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The Latin American Fashion Reader Regina A. Root, Editor. Oxford, UK: Berg, 2005.
This brilliant collection of well-researched articles approaches fashion as a unique document in which specific elements such as style, and selective use of fabrics, patterns, designs, and color serve as distinct indicators of cultural identity. Because the variety of topics treated in this book reveals a mosaic of ethnic regions influenced by the unique combination of elements forming their historical and geographical circumstance, this text stands out in contrast with traditional studies that tend to view the region as a uniform set of countries tied by their common colonial history. As the authors show, the dress and accessories used in the customs of a given region are part of a "social experience" and communicate specific ethnicity, values, beliefs, practices, and economic status of many groups that form Latin America's cultural map.
In Visualizing Difference: The Rhetoric of Clothing in Colonial Spanish America, Mariselle Meléndez states that dress "has played a vital role in the process of identity construction of the different ethnic and racial groups." The dress worn by the different groups in colonial Spanish America was a visual tool to identify their place in the caste system and to reinforce the superiority of the ruling class, as evident in authors who observed the colonial societies of Mexico, Peru, and other regions of Latin America at the time. Similarly, Kimberly Randall in The Traveler's Eye: Chinas Poblanas and European-Inspired Costume in Postcolonial Mexico, explains in-depth the origin, influences, and transformation of the "China Poblana" dress in Mexico and its importance as a symbol of national identity. In her essay The Eastern Influences of Latin American Fashion, Araceli Tinajero examines the syncretic nature of Latin America's civilization, and the wide variety of Eastern products and influences visible in art, literature, and dress that combined to give it its distinct multicultural richness. In addition to these three studies...