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Re-Orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress. Edited by SANDRA NIESSEN, ANN MARIE LESHKOWICH, and CARLA JONES. Dress, Body, Culture Series. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2003. xii, 283 pp. $74.95 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).
Published in Berg's Dress, Body, Culture series, Re-Orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress collects seven sociological and anthropological case studies on the topic of clothing dynamics in relationship to local and transnational politics. The volume begins with a provocative introductory essay on the globalization of Asian dress by coeditors Carla Jones and Ann Marie Leshkowich, who concern themselves both with the globalization of clothing worn in Asia and with the popularity of Asian or Asian-inspired fashion elements in Europe and North America. Sandra Niessen, also an editor of the volume, provides an afterword on the problem of Orientalism in Western fashion theory.
Niessen's case study of clothing history in the Batak area of Sumatra weaves together archival research and longitudinal ethnographic study. Niessen demonstrates that, contrary to Orientalist expectations, Batak clothing practices have a long history of change and response to outside influences. Through three scenarios, Niessen links earlier eras of change in Batak clothing history up to the late twentieth century and the use of Batak-produced cloth in Western-style clothing marketed in Jakarta.
Leshkowich studies a Vietnamese outfit, the ao dai, a version of which won the title of Best National Costume in 1995's Miss International Pageant. Leshkowich's ethnographic research centered on a market in Ho Chi Minh City, where she studied the work of producers and consumers of ao dai in a wide variety of fabrics and styles. Concluding that "the decision to wear an ao dai is just as influenced by global fashion trends as is the decision to buy Levi's" (p. 87), Leshkowich shows that the ao dai itself is a product of global cultural flows, touched particularly by Chinese, French, and American influences. The author's central arguments echo strongly with claims made in the introductory essay to the volume. First, "traditional" dress is feminized. That "woman" often serves as a repository for tradition is not a new revelation but has particular importance for analyzing clothing systems. Second, processes of globalization-particularly marketization of the Vietnamese economy but also transnational migration and its associated cultural flows-result in...