Anti-imperialism, ambiguity and the emergence of the sherwani-topi style in Hyderabad state, 1860–1900 | Intellect Skip to content
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Decolonizing Fashion as Process
  • ISSN: 2051-7106
  • E-ISSN: 2051-7114

Abstract

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Indian ‘princely state’ of Hyderabad became strongly associated with a particular form of male dress based around the long coat and fez or . Although often dismissed as a mere Indian frock coat by colonial commentators and historians, by 1890 the was widely recognized within India as a distinctively Hyderabadi garment, symbolizing the state’s continued autonomy and claims to civilized, modernizing legitimacy. Yet the encompassed many influences, from colonial European to Ottoman Turkish and regional Deccani, and was a product not of deliberate design, but gradual and often haphazard evolution within the specific social context of 1860–90s Hyderabad. Popular resentment of the soberly clad colonial and western-educated North Indian outsiders who predominantly staffed the newly reformed state administration, for example, drove a return to bright patterning, greater length and use of local fabrics like . Using archives of photography, memoir and costume to trace the ’s development, this article shows this era as one defined by a creative multiplicity of visions for identity and self-fashioning, engaging not only hegemonic-colonial constructs of civilized masculinity but also emergent North Indian reform movements and localized changes of sociopolitical structure, urban space and consumer opportunity.

Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • SSRC IDRF and CLIR-Mellon fellowships
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2022-10-01
2024-04-27
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Anti-imperialism, ambiguity and the emergence of the sherwani-topi style in Hyderabad state, 1860–1900
International Journal of Fashion Studies 9, 257 (2022); https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00071_1
/content/journals/10.1386/infs_00071_1
/content/journals/10.1386/infs_00071_1
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): fez; globalization; imperialism; masculinity; Mughlai culture; Ottoman fashion; South Asian fashion; South–South connections

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