In November 2020, State of Fashion (The Netherlands) produced an on-line programme entitled, ‘This is an Intervention’. Anthropologist Sandra Niessen was invited to share her thoughts about fashion and decoloniality in an on-line ‘Whataboutery’ and a published ‘Long Read’. She stressed the importance of diversity in dress systems, pointing out that the dominance of Western fashion has had a negative effect on indigenous cultures and their dress systems around the world. Afterwards, she received questions querying her right to presume what others should wear and pointing out that all should have the freedom to choose.  This short piece is Sandra’s response to those questions.

Thank you for these questions. They broach the issues of self-determination and self-representation, which were central to the Whataboutery.

What I hoped to do with the Long Read [Niessen 2020b) was to expose the obscured relationship between the system of industrial fashion and the clothing systems of people who have been positioned as being ‘without fashion’. The considerable ramifications of this conceptual distinction have bolstered the sense of superiority of those ‘with fashion’ and intervened in an overwhelming way with the cultures and clothing systems of those ‘without’. Furthermore, the distinction has restricted the latitude of self-determination and self-representation on both sides of the dichotomy. By drawing attention to the impacts of the colonial definition of fashion I have tried to facilitate awareness, and thereby ambition, to foster greater latitude for fairness between North and South in the medium of dress. For me, the ultimate goal is to eliminate fashion’s sacrifice zones – which include indigenous culture systems, also dress --  a challenging goal. I hoped that the Whataboutery would be a step in that process.

It is worth reflecting on why ‘we’ in the North, and especially fashion scholars, have for so long been blind to the ramifications of our ethnocentric definition of fashion. This has extended to not even questioning or testing the validity of this category called ‘fashion’. We have assumed its existence a priori. This realization drives home how subtle, deep and pernicious Eurocentrism and white supremacy can be, and how it can be inherited unseen and unquestioned. Not only has the category of fashion gone largely unquestioned (collectively, historically, from one generation to the next, and even within the hallowed halls of academe) but we have assumed, accepted, expected, and insisted upon its position of superiority above all other systems of clothing in the world. As makers and consumers of industrial fashion, we have become blind to fashion’s complicity in the decline and destruction of the clothing systems (and cultural values) of other peoples. Their position, as falling outside the fashion realm and being thereby conceptually erased, was simply determined by those within the fashion realm. This constituted a profound removal of agency and avenues of self-determination, not just on the side of non-fashion but, seemingly ironically, also on the fashion side.

I consistently point to the value of indigenous systems of dress (full of meaning, historically grounded, sustainable, local) and criticize the global fashion system for undermining those systems. Indeed, I champion their retention. And this is when listeners challenge me on whether it isn’t “up to the communities themselves to decide if they want to ‘buy in’ to the Western system”, given that culture is a living, changing thing that cannot be “preserved in a jar or a museum”. “Everybody should have the freedom to choose,” they point out. The colonial era is behind us; have we learned nothing? And of course I agree.

But there is another way of looking at the matter. Given how hard it has been to scrape the scales from our own eyes (the ‘we’ being the ones positioned as ‘having fashion’), it should be possible to perceive how  the lives of ‘other’ people might similarly be guided by inherited frames of thought. I have learned that the inflated ego on the fashion-side of the dichotomy has its complement on the non-fashion side. Throughout my 40 years of visiting Indonesia to explore the indigenous weaving arts of the Batak people, I have become increasingly aware of this. Since the onset of the colonial era, church, state, education, media, and the global economy have all served to inculcate in the people the colonial perception of themselves as being ‘without’ fashion.  There is awareness (how could there not be?) of themselves as having (been situated in) an inferior culture, an inferior clothing system, of being uncivilised and needing to be developed and modernised. It was at this juncture that I asked, during the discussion, “What [given this insight] is the role of the anthropologist here?” From the questions posed, I perceive that there was more concern about my advocacy as an anthropologist than the advocacy inscribed in the colonial past and implicit in the fashion system, including fashion advertising of all kinds. In response, I claim that my (indeed dubious) ‘right’ to tell people what to do and to represent them paternalistically was not at issue here. At issue was this larger complementary conceptual system and my conviction that we need to take collective ownership of it, to deal ethically with how we are complicit in perpetuating that damaging system. This is true for both sides of the great global divide that the system creates.

My years of going back and forth to Indonesia have impressed upon me the seemingly indomitable magnitude of the machinery of modernity. We have all seen cartoons of a forest being fed into the mouth of a grinder that spews out toilet paper at the other end, a metaphor for how our economy and lifestyles transform something of eternal and essential value into an ephemeral commodity. I perceive that there is an analogy to be drawn here with the workings of industrial fashion. My Long Read was an attempt to point out that industrial fashion has become a system for transforming vibrant, meaningful, locally sustainable indigenous fashion systems into disposable fashion devoid of meaning. My goal was to make the unseen and obscured connection between the two dots of industrial fashion and indigenous clothing systems visible. I called attention to how the conceptual system within which we live and operate has shaped what we see and do not see. It has focused our lenses ethnocentrically on the fashion side, to the exclusion of the non-fashion side, and left out what is going on between the two. Ultimately, though, my point is that on both sides of the fashion divide, most of us are blind to the overarching conceptual system and its destructiveness.

