What is cultural appropriation and how does it have to do with fashion?

What is cultural appropriation? When I asked a couple of people this question, they responded with, “Is that when someone’s culture is appropriate?”. Not quite. In today’s media, we talk a lot about cultural appropriation and what it means. Cultural appropriation is the borrowing of another’s culture in an unfair or unjust way.

So how can you borrow someone’s culture? That’s a good question. We live in a world where we are surrounded by media and we take influence from everything that surrounds us. The world feels like a really small place with our advanced technology and social media applications that keep us so connected. Everyone is essentially one click away from any sort of information that they desire to find. Being exposed to cultures from all over the world, we take inspiration from other cultures, but at what point is the borrowing of other’s cultures taken too far?

I’m not sure about you, but when I’m scrolling through my social media feed and I see another country adopting something American, then I don’t think to myself “That is really offensive”. This is what many people view cultural appropriation as — the simple borrowing or blending of a culture, but that isn’t necessarily what it is. In the definition, it is borrowing in an unjust or unfair way.

Let me give you a more accurate example. In 2012, Karlie Kloss, an international supermodel, walked in the Victoria’s Secret fashion show in a lingerie costume that was Native American inspired. She was clad in a head dress and lingerie that resembled Native American clothing. Many people were outraged by this because her costume was taking a culture’s historical garments and turning it into something that is comical. Dressing up in Native American clothing as a costume is making light of a culture that has endured a lot of hardships. This isn’t taking inspiration from the culture, it is simply poking fun at the culture because of the way that it is presented.

This doesn’t mean that fashion designers can’t take inspiration from other cultures for their clothing. It just has to be done in a tasteful and artistic way so that the culture does not feel degraded or stolen from. As a counter example, Karl Lagerfeld, the designer of high fashion brand Chanel, created a collection that had Native American inspiration. This was done in a way where Lagerfeld was not making the clothing “costumey”, but creating high fashion garments that were beautiful because of the culture that their inspiration was taken from. The clothing consisted of beautiful patterns and fabrics that makes them more of a work of art than anything.

There is a lot of grey area in the debate of cultural appropriation. One can pretty much argue that anything is cultural appropriation if they wanted to. But sticking to the strict definition of the term set guidelines of what is and isn’t cultural appropriation. We are all sharing this world, and to think that no of our cultures would ever mix is a bit insane. If we all collaborated in a respectful and beautiful way, then cultural appropriation would become an argument that we don’t need to have anymore.