Sartorial Choices Research Articles

Modi à la mode: Narendra Modi’s fashion and the performance of populist leadership

ABSTRACT Examining the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's performative approach to politics, this study offers an interpretation of populism as a style of governing. Central to this style is the visual appearance of the populist leader, heavily coded by their manner of dressing. The article offers an analysis of the ways in which the Indian Prime Minister uses fashion and clothes to articulate three fundamental features of populist leadership: the appeal and identification with the people, the anti-elitist discourse, and the presentation of the leader as saviour. I call these the performance of ordinariness, of difference and of extra-ordinariness. The article demonstrates how, by employing various polysemic sartorial choices, Modi’s modulated performance of populism has been critical to his electoral success and in broadening the appeal of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Getting to Know the Other: Niqab-Wearing Women in Liberal Democracies

Governments around the world have gone to great lengths to discourage and prohibit wearing of the niqab, often relying on the justification that this form of Muslim women’s dress represents and produces the oppression of women. Setting aside that these prohibitions are themselves detrimental to women’s equality, this article focuses on the voices of women who wear the niqab or face veil. I describe and analyze how women explain their decision to wear the niqab based on interviews in seven liberal democracies. For most women, the primary motivation for wearing the niqab is religious, though supplementary reasons are also offered. The niqab is an embodied practice that represents a personal spiritual journey. Women’s explanations for why and when they wear the niqab suggest a complex intermingling of doctrinal knowledge and practical lived experience that negotiates religion day to day. Women often pair their religious agency with a sophisticated rights-based framework to justify their sartorial choices. Women refute the idea that the niqab makes them submissive. Their empowered interpretations of their religion and their conviction to lead a life that is different from most, in countries with pervasive anti-Muslim racism, suggest a great deal of independence and courage. This research offers nuance to the depiction of women who are typically portrayed monotonously, dispelling inaccurate stereotypes used to support discriminatory decision making about niqab-wearing women.

Embodied Aging: Everyday body practices and Later Life Identities among the South Asian Indian Gujarati Diaspora in Canada

This study explores how South Asian Indian Gujarati older adults in Canada (Greater Vancouver area) strive to maintain personal continuity, citizenship, and selfhood through everyday body management practices (exercise/yoga, medication/health supplements, skin, and hair care routines) and cultural markers such as food, sartorial choices, and community engagement. This examination, we contend, is noteworthy against the backdrop of contemporary North American academic and popular discourses of a burgeoning consumerist movement around the medicalization of bodies and anti-aging technologies. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews of 26 older adults, we discuss how growing old in the diaspora is marked with moral ambivalence between ‘successful aging’ and ‘aging gracefully.’ Based on an inductive thematic analysis, we identify four major themes in how the older diaspora negotiate aging and reorganise their lives through changing social relations and shifting cultural institutions. The first theme is the growing salience of both bodily and social changes in conceptualizing “old age,” and how the experiences of aging vary by gender. Specifically, while most of the female participants visualized old age in terms of a loss of physical functionality, the male participants described agedness in terms of a loss of economic and social worth. The second major theme encapsulates the acceptable coping strategies for dealing with bodily changes and the associated reconfigurations of social roles. While a fit body and functionality were regarded as foundational traits for aging well by all participants, corrective measures or anti-aging products were not espoused as the most culturally appropriate “Indian” way of growing old. The third theme highlights the apprehensions regarding growing old in a foreign country, including a foreboding anxiety of dependence and frailty in the absence of traditional familial care networks. The final theme, explores how for most participants, the notion of home evoked ambivalence in constructing their sense of belonging and identity, often expressed through everyday practices and memory-keeping. Taken together, we ultimately show how age and embodiment are inextricably linked in the experience of growing old in the diaspora.

Dressed for Work: The Sartorial Representations of Working Women in Early 21st-Century American Primetime Dramas

The present study is theoretically located in the field of critical feminist studies of the representation of women in the mass media. It discusses the ways in which working women characters construct and express their occupational identity in selected American primetime TV dramas of the early 21st century. The observed strategies, which range from highly restricted self-expression to unbridled sartorial liberty, appear to be heavily correlated with the prestige of the presented occupations and their levels of masculinization/feminization. Moreover, the self-limiting sartorial choices of high-achieving professional women, frequently containing their femininity, result from the competitive nature of prestigious yet traditionally male-gendered occupations. However, it is also pointed out that working women are generally depicted as determined to accentuate the physical aspects of their femininity regardless of the established dress code or traditional gendering of their occupations. Thus, the sartorial choices made by the female characters at the workplace serve in the analyzed TV shows as symbolic manifestations of women’s growing confidence as players on the job market in their own right.

