses the history of protest dress of Black American resistance movements. Second, it scrutinizes the public perception of these movements by reviewing white media images of Black bodies participating in the resistance. The media shapes our world as well as public perceptions. It is linked to social change, thus, investigating various media images allows us to explore the cultural systems in which we live and the complexity of different means of communication and human interactions. Two theoretical frameworks have driven the research process. Social semiotics was employed to explain meaning-making as a social process and critical race theory to investigate the ways in which racialized bodies are perceived in white media. The latter was chosen because of its usefulness for examining society’s categorizations of race, law, power and culture. Through the lens of these two theoretical frameworks, it becomes evident that the dress of Black American protestors has historically communicated various discourses at the same time.

Since colonial times, clothing has had a phenomenal and perhaps complex political implication in Indian politics. The political leaders Mahatma Gandhi, B. R. Ambedkar, Jawaharlal Nehru and others had used their attire to exhibit their politics and ideology. In postcolonial India, the ideological battle between different political parties and the various ideological movements have often used clothing as one of the most effective medium to express their loyalty, identity and differences. However, the politics of clothing, its colours and the style of wearing in the democratic Indian context have received little academic attention. This article attempts to explore some aspects of clothing in postcolonial Indian democracy through an in-depth study. The researcher engages in an ethnographic investigation to understand the ways in which different political ideologies are exhibited through clothing and how it is used to display their political identity in public spaces. The article argues that beyond a system of governance, democracy contributes to shaping people’s imagination of clothing, create meaning for specific colours, style of wearing and pave the way for physical and symbolic forms of violence and conflict.

Punk is a lifestyle, ethos and perspective that deals with social unrest and personal discontent. Learning models are applied as framework in this research to contemplate how punk is learned and enacted as a lifestyle by going through daily fashion merchandising and social practices, such as how punks engage with artefacts and the rules of their scene. The punk subculture uses a pedagogy to their fashion production and consumption, employing the garments of their sartorial style with community interactions to create and symbolize their ethos. The community interacts in unision as newcomers to the scene learn from established participants, take in the knowledge available to them, and shift to self-produced ideas to develop their individualized punk ethos. This study used qualitative online surveys, in-person interviews and social media discussions from self-identified punks in the United States and Canada, as well as archival visits to punk-themed collections in order to analyse the experience of individuals who produce, consume and communicate their punk ethos through their garments.

This article argues for the consideration of the lecture-performance as a genre that offers rich possibilities for critical fashion discourse, one that is uniquely suited to the material, embodied nature of clothing.The article recounts a lecture-performance by Australian-based design group The Stitchery Collective, which explored moments in history that demonstrate fashion’s capacity to resist, rebel and turn the political into the fabulous. From Amelia Bloomer’s bloomers to the sans-culottes of revolutionary France, fashion has acted as a tool and medium for great social protest and momentum for change. In contemporary fashion, local designers in Australia embed counter-fashion ideology into their business practices to offer a counteraction to the more negative effects of capital-F Fashion. The lecture-performance aimed to reframe personal consumption choices in the now, via the political fashion of the past, as politically motivated and most of all, capable of contributing to real change. The Stitchery proposed that in fashion, the personal is political and the political is personal, both throughout history and in the present day. The creative work combined public lecture, historical dress up, contemporary fashion showcase and call to action in an engaging lecture-performance format.