Fashion, Agency, and Empowerment

Book excerpt: Fashion has always been strongly linked with the politics of gender and equality. In this global and interdisciplinary collection, leading authors explore the relationships between the dressed body, fashion, sex, and power, with an emphasis on the role of dress in both reinforcing and challenging social norms. Covering a range of geographic and social contexts, the book explores the role of fashion in empowering both individuals and groups to create transformation and change. Taking us from the performance of black dandyism through stylized hats, to the use of challenging dance forms and male-inspired dress by female South African dancers to express independence and equality, to ways in which recent Bond Girls have challenged traditional gender binaries, the book provides a crucial entry point into discussions of fashion as an empowerment strategy. Fashion, Agency, and Empowerment encourages the reader to critically examine the cultural and social impact of sexual objectification, as well as to consider personal and shared narratives of self-objectification and repression. With chapters ranging from the iconic self-fashioning of Princess Diana to a discussion of sex, power, and cultural constructions of masculinity, Fashion, Agency, and Empowerment provides crucial insights into global fashion, political structures, and social life.