Accessorizing politically

by Taslim van Hattum

In the ever increasing world of globalization and commodification, fashion and its 2009 trends have me looking towards the future of 2010 with a new level of consciousness—a step forward in finally taking cultural co-opting seriously in relation to accessorizing. As the new year dawns, not only am I rethinking fashion in terms of personal purchasing power, but more importantly, reflecting deeper on how the choices I make ultimately shape my identity and affect those around me, locally and globally. In 2010 I am leaving myself wrapped up in a fading fad of 2009. Comfortable having people think I am trapped unintentionally in last year’s fashion choices, I continue to rock a kaffiyah on any day where there is a chill in the air, and most any night when I simply want an accessory that makes my fashion identity feel complete. 

There is nothing new to my story about a young woman accessorizing with the year’s hottest fashion trends, and certainly there is nothing new about the story of fashion’s history of cultural appropriation in order to create these styles. However hopefully something new can be found in trying to accessorize with more conscious thought. I’ve realized I probably can’t count on fashion to provide my own education on ethical accessorizing, as fashion has always sought to acquire through appropriation of indigenous dress—kente cloth is incorporated in runway lines sporting “safari” themes, “harem” pants and indigenous Masai beading on feathered earrings are all this season’s rage. Moccasins line boot shop windows with trendy indigenous designs, and “ethnic” is now a firmly established fashion genre, like “bohemian” with a twist of “color.” 

The New York times recently issued a photographic showcase called “Prints and the Revolution” featuring fashion photography by renowned Malian photographer Malick Sidibé of African models wearing African-inspired and printed fashion designs by ONLY top American and European designers, including Christian Lacroix, Marc Jacobs, Christian Louboutin, Dolce and Gabbane, Viktor & Rolf, Bottega Veneta, Missoni, Gucci, Nicole Miller and more.  While showcasing ‘ethnic’ culture, few major producers in the global fashion industry speak to conscious fashion. Most ‘BIG’ fashion, with its emphasis on ethnic flair, almost exclusively follows the pattern of co-opting identities via clothing and accessories for mass-production. Little attention is paid to the harm done to local economies, and to people who have cultivated cultural symbols of dress for centuries to hold great meaning and significance. While there are limited small-scale exceptions gaining big ground, (fashion lines like Hemma, a popular line created by young women of the African Diaspora paying homage while supporting fair trade production in Africa and recognizing indigenous tradition and technique) few of these exceptions are competing successfully in large-scale operations.

The year 2009 went beyond African kente cloth, and became branded in my mind as the “the year of the kaffiyah”. Every fashionista and hipster sported the checkered black-and- white scarves—a scarf that I had previously been verbally accosted for wearing from September 11th, 2001 up until the current hipster trend of 2009. In 2001 I went from being a 2,000-year-old Arab farmer working my olive groves in this scarf to a straight jihadi terrorist hell-bent on western destruction, and on to 2009 when suddenly I was deemed a hip and fashion-forward individual who dressed with effortlessly draped chic.

Earlier in the year I realized this trend had really taken off when a skinny-jean-clad young man approached me one night and while covetously fingering the kaffiyah around my neck, asked, “Ohhh where did you get that ‘Riviera’ scarf?” (or so it was newly re-named by Urban Outfitters). Who wouldn’t rather imagine wrapping oneself in the Riviera-esque bliss of Saint Tropez, instead of the war-torn streets of Palestine? Never had a better marketing name change been made than from the unpronounceable and un-relatable ‘kaffiyah’ to ‘Riviera.’ I also knew that my honest answer of, “ The dirty back alleyway of a Middle Eastern market where I haggled for an hour over a 30-cent price difference” was not the appropriate response and so I opted for the easier-to-understand “Urban Outfitters, of course.” 

I found myself dressing through one of the biggest fashion trends of 2009 on a surprisingly politics-free platform by virtue of public ignorance surrounding the conscious and unconscious fashion choices we make. In the beginning I was delighted by the popular co-opting of the kaffiyah. I looked around and everyone was wearing them and my first instinct, as someone raised with the cultural and political symbol of the kaffiyah, was delight at seeing their familiarity fill the streets. Yet as the year progressed and they went from black and white, to florescent, and then to paisley patterned with skulls á la London’s Topshop I started wondering about the greater meanings behind the co-opting of this scarf.

