POLITICS OF FASHION
“Politics isn’t binary. It’s this system we’re in and all the ways it manifests. There’s the politics on your phone and the politics on your street. And, yeah, there’s the politics of your clothes”
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VIRGIL ABLOH OF LOUIS VUITTON & OFF-WHITE, 2020
Fashion has always been political. During the French Revolution the sans-culottes – militant revolutionaries - wore their rough trousers as a way of showing their working-class pride, the Black Panthers wore a uniform of leather jackets and berets representing a ‘counter-police force’ and civil rights activists turned up at protests and public marches in their Sunday Best to challenge white supremist power that deliberately kept black people at the bottom of the social hierarchy.
It wasn’t until the 19th century with the boom of the industrial revolution that the manufacturing of denim grew in demand. Hand in hand, the color blue seeping into the threads of denim was also stepping into revolution as it clothed the many industrial laborers who spent grueling hours working with machinery with very little pay. Hence the term, “blue collar” arrived. In 1949 the Mao suit, a style of dress for the Chinese Communist Party also used the color blue in their uniforms. In 1859, the color was celebrated in aristocratic circles in Europe and Britain while it became a color of terror for the East where it was forcefully grown. Same as clothing, the color blue also has a political dimension.
INDIGO REVOLT
The indigo revolt began as a conflict between European capitalists who traded the product and the Bengali cultivators who were exploited for their labor and behind all the production that went into making the famous indigo dye. The revolt was not a spontaneous one. It was built up over years of oppression and suffering of the farmers at the hands of the planters and the government. A revolt started to form between the farmers as a protest against the cruel oppression they were subject to.
All Images, Designs & Videos Mehvish Gulzareen Ali
