Publication Series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna VOLUME 22 Fashion and Postcolonial Critique Elke Gaugele Monica Titton (Eds.) Fashion and Postcolonial Critique Fashion and Postcolonial Critique Elke Gaugele Monica Titton (Eds.) Publication Series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Eva Blimlinger, Andrea B. Braidt, Karin Riegler (Series Eds.) Volume 22 On the Publication Series We are pleased to present the latest volume in the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna’s publication series. The series, published in cooperation with our highly committed partner Sternberg Press, is devoted to central themes of contemporary thought about art practices and theories. The volumes comprise contributions on subjects that form the focus of discourse in art theory, cultural studies, art history, and research at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and represent the quintessence of international study and discussion taking place in the respective fields. Each volume is published in the form of an anthology, edited by staff members of the academy. Authors of high international repute are invited to make contributions that deal with the respective areas of emphasis. Research activities such as international conferences, lecture series, institute-specific research focuses, or research projects serve as points of departure for the individual volumes. All books in the series undergo a single blind peer review. International reviewers, whose identities are not disclosed to the editors of the volumes, give an in-depth analysis and evaluation for each essay. The editors then rework the texts, taking into consideration the suggestions and feedback of the reviewers who, in a second step, make further comments on the revised essays. The editors— and authors—thus receive what is so rare in academia and also in art univer sities: committed, informed, and hopefully impartial critical feedback that can be used for finishing the work. We thank the editors of this volume, Elke Gaugele and Monica Titton, for proposing this volume on the nexus of fashion/fashion theory and postcolonial critique. Fashion as an artistic, cultural, social and of course economic pheno- menon provides ample necessity for a critique coming from a postcolonial perspective. Colonialization and globalization play a prime role within fashion and so a critical perspective, looking closely at the structures and processes that shape all the dimensions of this section is important. The authors tackle the topic from fields and disciplines that are all important areas of research at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, cultural studies, anthropology, textile studies, art history, gender studies and fashion theory, and bringing together these perspectives by inviting an international group of authors is a great achievement of the editors. Moreover, this volume is part of the Austrian Center for Fashion Research ACfFR, a research group initiated and led by the editors, who established a consortium of partners from other art universities. We would like to thank Elke Gaugele and Monica Titton for their excellent work and their commitment to the ACfFR and to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, as well as the authors for their contributions. As always, we are grateful to all the partners contributing to the book, especially Sternberg Press. The Rectorate of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Eva Blimlinger, Andrea B. Braidt, Karin Riegler This is a peer-reviewed publication. We thank the anonymous reviewers for Contents their in-depth comments and advice. Editors: Elke Gaugele, Monica Titton Editorial Assistance: Anna Berthold Fashion and Postcolonial Critique: An Introduction Editorial Coordinator: Martina Huber, Iris Weißenböck Elke Gaugele and Monica Titton 10 Copy Editor: Niamh Dunphy Proofreader: Claire Cahm Design: Anna Landskron, Surface, Frankfurt am Main/Berlin Printing: Holzhausen Druck GmbH, Wolkersdorf Decolonizing Global Fashion Archives Binding: Buchbinderei Papyrus, Vienna The Implementation of Western Culture in Austria: Cover image: Portrait of Grace Bol photographed by Sølve Sundsbø for Luncheon Colonial Concepts in Adolf Loos’s Fashion Theory Magazine 3 (Spring 2017), as part of the editorial “Sunrise Market.” Styling by Christian Kravagna 40 Matthias Karlsson. The Cape worn by Grace Bol is designed by Duro Olowu. Courtesy of Sølve Sundsbø. La Revue du Monde Noir: Nos Enquêtes Louis Thomas Achille, Jean Baldoui, Marie-Magdeleine Carbet, Supported by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the Austrian Center for Paulette Nardal, Rosario, and Clara W. Shepard 54 Fashion Research, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. This book is a result of the Austrian Center for Fashion Research (ACfFR), an interdisciplinary research Afrofuturism as a Strategy for Decolonizing project funded by the