The Power of Fashion: Negotiating Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Moroccan Society (original) (raw)

16th IFFTI Annual Conference 2014 Title : The Power of Fashion: Negotiating Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Moroccan Society Subtheme : The Cultural Aspects of Fashion Keywords : Morocco, fashion, globalization, tradition, modernity Note : This paper was awarded the Junior Faculty IFFTI Initiatives Award Although there have been fears that globalization would lead to global cultural homogeneity based on especially a Western model, social scientists have contested this, insisting that receivers of cultural flows are not passive agents but that cultural materials always entail local interpretation, translation and customization on the part of the receiving subject. A good example is the introduction of Western fashion on a large scale in Morocco, which did not threaten the continuity of Moroccan fashion, but on the contrary, accelerated its development mainly by introducing new consumption and commercialization patterns that are applied to Moroccan fashion. Because Moroccan and Western fashion have different values, meet different needs and therefore represent different markets, they do not compete with one other. The power of fashion lays in the fact that it allows people to negotiate concepts of continuity and change, tradition and modernity and local and global. Western fashion brands have, first of all, contributed to an important extent to the democratization of fashion in Morocco by making fashion trends accessible to a wider range of social classes through fashion boutiques and advertisement. Secondly, they have contributed to the commodification of Moroccan fashion, resulting in a switch from a craft to an industry, consumption based on demand to consumption based on offer, the commercialization of traditional occasions like Ramadan and the wedding season and the development of new markets for Moroccan fashion. Thirdly, by introducing strategies of branding, marketing, customer services, seasonal fashion, etc., a shift occurred in Morocco from anonymous workshops of ‘traditional’ tailors to ‘modern’ designers’ boutiques associated with luxury and glamour and insinuating services that Moroccan consumers have grown accustomed to through their shopping for Western fashion. But most of all, under the influence of Western fashion, ‘traditional’ Moroccan fashion is believed to have ‘modernized.’ This paper argues that concepts of tradition and modernity are not static nor mutually exclusive and it uses the case study of the Moroccan fashion industry to illustrate this. While Moroccan fashion is the materialization of important social, cultural, political and religious changes in contemporary Moroccan urban society, the other way around, fashion offers a powerful tool to negotiate between local realities and foreign influences. Where tradition provides people with cultural anchorage, modernity represents an alternative to some repressive mechanisms of these very same traditions. As this case-study shows, the growing impact of foreign cultural influences as a result of globalization do not threaten local culture, but on the contrary, lead to a re-evaluation of national identity based on local cultural heritage.