It's that time of year again..

sun is shining, flowers in bloom, love in the air, and CULTURAL APPROPRIATION OF "OTHERS" seem to be some kind of contagion, particularly in warm weather. It is of great interest to me how brands like Free People and Anthropologie keep bringing back that "Indian Summer" theme every year (both Native American and from India). The most recent Anthropologie catalogue is set in India.




For most fashion catalogues of this variety, the models get to travel to different countries to model the brand's clothes. In every image, they seem to use the background of native people as props [appropriation] to further emphasize the tallness and whiteness of the main model. It is a bit unsettling to me. What exactly do these clothes have to do with India? Furthermore, the company and its advertisements seem to promote a kind of well-rounded and conscious lifestyle (the Anthropologie woman can look chic even while travelling in a third world country!), but there is never any semblance of interaction with the native people, so what exactly is the point of having them in the photo?

I'm not saying that fashion has to be a political thing or that you can't wear clothes that don't "belong" to your culture. It's iffy territory, I think because clothing as something that you can change in and out of so easily is not necessarily considered a very vital part of cultural identity, outside the realm of religious or ritual regalia (even this is not altogether recognized, as evidenced by the number of hipster heads adorned by Native American headdresses at summer music festivals). Personally, I think it is really dumb when white people wear dreads, for instance, or when they wear a bindi on their forehead or something like that. It's great that you are interested in other people's cultures but for something that has more cultural and historical significance, you better have a better reason than "it looks cool." I know that in the case of garments like the keffiyeh, harem pants, and even fabric that have used batik dyeing, people have appropriated it so much to the point that we don't even think about its origin, but that is the very root of the issue.

I might have posted about this before, but Yellow Apparel: When the Coolie Becomes Cool is an excellent film about this very topic. Look, I'll even embed it for you.

yellow apparel: when the coolie becomes cool from Yellow Apparel on Vimeo.