Hochschulraumstrukturmittel of the Austrian Federal the Global Fashion Archive Ministry of Science, Research and Economy. Sonja Eismann 64 ISBN 978-3-95679-465-0 (Re-)fashioning African Diasporic Masculinities © 2019 Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, Sternberg Press Christine Checinska 74 All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Last Stop Palenque: Fashion Editorial Hana Knížová and Sabrina Henry 90 Sternberg Press Caroline Schneider Karl-Marx-Allee 78 D-10243 Berlin www.sternberg-press.com Conditions of Postcoloniality The Production of African Wax Cloth in a Neoliberal Global Market: Vlisco and the Processes of Imitation and Appropriation A Brief History of Postcolonial African Fashion Christine Delhaye 246 Helen Jennings 104 Incommensurate T-shirts: Art/Economy from Senegal Fresh Off the Boat: A Reflection on Fleeing, to the United States Migration, and Fashion (Theory) Leslie W. Rabine 260 Burcu Dogramaci 114 Reviewing Orientalism and Re-orienting Fashion beyond Europe Appendix Gabriele Mentges 128 Image Credits 276 212 Magazine: Picture Spread Heval Okçuoğlu 142 Biographies 282 Rewriting, Adapting, and Fashioning National Styles in India Ruby Sircar 156 Fashionscapes, Hybridity, and the White Gaze Birgit Haehnel 170 Entangling Critical Global Fashion Histories Remodeling the Past, Cross-dressing the Future: Postcolonial Self-Fashioning for the Global Art Market Birgit Mersmann 188 Re-mastering the Old World: Picture Spread from the Ikiré Jones Archive Walé Oyéjidé Esq. 202 Textiles Designing Another History: Wael Shawky’s Cabaret Crusades Gabriele Genge and Angela Stercken 210 Traveling Fashion: Exoticism and Tropicalism Alexandra Karentzos 230 Elke Gaugele, Monica Titton 11 At present we are witnessing an epistemological turn in fashion research. Fashion theory is increasingly concerned with the project of a critical global fashion and design history that takes into account a postcolonial fashion Fashion and 1 perspective. This paradigmatic shift is part of an ongoing process that, over the past two decades, has initiated complex interdisciplinary debates within disciplines such as fashion history, anthropology, sociology, art history, and cultural studies that aim to establish a postcolonial perspective for fashion Postcolonial research. Since the works of key postcolonial thinkers like Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha, and Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak have to a large extent not yet been adequately received in fashion theory, there is still a lot of conceptual and theoretical work to be done. Postcolonial theory is a critique of European knowledge and predominantly employs post-structuralist discourse and literary Critique 2 analysis. When this heterogeneous, theoretical apparatus—characterized by an intellectual history with a dialectic between Marxism and post-structuralism/ postmodernism3—is applied to the equally heterogeneous field of fashion research—a discipline that largely focuses on material, bodily, economic, social, An Introduction and cultural practices—postcolonial theory itself is challenged and eventually even revised. Although decolonization is, in the words of James Clifford, “an unfinished, excessive historical process,”4 the main corpus of postcolonial theory, Elke Gaugele and Monica Titton which emerged in the 1980s and ’90s, has seen many paradigmatic shifts and transformations of its scope and reach. Consequently Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak opens her book Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999) with the declaration that postcolonial/colonial discourse studies are becoming “a substantial sub- disciplinary ghetto.”5 Also Stuart Hall has asserted that “the post-colonial” as a decisive, hyphenated temporal marker within the general process of decolo- nization is highly problematic, yet he still saw it as a useful concept “to describe or characterize the shift in global relations which marks the (necessarily uneven) transition from the age of Empires to the post-independence or post-decolo- nization movement,” and as a frame of mind “to identify what are the new rela- tions and dispositions of power which are emerging in the new conjuncture.”6 And even though the growing “postcolonial theory industry” has enforced the 1 The idea for this book goes back to a 3 Gandhi, viii. symposium organized by Elke Gaugele, 4 James Clifford, Returns: Becoming Monica Titton, and Birgit Haehnel entitled Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century “Re-visioning Fashion Theories: Post co lo nial (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University and Critical Transcultural Perspec tives” Press, 2013), 6. (symposium, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 5 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of December 11–12, 2015). The sym posium Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of was organized in cooperation with