Abstract
Through informal and formal interviewing, participant-observation, and textual analysis this article investigates popular, political, and economic meanings assigned to treatments of the body. More specifically, this article examines the ways in which Cape Verdean youth in the Greater Boston area construct individual and social identities via fashion, that is, it underscores fashion and clothing as an important social sphere of identity construction. It highlights a semiotic web and performative practices where local, national, and global identities are negotiated and constructed. To this end, it asks a series of questions about the commitments brought to notice by clothes and fashion. First, how important is fashion in the creation and maintenance of identity? Second, how does the powerful and hegemonic racial coding of clothes and style affect the use of clothing by Cape Verdean youth? Lastly, what do the clothes Cape Verdean youth wear say about who they are or who we think they are?
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