Fashioning Brazil: Globalization and the Representation of Brazilian Dress in National Geographic

Description

Examining the dynamics between subject, photographer and viewer, Fashioning Brazil analyses how Brazilians have appropriated and reinterpreted clothing influences from local and global cultures. Exploring the various ways in which Brazil has been fashioned by the pioneering scientific and educational magazine, National Geographic, the book encourages us to look beyond simplistic representations of exotic difference. Instead, it brings to light an extensive history of self-fashioning within Brazil, which has emerged through cross-cultural contact, slavery, and immigration. Providing an in-depth examination of Brazilian dress and fashion practices as represented by the quasi-ethnographic gaze of National Geographic and National Geographic Brazil (the Portuguese language edition of the magazine, established in 2000), the book unpacks a series of case studies. Taking us from body paint to Lycra, via loincloths and bikinis, Kutesko frames her analysis within the historical, cultural, and political context of Latin American interactions with the United States. Exploring how dress can be used to manipulate identity and disrupt expectations, Fashioning Brazil examines readers' sensory engagements with an iconic magazine, and sheds new light on key debates concerning global dress and fashion.

Elizabeth Kutesko is Lecturer in Fashion History and Theory, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK.

Fashioning Brazil will surely prove useful to more than a few scholars ... Kutesko speaks in a very persuasive voice. * The Journal of Dress History * Fashioning Brazil is a game changer in anthropological-cultural understandings of fashion cultures. By unpicking the representation of Brazilian dress in a century of National Geographic, Kutesko shows how national identity is shaped by dress from inside and outside, by western and non-western influences and gazes. -- Jennifer Craik, Queensland University of Technology, Australia A highly original and deeply researched exploration of the intersections of fashion, nation, and mass media representation that illuminates all three of these elements. This work's implications are far-reaching and interrogate the impact of images and the complexities of identities. -- Victoria L. Rovine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA and author of 'African Fashion, Global Style: Histories, Innovations, and Ideas You Can Wear'