I own up to wanting to expand the latitude of self-determination on both sides of the divide.  I wrote the Long Read as an activist who is engaged in doing what I can to facilitate the changes needed for a future not-as-usual, but one that can engender sustainability and well-being. I chose, as an activist, to participate in the admirable and influential State of Fashion because of this desire to facilitate change. This was also my motivation for writing the Long Read. This is my recourse as an anthropologist. I am under no illusions about my capacity to influence choices taken by villagers in Indonesia. What is indomitably at operation, influencing choices is, among other things, the more than trillion-dollar engine of industrial fashion, its depiction of modernity, and its way of operating throughout the world, influencing political, economic, cultural and lifestyle choices. Let us challenge ‘the right’ of that system to impose itself everywhere! My power to make real change in a village is less than that of a flea to guide an elephant. The significant ethical issue for this Whataboutery is not how I conduct my fieldwork, but the workings of the industrial fashion system. In this, you and I are equally complicit. And the role, then, of an anthropologist? My writings and the Whataboutery are my answer to that question.  Here and in Indonesia, I approach the issue of fashion and clothing systems in the same way: by discussing the implications of the  dichotomised system of fashion. Raising awareness. That is my recourse.

And so to the question that was posed about how I try to facilitate agency: I hope that it is becoming clear from the above that, for me, facilitating agency was my ultimate goal in participating in the Whataboutery. The occasion presented a much coveted opportunity to share my insight into the need to shake free of the conceptual yoke that has shaped the operations of industrial fashion and polarised the world of dress. Anything less than this kind of radical revision will entail ‘playing the game’ within the terms set out by the current fashion system. In the end -- even if the violence is somewhat ameliorated --playing by the terms set by this system will only reinforce and expand the reach of industrial fashion and its conceptual baggage. This will, in turn, most likely engender further dependence on that system. The same goes for making so-called sustainable and even regenerative fashion. If these efforts take only the biophysical world and ecological footprint into account they will ultimately fail to alter the system. The many layers of fashion’s violence towards people and their cultures (not just garment workers) must also be addressed and redressed, and this will require that both sides of the fashion divide come to grips with the bigger picture. A paradigmatic shift is needed.

Just as the rejection of industrial fashion in the North has implications for garment workers in the South, I perceive that discussions on the two sides of fashion’s apparent polarity are complementary and mutually referential. Both continue to be informed by fashion’s colonial definition. I have proposed that respectful sharing of perspectives and intentions can lay an important foundation for a decolonial future. It makes sense that any steps towards an altered  future must involve both sides.

I am not aware of having either the ambition or the capacity to tell ‘their story’ – rather to do my bit to help create the space to hear ‘their story’ about what it means to be situated on the other side of the great fashion divide. (See my film, ‘Uli’s Voice from a Sacrifice Zone of Fashion’ as an example (https://youtu.be/qVLxga3TOsM).  I used the Whataboutery stage to share insights emerging from my experience of both the fashion and the non-fashion worlds. I felt the need  to tell about the deep injustices and violence of the fashion dichotomy, to point to the destruction that it has caused for those putatively without fashion. I aspire to helping the ‘fashion side’ perceive the cultural destruction enacted by the fashion system and facilitate repair, to allow diversity to flourish once again. On both sides of the divide.

References

Holthaus, Eric. 2020.  "The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What’s Possible in the Age of Warming," Harper Collins.

Meyer, Aditi, 2020. ‘intervention 02: origins - an introduction’

https://www.stateoffashion.org/en/intervention/intervention-2-origins/origins-introduction

Niessen, Sandra. 2020a. Fashion, its Sacrifice Zone, and Sustainability, Fashion Theory, 24:6,859-877, DOI: 10.1080/1362704X.2020.1800984

Niessen, Sandra, 2020b. ‘Regenerative Fashion, there can be no other.’ Longread, State of Fashion Whataboutery # 2. https://www.stateoffashion.org/en/intervention/intervention-1-introspection/long-read-titel/

Niessen, Sandra, 2020c. ‘State of Fashion Whataboutery Series, ‘This is an Intervention’ 01’

https://rcdfashion.wordpress.com/2020/12/28/rcdf-participation-in-the-state-of-fashion-whataboutery-series-this-is-an-intervention/

Niessen, Sandra, 2020d. ‘State of Fashion Whataboutery Series, “This is an Intervention”’

https://rcdfashion.wordpress.com/2020/12/22/state-of-fashion-whataboutery-series-this-is-an-intervention/

Whataboutery #1 2020 REWATCH

https://www.stateoffashion.org/nl/this-is-an-intervention/interventie-1-introspection/rewatch-whataboutery-1-regenerative-fashion-there-can-be-no-other

About State of Fashion

https://www.stateoffashion.org/nl/about/

Vazquez, Rolando, 2020. Vistas of Modernity – decolonial aesthesis and the end of the contemporary. Mondriaan Fund Essay 014. Amsterdam: Mondriaan Fund.

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