Fashioning culture: Transforming perspectives from Oceania

Abstract

In this introductory article we discuss what might be gained from examining more familiar areas of anthropological research such as cloth, dress or material culture through fashion as an analytical category and, in turn, how insights from Pacific clothing cultures can broaden understandings of fashion. Our aim is to unsettle the ethnographic gaze that is often brought to bear on non-western cultures of fashion, cloth, clothing, style and innovation. Fashion, as we conceive of it, spans from the physical production and design of garments and objects to everyday appearances, the desire to be ‘in vogue’ and the consumption of aesthetic objects that are considered popular. From this starting point we move analyses of fashion from the systemic to the experiential, reflecting ethnographic sensitivity to everyday embodied practice and the constant political and creative negotiation of values and norms that takes place in quotidian social relations. We situate these analyses in a region that is often perceived to be at the very edge of the world economy and invite further discussion about the relationship between fashion and the global flow of people, ideas and commodities.