Danitra Vance’s Cabrini Green Jackson and the Performance of Black Girlishness

Abstract Trough analysis of comedienne Danitra Vance’s 1986 Saturday Night Live sketch performances of a 17-year-old character named Cabrini Green Harlem Watts Jackson, this paper argues that performances of Black girlishness can explicate that while anti-Black and sexist violence and domination suggest that white people do not perceive Black girls as children, there are indeed telltale indicators of Black girlishness. Educators, artists, and scholars who seek to understand and defend Black girls have made the claim that since Black girls are not perceived as children, they do not have girlhoods, and this paper’s argument complicates that claim. From Vance’s diction to her movements and sartorial choices, Cabrini Green represents the paradox of perceived innocence and perceived waywardness and womanishness, an age-old characteristic of African American girlhood as a set of experiences and as a set of ideas.

Agency versus Insurgency

Agency versus Insurgency

Indian Costumes through the Ages: Insights into Sartorial Choices Using Mathematical Biology

Costumes of a civilization are studied as a means of understanding people, their thinking, tastes, and culture. However, the subjective ‘feel’ of costume due to their interaction with human body is an important personal aspect of costumes that has not been studied. We hypothesize that this aspect can explain the motivation behind features of costumes that change or remain immutable over time. We propose a novel numerical encoding of costumes based on the interaction of costumes with human anatomy. Using methods from machine classification on a set of costumes from ancient to contemporary periods, we show that costumes of different epochs and cultures are separable in the two dimensional principal component space. We use the Eigen costumes to analyze the immutable similarity in Indic costumes through the ages and the contrasting features between Indic and non‐Indic. We further dwell into primary sources to demonstrate that these characteristic features of Indic costumes were very likely considered and deliberate choices motivated by yoga in order to induce beneficial effects on prāṇa. We hope that this work will be a small first step for an alternate way of deriving insights into sartorial trends in various archeological specimen using methods from life sciences and computation.

‘The Rose and Lily Queen’: Henrietta Maria’s fair face and the power of beauty at the Stuart court

AbstractThe marriage of Henrietta Maria (1609–69) and Charles I (1600–49) was presented in literature and prints as the joining of the ‘lily’ (France, the queen) and the ‘rose’ (England, the king). Harnessing these floral analogies, this article examines how Henrietta Maria’s fair face was invested with social, political and medical import, and as such was widely cultivated and enhanced through physic, sartorial choices and painted representations. Her skin texture and colouring were considered a mirror of her dynastic pedigree, marital status and good health. The white and red palette of the lily and the rose were intrinsic to longstanding ideals of facial colouring, and to youthful bloom and fertility. This colouring was marshalled by painters such as Anthony van Dyck in her portraits, and strategically deployed through her clothing. Her physician, Theodore de Mayerne, also provided her with prescriptions to clean, smooth and restore her face. As such, the queen’s facial skin functioned as a mirror of her quality, a paradigm of health and a canvas for artists, wardrobe specialists and physicians to cultivate and highlight her natural beauty. The analysis is built on a range of primary sources including treatises, wardrobe accounts, herbals and cosmetic recipes.

Fatness, girlhood, and self-acceptance in Gippi and Fanney Khan

ABSTRACT This article explores the multiple discursive negotiations through which adolescent fat subjectivities are reconstituted in two films, namely Gippi (2013) and Fanney Khan (2018). Taking an intersectional approach between the fat acceptance movement and girlhood studies, it demonstrates how the female protagonists challenge, question, and eventually undermine the hitherto existing paradigms of corporeality in Hindi cinema. The fat female body that is often relegated to the margins of the diegetic spaces of visual representations and popular cultures in South Asia, is accorded narrative centrality to provide a differential grammar of beauty, success, and empowerment. Though fatness is delineated in these two films as either a subject of intense hostility and antagonism between competing girls or a matter of desexualized femininity and traditional sartorial choices, it still facilitates an oppositional and counter-hegemonic ideal that destabilizes dominant notions of sizeism and fatphobia.

MeXicana Fashions: Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity Construction ed. by Aída Hurtado and Norma E. Cantú

