Fashioning Female Identities and Political Resistance in Contemporary Chile

Abstract

During the last few decades, the act of remembering, of reconstructing and reevaluating image, has fueled political dialogues in Chile. The political role of fashion cannot be denied as an organizing agent, especially during the country's seventeen-year dictatorship and into its transition to democracy. This article, through the application of fashion theories, explores women's fashion since the 1960s, particularly as informed by the popular novel, Marcela Serrano's Nosotras que nos queremos tanto (1991), as well as other popular culture sources. Serrano's first novel sets the precedent for the author's elaborate fashion descriptions, arguably the most style detailed of her oeuvre. Nosotras tells the stories—in vivid fashion-laden descriptions—of four best friends who reunite at a lakeside house in southern Chile and serves as a springboard to explore some of the national and socioeconomic concerns of fashion that not only historically mark Chile's evolving fashion realm but also occupy the country's current fashion discourse. I will analyze the author and her characters’ deliberate use of clothing, permitting Serrano's protagonists to rip out the seams of class and gender confinement. Through fashion choices that provide an alternate means of expression, the characters walk the runway into an expanded political sphere, presenting newfound possibilities for often silenced voices.