SIT Graduate Institute/SIT Study Abroad SIT Digital Collections Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection SIT Study Abroad Fall 2014 Who Are You Wearing? A study of Moroccan fashion discourse, identity performance, and social change Leah Michalove SIT Study Abroad Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection Part of the African Studies Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Fashion Design Commons, Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Michalove, Leah, "Who Are You Wearing? A study of Moroccan fashion discourse, identity performance, and social change" (2014). Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection. 1935. https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/1935 This Unpublished Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the SIT Study Abroad at SIT Digital Collections. It has been accepted for inclusion in Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection by an authorized administrator of SIT Digital Collections. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Who Are You Wearing? A study of Moroccan fashion discourse, identity performance, and social change Leah Michalove Academic Director: TaiebBelghazi Emory University Middle Eastern Studies and Anthropology Africa, Morocco, Rabat Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for MOR, SIT Abroad, Fall 2014. 2 Abstract Clothes and their consumption become almost invisible in their very ubiquity, yet fashion acts as a sort of optical litmus test for the mood of society. Clothing can express cultural norms, serve as shorthand for social grouping, and provide a kind of corpus of visual allusion; in short, clothes and how we wear them constitute a system of signification, a visual language as dynamic, complex, and arbitrary as any spoken communication.