Italian and Chinese agendas in the global fashion industry’

none1noIt is difficult to apply the concept of ‘authenticity’ to the case of fashion, which has always been the outcome of hybridising and crossovers. Today, the idea of a historical and geographical ‘origin’ of fashion, identified with Europe and long cultivated by fashion scholars, is questioned, if not wholly rejected. Capitalism and fashion are very closely related, especially within large-scale industrial systems of production, but the exclusion of fashion from the history of non-European cultures and economies is no longer acceptable. Similarly, the idea that costume and dress in other countries and cultures may not be comparable to fashion as experienced in the West is subject to criticism. To some extent the opposition between fashion (as quintessentially European and Western) and costume (for all the others) is also no longer valid. The contrast between the unchangeable nature of costume (of generic others) and the mutability of our fashion is something that often does not correspond to reality, as it rests on the ethnocentric idea that there are people ‘without fashion’ and people ‘with fashion’. Recent scholarship argues instead that ‘traditional’ garments evolve in different ways, according to their cultural context. New definitions are sought for terms like ‘traditional’, ‘ethnic’ and ‘folk’ dress (Skov 2003, 2004a, 2004b; Eicher, Evenson, Lee 2000; Hansen 2004)mixedSegre Reinach SSegre Reinach