Reviewed by: meXicana Fashions: Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity Construction ed. by Aída Hurtado and Norma E. Cantú Amanda Ellis meXicana Fashions: Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity Construction. Edited by Aída Hurtado and Norma E. Cantú. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2020. iv + 330 pp. $105.00 hardcover/$34.95 paper. meXicana Fashions explores the complex cultural politics undergirding various aesthetic modes, self-adornment traditions, and shared vestimentary practices and their relationship to Xicana identity formation and cultural belonging. This dynamic, unparalleled edited collection is organized into three sections: “Rendering of Self: Personal Narratives/Personal Adornment,” “The Politics of Dress: Saying It Loud/Saying It Clear,” and “The Politics of Entrepreneurship: Making (It)/Selling (It).” Through thirteen chapters, the volume illuminates the significance of fashion, performance, and personal aesthetics as reactive processes and “strategic weapon[s] of public self-presentation” by teasing out the ways fashion is leveraged to counter the stigmatization and derogation of social identity (14). The volume’s raison d’être is to “argue that meXicanas are exposed to more fashion and aesthetic vocabularies than those floating in the hegemonic sea of fashion” and that these vocabularies constitute an array of political meanings behind Xicana sartorial choices (14). Garments like huipiles and accessories like sarapes, rebozos, and huaraches are understood as stylized multidimensional cultural phenomena that make up the tactical practices and visual semantics that variously signify meXicanidad. Ergo, the volume theoretically situates dress as an everyday mode or technology of resistance by which people “declare allegiance to particular intersectional identities or . . . refute them” (8). The single greatest strength of this collection is its diverse interdisciplinary and topical reach. meXicana Fashions forwards the analysis of poetry, novelistic [End Page 190] discourse, visual archives, blogging practices, and song lyrics by bringing together literary criticism, auto-ethnographies, transcribed platicas, and the qualitative and quantitative content analysis of mass (print) media. Several chapters contribute to discussions of decoloniality, as they relate to self-stylization, Indigenous fashion shows, and community art exhibitions. Each chapter sophisticatedly elaborates the conceptual terrain in which to wrestle with fashion in relationship to political praxis, effectively illuminating the ways sartorial choices become the mechanisms by which people articulate ownership of their bodies by refashioning, asserting, and/or reclaiming an identity through self-adornment. In the first section, Norma E. Cantú contends that though the huipil garment is linked to a specific region of origin and communal group, huipiles take on new politically charged meanings when donned by Chicanas. The volume opens with the voices of women who “claim the garment as a signifier of Indigenous identity” and who self-consciously don the huipil as a “referent to their ethnic identity, albeit one that has been denied them as mestizas” (41). Chapter 2 forwards Josie Méndez-Negrete’s intimate retrospection and visual art that recounts how sewing and embroidery became central to her survival and metamorphosis after her move to the United States. She vividly describes the huipil as part of a counter-aesthetic and as “a living, inspiring, and protective garment” that announces both her own indigeneity and her solidarity with other Indigenous women (68). In chapter 3, Micaela Díaz-Sánchez interviews women in the professoriate who use clothing as part of an expressive technique and political intervention, describing dress as part of “a choreography enacted by Chicana academics” as they navigate academic institutions (74). Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs’s auto-ethnography renders an analysis of song lyrics and common refrains to think through the complex signification of attire in chapter 4. The author ultimately asserts that though ethnic outsiders can only “abstractly and at best marginally comprehend the deep cultural meaning instilled” in Maya garments, “Indigenous clothes carry an equally immense value for Chicanas, serving as a deeply personal expression” of identity (101). Chapter 5 closes out the first section of the volume, and in it Domino Renee Perez poetically grapples with her South Texas familial legacy through close readings of vintage family photographs and dress practices to reflect on the relationships between intergenerational memory, adornment, family resemblance, and belonging. The second section begins with an ethnographic exploration of women’s use of the quinceañera tradition and consumer...

Modern Bodies and Changing Identities

Modern Bodies and Changing Identities

Ill-fitting suits and taped ties: Donald Trump’s politico-sartorial style

Because Donald Trump’s language and rhetoric attract so much attention and comment, discussions about the role of fashion and style in the Trump presidency are often limited to outfits worn by the First Lady or his daughter, Ivanka. When Trump’s style is analysed in the press and on social media platforms, it is frequently derided. This article argues for the importance of Donald Trump’s sartorial choices as forms of visual (political) communication. It suggests that Trump, whose appearance and taste are often subject to ridicule in popular culture, has actually cultivated an image of himself as anti-elite. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s lesser-known theory of the corporeal hexis to discuss Trump’s self-presentation, this article shows how, as both candidate and president, he has used sartorial codes to communicate with the different constituencies that were vital to his election and remain central to his bid for re-election in 2020.

Between the gangster and the country gentleman: Male fashion during the volatile 1990s

Official de-Sovietization during the chaotic 1990s ushered in ‘The New’ – ostensibly, a new sociopolitical and economic order, a new business vocabulary, the new word ‘rossiiane’ for Russian citizens, the New Russians and the new genre of male fashion. Much of the new, in fact, recuperated the pre-Soviet old, including appropriation of western styles in sundry walks of life. Within male fashion, sartorial choice signalled allegiance to the ‘new’ order, financial and social status, individualism or membership in various collectives. Glossies targeting a male readership served as both primers and advertisements for men intent on forging an identity expressed in sartorial choices derived from such western modes as grunge, pop, Mafia, British rural garb and youth-eclectic ‘casual’. For better and worse, that plethora reflected the seemingly endless options for the country during the Yeltsin era.

