The Cultural Biography of Hippy Fashion Free Essay Example

It is my objective in this essay to discern the cultural biography of a ‘Hippy/ Traveller’ outfit on display at the Fashion Gallery in the Brighton Museum. The garments that are exhibited include a jacket, of a grey base colour adorned with symbols and motifs; a black acrylic with metallic silver coloured thread pull ; purple and dark blue striped cotton jersey t-shirt; a multi-coloured patchwork velour skirt, a pyramid studded belt and a selection of jewellery consisting of a necklace, earrings and a bracelet.

This outfit provides a prime example of a renegade street-style culture, and therefore is appropriate for an exploration into the under lying and surrounding issues focusing in terms of on the influence and appropriation on and by a subculture. This emphasis should also link closely with historical developments concerning the fruition of the indigenous ethnic practices from which this outfit has been contrived, examining especially the notions of cross- cultural consumption.

The academic and theorist David Howes, whose work in law, culture and anthropology, is revered as a seminal articulation into the study of cross-cultural consumption quotes the essence of my investigation in terms of consuming the “other”: 1The relationship between goods and culture needs to be rethought, taking the constant displacement of things in the increasingly global marketplace into account.

In particular, we need to know more about the social relations of consumption- or in other words, the logic by which goods are received (acquired, understood and employed) in different societies.

Most particularly, the jacket and the jewellery reveal clear indications of Native American Indian influence, deduced from the style and layout of motif, with the presence of silver and turquoise jewellery.

It is here therefore that my biography takes its direction. Historical Insight Into Cross-Cultural Consumption The changing attitude, economically and intellectually, of Western Europe and its development of nation- states coupled with increased nationalist spirit spurred on the urge to explore beyond a non-European world.

This ultimately gave rise to what has been termed the discovery of the New World. This discovery would, however, serve to perpetrate many afflictions upon the peoples of this world for the second half of the millennium. With the arrival of the Spanish to the Americas in the 1500s, there came with it the arrival of a formidable and ruthless oppression, a cultural Armageddon, or from a Western perspective, the practice of Christianity and the ideals of ‘civilization’.

The Native Americans who had inhabited these new lands for several millennia, were thus considered to be lacking in almost all definable virtues and when measured against the codes and conventions of the White man were deemed to be savage and infidel. As the precursors to the eventual White usurpation of North America, the Spanish pre-empted and pre-conceived notions and ideas of the Indian inhabitants that would become manifest within the future treatment of these peoples.

This treatment would perpetuate racism, deprivation and by no means least, exploitation on a grand scale. It did not take long for the new arrivals to gauge the scope for potential labour exploitation, and manipulation of indigenous practice, as the natives revealed themselves to be prolific and masterful exponents of ostensibly textile weaving and jewellery designing, amongst many other crafts at which they were also proficient.

Trade between the Navajo and Hopi tribes with the new arrivals has been evident since the sixteen hundreds. In 1788 a Vicente Troncoso escorted a Navajo chief back to his village from prison and remarked that the Navajo women: 2Make the best and finest sarapes that are known, blankets, wraps, cotton cloth, sashes and other things for their dress and for sale… A proposition I made them…

in order to stimulate them more to work with the interest it will produce for them, which is in essence, their sarapes being so appreciated by the presidial officers, they might make as much as they can until the departure of the wagon train, they might deliver them to me so that I might send them to be sold and the proceeds bring them spun wool of several colours in order that with these making them more showy they would command a better price and be of equal utility, it seeming to them very well that my plan be executed.

Oppressive and manipulating methods were applied, such as physical aggression and forced intermarriages with eminent tribal chieftains so as to ensure maximum productivity and reward for the new arrivals. It is hard to understate the detrimental impact that White contact imposed on the native peoples of North America from the 1500s onwards. Their motives were greedy, ruthless and marginalizing.

Long after the Spanish control of the Southwest the nineteenth century saw programmatic attempts by missionaries and agents representing the United States government seeking to destroy or modify native political, social, religious and economic institutions as a step towards their political integration and complete social assimilation into the conventions of the American mainstream ideal of ‘civilisation’.

A civilization, that in spite of minimal attempts to create a state of egalitarianism via various independent agencies, in reality deprived the natives of their title rights to the regions water and mineral supply, as well as confining them to small and restricted reservations most often lacking access to natural resources. An issue which lay at the root of the conflict between White and native cultures.

With this assimilation, came the escalation of ethnic art markets leading into the twentieth century which in turn produced a rapid cultural transformation, whereby native peoples striving for cultural legitimacy and survival within the realms of the industrialized West were coerced into accepting the economic option of what Edwin L. Wade describes as, 3’converting culture into commodity’.

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