How Colonialism and Fashion are intertwined

Recently, I attended a talk in which Ms Ramanathan spoke about how literacy is the most important way to communicate and can be the only way in some circumstances, it really sparked my attention to how this links to fashion in ways I've never really considered prior to this. The main topic she talked about was how pieces of text have underlying colonialism, that is used to oppress those who aren't from Western countries. For example, a book about India's history of colonialism written by someone from America in English almost forces the people of India to adapt to these western ways, forcing control over indigenous populations and not allowing them to have their identity for themselves. It is a subtle way of Western societies holding power over non-Western countries in a way that means they can't speak out about their side of their history. Nowadays, language as a colonial device isn't as much of an issue due to our increased ability to communicate with each other, and different texts that are now able to be translated easily into all different languages. However, this oppression has occurred in other ways.

This links to fashion as the fashion that is popular and mainstream is usually brought about by Western cultures, Europe, and America whereas those in non-western countries aren't paid much attention to in terms of fashion and we force these Western mainstream ideas onto them showing how fashion has been used as a colonial device to gain control over the indigenous people and if they don't conform to these fashion norms that have been pushed onto them by the media and the rest of society then they are viewed as outcasts, further taking away their voice but if they do conform it's like submitting themselves to a more western identity in which the media has forced onto so many people. It is fairly obvious that we often do not see any non-western culture within fashion, just look at the fashion shows which take place which hardly ever attempt to incorporate other cultures. Western Cultures are very blind to this idea, that fashion often lacks inclusivity of other cultures. Colonialism is still deep-rooted in society, for example, we know the main fashion capitals as Milan, Paris, London and New York, all Western countries that have been highly associated with the fashion industry but cities like New Dehli have never been mainstream fashion cities

It is important to note the lack of diversity on the runway giving the idea that the indigenous population can't be involved in the fashion industry, It is no secret that fashion shows have lots of criticism for their lack of body diversity, however it is often talked about and some designers have tried to make fashion shows more inclusive in this way although, the lack of cultural diversity is rarely touched upon proving how fashion has been used as a colonial device, restricting indigenous people from not only sharing their identity through fashion but also keeping their identity, especially with the growth of social media over the years,

especially TikTok where the most popular creators are American

or English who spread mainstream ideas of fashion to

their audiences.