Dr Sandra Niessen
Sandra is an Associate Professor and her research focuses on indigenous weavers and handwoven textile production in Indonesia. Together with Ann Marie Leshkowich and Carla Jones, she co-edited "Re-Orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress" (Berg Publishers, 2003) and together with Anne Brydon, "Consuming Fashion: Adorning the Transnational Bod"y (Berg Publishers, 1998). She has recently completed a book manuscript entitled "Batak Textiles, Design, Techniques, and Nomenclature" (forthcoming, Walburg Pers) the final of three volumes that explore the social roles and history of Batak clothing and textiles.
Going Global with Fashion Theory
Fashion: global but Western. Clothing labels reveal that fashion is a global phenomenon. However, that fashion is a Western phenomenon is also a central component in the package of assumptions about fashion. What is fashion and what is not fashion? What are fashion's criteria for inclusion and exclusion? What do the criteria tell us about fashion, fashion theory, fashion theorists, and about the social machinery that renders fashion so unquestionable a force? I argue in this presentation on fashion theory that the conventional definition of fashion as a uniquely Western phenomenon runs on Orientalist momentum leaving both primary and concealed the power relations that are central to fashion's processes. This presentation examines the interface between fashion and non-fashion. While the boundary is in fact constantly shifting, constant is the mutual interdependence of both categories for definitional purposes. I contend that fashion's definition is too limited by a focus only on one side of the process, and it must be broadened to acknowledge the systemic inter-dependence of the oppositions generated by the fashion process. In short, this presentation launches a way of approaching fashion as a global phenomenon.
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