Crossing boundaries: bras, lingerie and rape myths in postcolonial urban middle-class India

With the processes of modernization, urbanization and the entry of women in the formal labour market in Indian metropolitan spaces, this article examines how the modern middle-class woman’s sartorial choices become enmeshed in popular rape myths (false beliefs) that serve to blame her for the wearing of western clothing. The article articulates the ways in which middle-class women’s social realities are shaped by historical, colonial and nationalist ideologies of modernization, constructed and mediated through moral codes of dressing. By drawing upon original and contemporary empirical narratives from the urban spaces of Delhi and Mumbai, we emphasise how everyday sartorial choices, in relation to particularly the bra and lingerie, can reveal the nuanced ways in which Urban Indian Professional Women (UIPW) seek to understand, negotiate, and resist patriarchal power. Our findings shed light on conflicting and contradictory spatial experiences, where some women internalize and negotiate moral codes of dressing, out of fear, and others who transgress are subject to sanctions. Given the paucity of scholarly literature in this area, the article makes an important theoretical and empirical contribution with its focus on postcoloniality and everyday discursive material spaces of gendered and sexualized dress practices. It argues for the consciousness raising of everyday urban geographies of dress that reveal complicated structures of power that are often deemed hidden.

From Unnatural Fanatics to “Fair Quakers”: How English Mainstream Culture Transformed Women Friends between 1650 and 1740

Quaker women’s plain clothing acquired a special significance in the eighteenth century. This article examines its meaning through an analysis of various kinds of cultural products, including plays, periodicals such as the Spectator, and novels such as Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740). It also addresses writings on the question of appropriate attire by Quaker authors. Women Friends’ sartorial choices became a parameter from which to measure the specific kind of cultural shifts that occurred generally in eighteenth-century English society regarding gendered prescriptions for women’s conduct and patterns of consumption. These changes are chronicled from the early stages of the movement in the last decades of the seventeenth century through the early decades of the eighteenth century, when Quakerism developed into an established denomination. The acceptance and eventual desirability of Quaker women as spouses, illustrates the ways in which English society began to codify and establish ideal wifely behaviour.

Leopard in kitten heels: The politics of Theresa May’s sartorial choices

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.

Cosmopolitan Veiling in Paris: Young French Muslim Women in Transition

This paper focuses on the beauty and sartorial choices of young French Muslim women in the Paris area. Through biographies on their morning rituals, this article questions the notion of cosmopolitanism when it comes to their veiling practices. Research suggests that these young women, through their double presence in the world – as French citizens and as global citizens – are powerful agents of change of the dominant material culture and consumption. Their varied beauty and sartorial choices help them construct a coherent inner and outer self and manage social and gendered interactions, facilitating circulation. It is argued that wearing the hijab can be conceptualized as a new form of cosmopolitanism, neither ‘from below’ nor ‘from above’: it reframes a Eurocentric view of conflicts between religious and secular discourses in postcolonial times, as well as French fashion.

Dissent Dressing: The Colour and Fabric of Political Rage

Dissent Dressing: The Colour and Fabric of Political Rage

Dressing the Myanmar Migrant Body: (In-)Visibility and Empowerment in Thailand

AbstractThe invisibility of migrants has been widely analysed in relation to states’ policies and practices. I argue in this article that emphasising the role of states and institutions in marginalising vulnerable populations by rendering them invisible throws a shadow over the multifaceted ways in which migrants interpret and relate to invisibility. Among Myanmar migrants in Thailand, as we shall see here, the notion that invisibility provides a protective shield to migrant bodies is in fact widespread. While invisibility is at times perceived as a threat to the future of these people, conceiving of invisibility solely as a tool of domination precludes us from fully understanding the complexity of Myanmar migrants’ experiences in Thailand and, more specifically, the many forms of empowerment that shape these experiences. Privileging the discourses and practices of Myanmar migrants in Thailand about their sartorial choices reveals that migrants appreciate invisibility for its capacity to create control over their own bodies. Further, it reveals the complexities of negotiating and expressing diasporic sartorial conventions.

Suit of power: fashion, politics, and hegemonic masculinity in Australia

ABSTRACTIn 2010 the Australian Labor Party selected Julia Gillard as leader, making her Australia’s first female Prime Minister. Between 2010 and 2015 there was a renewed focus on issues of gender inequality in the way that women politicians have been treated in Parliament and in the media. Specifically, women in positions of political and institutional power such as Julia Gillard, Julie Bishop, and Quentin Bryce, were critiqued on their clothing choices in the Australian media. In this article, I argue that the Australian media’s attention to the fashion choices of women in politics is problematically gendered, because it subordinates aesthetic features that do not conform to hegemonic masculinity. I argue that in response to the dominant masculine aesthetic norm in politics, women politicians are using their sartorial choices to challenge this marginalisation of femininity in the political sphere.