Despite the mainstream media controversy dubbing the kaffiyah ‘hate couture’, Rachel Ray’s public apology for wearing a kaffiyah on TV, and Dunkin Donuts became politicized for something other then crème filling, the new ‘Riviera’ scarf was an instant fashion hit! Rappers like Kanye West and celebrities like Sienna Miller draped kaffiyahs around themselves, along with Busta Rhymes in his now infamously insulting “A-rab money” music video, which caused worldwide controversy, resulting in the song’s ban from radio play throughout Europe and the Middle East.

I realized that as much as I loved the familiarity of the symbol now hitting the American streets, deep down I harbored sadness that unlike your average fashionista, I had to make sure not to wear it when traveling. This was the case even as I flew through New Orleans, New York, and Chicago.  I saw other young people cozily wrapped in their kaffiyahs without fear of repercussion or assumption. It was a simple fashion choice on their parts. On me, the kaffiyah wasn’t just a fashion accessory, but a conscious historic and political choice of self-representation. It was like kente cloth on a European simply being a pretty and colorful design, but on a Ghanian denoting far more specific connotations about history, tribe, class and class-consciousness.

Although most people might have just fashion-trended their way into kaffiyah-draped hipsterdom, I spent the latter part of 2009 thinking about who this co-opting affected, as well as my own guilt at knowing that I slipped easily into the “I bought it at Urban Outfitters” lie in order to not have to go into depth on a nightclub floor about what a kaffiyah really means and who it represents. These thoughts and emotions led me from just being a fashion follower (who I will admit had a superiority complex borne out of knowing the true meaning of the garment, and therefore feeling as though I knew oh-so-much more then these average hipsters wearing it) to joining others in action surrounding the kaffiyah. While it was great to see so many people wearing kaffiyahs, it meant little if they didn’t know what they were wearing, and so 2009 seemed like the time to not only wear a kaffiyah, but also help others wearing it learn something more about it.

In response to the exploding fashion trend, a group of New Orleanians, led by Mai Bader and Haithem El-Zabri (of Austin, TX) in partnership with New Orleans Palestine Solidairty (NOLAPS) launched The Kufiyeh Project (http://www.thekufiyehproject.org), a project seeking to explore and support the historical and cultural significance of the kaffiyah. The Kufiyeh Project seeks to promote ethical purchasing of the kaffiyah from original sources to support indigenous industry as a means of cultural preservation. Locating the last remaining original kaffiyah factory in Hebron, which has been decimated by cheap mass-produced Chinese imports by American companies, the project set up direct marketing systems with original scarves being sold at a mere $12.00, cheaper by almost $13.00 than Urban Outfitters scarves and supporting the actual people who they represent.

Although this fashion trend of 2009 is nothing new in the world of co-opting and mass-producing indigenous cultures’ dress, it created an ongoing internal dialogue about ethical consumption to me and many of my peers. We often hear about how commodification and introduction of products in a developmental context destroys local economies, but we rarely hear about it in terms of fashion and how this co-opting ultimately conceals or obscures the exploitative nature and social relationships of production, labor, consumption, and the meaning of identity-defining objects.

The kaffiyah-trend is now slowly fading out of fashion with most people none the wiser about the politics of the accessory (a fault of my own on occasion when I did not take the time to educate kaffiyah-coveters further when approached). However, the scarf continues to remind me about my own purchasing practices particularly as I approach 2010 ready for fresh, intentional, and conscious starts. I don’t want a ‘Riviera’ scarf—a label that is really about the symbolism attached in order to enhance the product’s desirability, while simultaneously concealing the social relationship behind it. If I am wearing a kaffiyah in 2010 I want more than an imitation on a mass-produced and meaningless scale. I want clothing and accessories that are representative and contribute to my local and global community ethically. If we are force-fed consciousness in all of our choices: healthy, local and organic eating, going green, conserving water and electricity—why are we not incorporating this same level of consciousness into our ethical practices of dress?

I can’t say I am sad to see my chosen accessory’s popularity fade into last year’s fashion history. My feelings about its rise to meteoric popularity are complex, both happy and sad, but I rest assured knowing that like with any fashion fad, it is sure to be reborn again, recycled and renamed sometime again in the future. And when it does I will remind myself that regardless of its branded name the next time around, I am responsible for explaining to others what a kaffiyah represents, whose factory they should be purchasing it from and that it means more then just being stylish and warm.

(a modified version of this article appears on InvadeNola.com at http://invadenola.com/2010/01/17/accessorizing-politically/