Author Topic: Dress decolonization  (Read 5913 times)

Zea_mays

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Re: Dress decolonization
« Reply #30 on: July 26, 2021, 12:27:38 pm »
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This sounds like a stupid idea to me. It would be equivalent to us as anti-Zionists walking around wearing kippahs!

I still can't find any articles about US professors/intellectuals doing this, but I stumbled across this article about Namibians. (See articles for pictures).

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The Namibians who STILL dress like their colonial masters: Tribe clings to 19th century dress 'to protest against the Germans who butchered them'

    Anthropologists believe the dress of the Herero tribe is a fascinating subversion of their former rulers' fashion
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2286624/The-Namibian-women-STILL-dress-like-colonists-Tribe-clings-19th-century-dress-protest-Germans-butchered-them.html

Maybe 100 years ago it was a triumph over colonialism, now it's just plain colonialism.

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Naughten told TIME that, according to custom, whenever a Herero warrior would kill a German soldier they would take his uniform, considered to be a badge of honor and an act that would symbolically “take their power.”

Today, many of the uniforms are merely bartered, bought or sold, but the influence of the early German colonial wares has led the Herero to adopt other more European elements of fashion. In this remote corner of the Namib, European style of dress has become a celebrated aspect of the modern Herero’s identity.
https://time.com/3797199/jim-naughten-conflict-and-costume-in-namibia/

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This website may be a useful resource when examining colonization and decolonization in fashion:

https://fashionandrace.org/database/vision-statement/