Daily Times

I recently read the news “Eid rush! Tailors warn no more new orders for stitching please.” That was when I thought about writing a piece on fashion this week and not because I have grown tired of thinking and writing about terrorism. And it is certainly not because I no longer think violence and terrorism have become irreplaceable and unimportant in our cultural and social activity. What I am worried more about is the predictable, limited and boastful manner in which people talk about fashion. Indeed, fashion, especially in relation to clothing and textiles, shapes the relationship between self and society in unique ways and in this light fashion appears as the lens — the critical mediating force — through which one can analyse and understand cultural, economic and political shifts within a broad spectrum of societies.

These fast fashion brands, known for bringing democracy to the once elite world of fashion, have created a following of women who practice impulsive shopping, being blinded by the thrill of possessing something new as often as they can. While fast fashion retailers masterfully imitate catwalk trends in their designs, local retailers provide cheaper versions of high-end trends in their stores at the speed of light. It seems that high street tailors have learned from fast fashion companies too. Ladies tailors, feeling the success of fast fashion giants, have started adopting similar strategies, trying to provide copies faster and in bigger quantities by providing imitation lines, immediately available for purchase.

Waves upon waves of inflation and poverty have not stopped fashion designers here from continuing to swipe recklessly from other cultures. Critics should change the subject by examining the histories of what gets swiped and, more importantly, what does not. A favourite cliché among fashion elites is that commercialism is a bad word. The idea is that fashion is, first and foremost, art. Questions and critiques that follow the economic bottom line of fashion companies that profit, how and how much, are inappropriate. Yet, since trying to parse out what is an appropriate trend or not has not seemed to help anyone, the inappropriate is exactly what seems to be the need right now.

I have to admit, defining trends nowadays is not an easy task. Trends are in essence very complex mechanisms that mirror changes in the economic and political landscapes, and fashion itself is a reflection of social, economic, political and cultural changes. In this context it is essential to mention that ‘the trend’ is not what it used to be. Many savvy women now follow their own fashion rules, inspired by what they see on the fashion-animated streets, the internet and in the live-streamed fashion shows that are becoming a staple for fashion lovers.

Typically, it begins with a fashion event and this event, almost immediately shared widely online, typically elicits two major responses. “Cultural appropriation” implicitly or explicitly suggests that fashion is an expansive but essential personal statement in everyday life that you can afford and defenders, in increasingly strained tones, take the position of “cultural appreciation”. They say that drawing inspiration from the models’ bodies, fashion practices and objects of people of colour are acts of appreciating, admiring life and even loving status difference and diversity.

The popular chorus of cultural appropriation quickly becomes a performance in which neither side misses a cue nor forgets a well-learned line. This will routinely continue for several months and maybe weeks until it peters out or until style changes or the next fashion crops up, whichever comes first. Sadly, the debate around fashion in our society often gets more press and social-media attention than terrorism does itself and nobody seems to change opinions for the next go-round. Cultural appropriation controversies happen outside of fashion as well. Debates similar to those I have just described have sprung up on television shows. But there is a big problem with critiques of cultural appropriation. They reaffirm the very thing they intend to oppose: an insane amount of money is wasted on fashion and exploitation of culture in marriages at the expense of everyone else.

For an example of what I mean, let us look at a fashion trend that fashion bloggers, journalists and other fashion houses bring into our society. The trend emerged about three decades ago during the ready-to-wear shows in Lahore and Karachi city. Not long after, the same garments appeared on the bodies and feet of the fashion elite. The trend reached peak ubiquity when more affordable versions of the luxury garments appeared on the shop floors of mass-market retailers. However, famous fashion designer boutiques and personalised showrooms are far from the only places where these fashion clothes and accessories circulate. Copied by street tailors, manufactured in China and sold for as little as a few hundred each, their cheap price tag and their high durability make them popular carryalls for both the inferiority complex stricken upper middle and upper lower class in our society.

None of the critics levelling charges of appropriation, though, questioned the basic premise that this behaviour exemplified as high-low cultural fusion, high culture being popular fashion design and low culture being market street culture that brings nothing but a profound sense of emptiness in character strength. However, the truth is that the race originates not in fashion shows, in glossy fashion magazines or even in street culture. Rather, it gets stroked by the suppressed, insecure, false and pretentious ego of fashion lovers that incubates their mental comfort to visible immaturity at the expense of other important things in life.

This is nothing new in fashion; slumming is a trope in the rarefied heights of haute couture. In recent years, we have seen much appropriation of the sort. Wait while I question the ethics of the fashion industry’s appropriation of others’ cultural artifacts. I do not question the idea that those artifacts originated in a slum but I do critique the cultural appropriation proceeds as if there are only two places in the world: “western capitalist institution” and “slum”, which, of course, allows me to reaffirm the very geo-cultural power relations I was trying to critique.

This is the problem with cultural-appropriation critiques. They depend on reductive binaries — “high culture”, “low culture” and oftentimes, “upper class” and “middle and lower class”– that preserve the hierarchical relations between the fashion industry and the cultures being appropriated. This is related to the problem with cultural appreciation defences. Producers and consumers of culturally appropriated objects often present them as examples of healthy cosmopolitanism, of openness to diverse global sources of inspiration.

Have you ever watched a fashion show? What if the clothes the models were wearing were your normal apparel? Would you wear layers of multi-coloured makeup just to look beautiful every day? Our world is filled with not only an immense amount of makeup and clothing but tanning and plastic surgery as well. Even without knowing the textile history of the Céline, Stella McCartney and Louis Vuitton pieces or, in fact, taking for granted the Chinese origins of the second and first rated fakes, an inappropriate critic like me might ask how Pakistani women benefit financially and socially from a high-fashion craze that does not actually reference their cultural practices, everyday lives, and bodies. Does that craze afford them new opportunities to actively and genuinely participate in the fashion system as designers, consultants, consumers or in some other capacity? Or does it only worsen their historical exclusion? In other words, how deep does the ballyhooed “cultural appreciation” run?

The writer is a professor of Psychiatry and consultant Forensic Psychiatrist in the UK. He can be contacted at fawad_shifa@yahoo.com