Fashion Matters: The ‘Glocal’ Mix of Dutch Fashion

Abstract

‘Fashion matters’ proposes a new-materialist framework to look at global fashion. A new-materialist approach helps to highlight fashion’s materiality and understand the hybrid mix of both local and global matters in fashion. An analysis of the material details of the – often ironic – use of cultural heritage in contemporary Dutch fashion (e.g. Viktor&Rolf, Klavers van Engelen, The People of the Labyrinths, Oilily, Scotch & Soda) reveals how Dutch fashion designers tap into local clothing styles and crafts. Such examples are part of a growing preoccupation with local roots in times of globalisation. The current interest of Western countries in their own local, national roots cannot be separated from a fascination for ‘cultural otherness’ and for ‘other’ local traditions. Fashion designers and firms establish a look that is both local and global at the same time; or: ‘glocal’. The ‘material turn’ enables an understanding of ‘glocal’ fashion as both a material reuse of local crafts and as an immaterial phenomenon of globalized identities.

Keywords

• cultural heritage
• materiality
• glocalization
• dutch fashion
• new materialism