Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty - Fashioning Culture: Transforming Perspectives from Oceania, Jun 2021

Between 1837 and 1840, governor and chief John Adams Kuakini engaged in cotton farming and cloth production, the first Hawaiian to ever do so. His success in running a cloth-making operation was not done alone, however, but with the guidance from New England Congregationalist missionaries who introduced homespun to Kuakini and hired foreigners and makaʻāinana men and women labourers. This article explores Kuakini’s motivations for investing in cloth-making through the lens of his chiefly power, with special attention to the ways in which Kuakini asserted dominance over those who challenged him and those he believed were subservient to him. I examine Kuakini’s motivations and foray into cloth-making, which differed greatly from Congregational Christian ideas about cloth-making, further demonstrating how Kuakini’s power in the early Hawaiian Kingdom extended over both native and foreign bodies.

This article brings Papua New Guinean women’s perspectives on fashion, gender and morality into conversation with questions of colonial histories and global consumerism. The article shows that adherence to social norms is policed by women in the public sphere and that one person’s choices are enmeshed in ideas of responsibility and obligation to others. Increasingly, younger generations of women believe it is an individual woman’s right to wear what she wants in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Yet young women confront their peers in much the same way older women do. What women wear in PNG is embroiled in ideas of collective morality; plays out at intersections of class, age, race and gender; and demonstrates tensions between ideas of autonomy and collectivity. On whose terms do contemporary Papua New Guinean women get to decide how to dress: their own, or in accordance with community norms and standards? What are the contemporary and historical contexts of whiteness and colonial power that have influenced these norms and standards? This article brings together the experiences and perspective of a young professional Papua New Guinean woman, and her relatives, in dialogue with a young English–Iranian woman anthropologist.

In this article I consider fashion as a key modality through which young Fiji citizens experience modernity and construct contemporary self-identities in dialogue with global popular culture. A multi-dimensional tool, fashion is effectively used as self-performance; a way of carrying the body in public spaces, including dress and style as well as mannerisms, demeanour, body shape and comportment. It follows that fashion also intersects with other social categories such as gender, sexual identity and race in order to inform local social scripts in which people judge their own and others’ appearance and define the nature of a desirable, modern body.

In recent years, the recognition of creative industries such as art, design, media and fashion has thrust these sectors into the spotlight as valuable tools for economic development and integration into global markets. By establishing themselves as creative hotspots, developing countries grow small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and promote creative entrepreneurs who are involved in transforming culture. While an emphasis on incorporating ‘culture’ into design might also be seen as stultifying or essentializing culture, stakeholders working in the region consistently emphasize the significance of incorporating local cultures into their creations. In this article, we draw on interviews with Pacific designers and fashion festival organizers to demonstrate the range of ways in which ‘culture’ is woven into the story of Pacific fashion. In doing so, we highlight the ways in which participants are ‘remaking’ cultural identity and expression by ‘spinning it into something new’, keeping cultural connections alive and personal for those involved in these industries, while also allowing makers to situate their brand or product in the global market. Furthermore, we suggest that involvement in the world of fashion on a global scale represents an opportunity for participants to explore more inclusive and diverse versions of Pacific identity than those sanctioned or imagined outside the world of fashion.

Familiar narratives of fashion history in Aotearoa New Zealand recount the successes of Pākehā (New Zealand European) designers who have forged a distinctive fashion industry at the edge of the world. This narrative overlooks the history of Māori fashion cultures, including the role of ‘style activism’ enacted by political figures such as Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan and collectives such as the Pacific Sisters who advanced the status of Māori and Pasifika design in the twentieth century. It also ignores the changing nature of the New Zealand fashion industry today. One of the most significant recent initiatives to alter perceptions of fashion in Aotearoa New Zealand has been Miromoda, the Indigenous Māori Fashion Apparel Board (IMFAB), established in 2008. By championing the work of Māori fashion designers and prioritizing the values of te ao Māori (the Māori world-view), Miromoda is successfully contributing to the ‘decolonization’ of the New Zealand fashion industry. This article foregrounds practices of cultural collectivity, including that of style activists such as Tirikatene-Sullivan and the Pacific Sisters, and Māori fashion designers such as Kiri Nathan, Tessa Lont (Lontessa) and Bobby Campbell Luke (Campbell Luke), to explore the expansion of a more affirmative fashion future in Aotearoa New Zealand.