Fashion, Style & Popular Culture - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2015

Mexican tourist jackets entered the United States apparel market as a casual trend among women and little girls after World War II. Blazer-style jackets sewn from woolen fabric featured colourful hand appliquéd and embroidered motifs depicting such iconic Mexican symbols as sarapes, sombreros, burros, desert fauna and dancers. This article traces relationships among symbolic representations of Mexican nationalism on the jackets, development of the post-war tourism industry in Mexico, and subsequent reinterpretation of Mexico as an exotic yet accessible destination for US tourists. Methods included review of literature on post-war tourism to Mexico and examination of extant garments, historical photographs and needlework periodicals. Results reveal that Mexican jackets (originally produced in Mexico) incorporated symbols of Mexican nationalism, especially the emblematic national duo el charro and la china poblana as the dancing couple. An early tourist publication titled ‘Make Friends with Mexico’ coincided with warming of relations between the two countries and the beginning of American Airlines flights to Mexico in 1943. McCall Needlework appropriated the Mexican tourist jacket in patterns for homemade jackets linked with their origins as souvenirs of Mexico. Analysis of results argues for political motives that encouraged cross-cultural adoption of Mexican symbolism in American fashion. However, this seemingly benevolent cultural exchange through tourism was not equitable; Mexico had to prove itself worthy and familiar to prospective US tourists who associated the country with banditry and tumult. Transforming its image was tantamount to asserting national identity.

Despite the many exhibitions and catalogues concerning Carlos Mérida’s artistic career, little attention has been focused on Mérida’s numerous book illustrations. During the late 1920s and 1930s, Mérida engaged in several illustration projects for travel guides written for a North American audience, which incorporated imagery from Mexico’s countryside, particularly featuring people wearing folk dress. The travel diary Banana Gold (1932) by Carleton Beals and travel guidebooks by Anita Brenner and Frances Toor were aimed at this burgeoning group of United States travellers. While Mérida utilized a fairly consistent, minimal style for these projects, distinctions in his subject matter concerning banana plantation workers, pre-Columbian imagery and more contemporary folk costumes belie distinctions in Mérida’s intent. In this capacity, Mérida helped to create a sense of Latin American folk culture to a United States public via his illustrations featuring dress.

Mola blouses have become identified with both the Kuna Indians and the nation of Panama. The iconography on mola blouses has included images from North American and Latin American popular culture since the early twentieth century. This article explores the selection and display of images of consumer and popular culture by Kuna women with the later depiction of similar quotidian images in the early work of Andy Warhol.

This article explores notions of independent fashion design in Peru, addressing two actors within the local fashion design and textile systems that have played an important and relational role in its emergence: independent fashion designers and the Gamarra Commercial Emporium (or Gamarra) in Lima. Notions of independent fashion are explored in terms of their impact in contemporary fashion practices in Peru, aiming to go beyond a singular notion of independent fashion design. I will argue that a cartography of independent fashion design in Peru should account for the multiple voices and trajectories of the actors that shape it, considering independent fashion design as a movement of economic and affective dimensions. The article presents the story of Amapolay: Independent Manufacturers as a case study and one of many paths that shape the emerging fashion systems of independent design in Peru. It highlights the need to produce empirical research on emerging and independent design practices in the region, considering the experience of Peru as one of several national routes of independent design in Latin America that merit further study and theorization.

Upon entering the global fashion system in the 1950s – later than most established fashion capitals – Brazilian fashion had to find its place without directly competing with those established markets. Instead, the goal was to solidify the image of a nation with no resources as a competitor in the existing global fashion system. The goal was, instead, to solidify the image of a nation that had no resources to establish itself at a level equivalent to that of the existing fashion system. The desire for moda brasileira/Brazilian fashion to attain relevance in the international fashion world was an internal endeavour that would demand the recognition of Brazilian fashion as an industry-culture binomial. In that sense, the attribute of brasilidade/ Brazilianess – which no other nation could claim – worked to frame Brazil’s position in the global fashion system. Those aspects of Brazilian fashion are discussed in this essay from the perspective of the social and cultural context in which they developed while also exploring the permanence of certain iconic images of brasilidade, which guarantees the participation of the country in the global fashion system.

The purpose of this study was to explore the meanings that Puerto Ricans assign to the consumption of apparel products and how consumption is important to their identities. Puerto Ricans are the second-largest Hispanic/Latino subgroup in the United States. Research on Hispanics/Latinos demonstrate that the presence of this group is strengthening in all sectors of the US economy, yet little is known about their consumption practices, particularly the different consumer groups comprising the overall market. An interpretive approach to data collection and interpretation was employed to explore the meanings associated to the consumption of apparel products among a specific group of Hispanic/Latino consumers: Puerto Ricans. A total of 22 in-depth interviews were conducted with Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico. Data analysis revealed that Puerto Rican consumers are strongly influenced by sociocultural values when it comes to the consumption of apparel products as these products are used as tools to convey important meanings related to identity. Based on the findings, theoretical implications and future research avenues are discussed.

Some of our past research has explored Puerto Rican dress and fashion through fieldwork, examination of primary sources and content analysis. We have published on the Masks Festival of Hatillo, a Christmas carnival in Puerto Rico, where costumes are constructed by covering garments with ruffled pieces of fabric, creating intricate and colourful designs. We have also studied the Puerto Rican jíbaro or mountain peasant – one of the most significant images of Puerto Rican cultural identity – examining a variety of transformations of the romantic image of the jíbaro dress (wide-brimmed straw hat, loose cotton shirt and pants, and sandals or bare feet) as it navigates through time in new geographical and cultural settings. Dress associated with the female jíbaro (a peasant blouse with a low neckline and a full skirt with a headscarf, sash and large earrings) has also been appropriated in a variety of simulacra, including a Barbie doll. With this rich cultural heritage in tow, we assumed that Puerto Rican fashion designers would take advantage of and reference elements from dress associated with some of the traditions and popular culture aspects mentioned above. We have found, however, that the incorporation of national heritage and tradition is scarce among Puerto Rican fashion designers. It is left almost exclusively in the hands of souvenir manufacturers who also occasionally incorporate other elements of Puerto Rican cultural heritage, such as native Taino imagery, handmade lace or mundillo, and dress from folkloric dances such as the bomba and the plena. We suggest that, in Puerto Rico, connecting one’s brand as a designer with recognized symbols of national culture is not common practice. We believe that this is in part due to the commodification of said national and traditional symbols in the souvenir market. There are also strong reactions coming from the ‘traditionalists’ when designers venture to modify an element of something considered cultural heritage and use it as a source of inspiration for their collections. This attitude limits the exploration in Puerto Rico of cultural heritage as a source for design inspiration or branding.

Made in Mexico: The Rebozo in Art , Culture and Fashion, 6 June–31 August 2014

Alta Moda, Dallas Contemporary