Ethnographic Semantics of Fashion

Abstract

Ethnic style is a notion that has come to stay in the vocabulary of fashion magazines. Should one open any of the manifold fashion editions circulating in Russia at present, one will inescapably notice headlines like etnostil’, etnoshik, etno&ekzo, etnografia, and others. What they point to is of course not the discipline of ethnography, nor particularities of traditional clothing of this or that people. The aim of the article is to discuss the particular Western notions of the political-geographic picture of the world as reflected in the contemporary fashion industry: major trends in intercultural borrowing, ways of interpreting, reading, and rendering traditional cultures and their elements.