Dangerous Designs

Currently reading the tightest book ever, Dangerous Designs: Asian Women Fashion the Diaspora Economies. Parminder Bhachu talks about how resistance manifests itself in the form of fashion and through reclaiming your identity through the clothes you wear. In the 1980's and 90's, British-Asians fused western clothing styles with that of their homeland, creating a new representation of both cultures, while going against the mainstream. Bhachu goes on to discusses how with struggle comes creative improvisation. In the introduction she says,

"[British-Asian Fashion's] hybridizing aesthetics represent dynamics similar to many facets of black cultural production and have much in common with other forms produced by people on the margins who draw from a range of sources in highly politicized, hostile landscapes. Such cultural production constitutes a crucial form of resistance, often characterized by a negotiative aesthetic-which is all that you have when you are in the margins. When you do not have classificatory systems and vocabularies of command, your strength lies in your ability to improvise and to innovate. Music yields the most widely appreciated examples, perhaps, from jazz to hip-hop and, within the Asian diaspora with which I am concerned here, bhangra and its subsequent reworkings.

"Finally, my research would not have been possible without the help of my favorite people, my Punjabi women friends, the 'older and old' masis at the Sikh temples: these wonderful and brave 'honorary aunts' are the heroines of my tale..."