ABSTRACT
Fashion, like language, serves as a form of mediation between people as well as an expression of the self. This chapter investigates the instance in which a pair of trousers worn by Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein triggered a jail sentence, demonstrations, interviews, exile and international media attention. Fashion both stated and created the identity of Lubna Hussein as an international symbol of political struggle and women's rights. The trousers and their wearer took on enormous significance in a highly complex political environment, where the authoritarian Sudanese government has been navigating a delicate course between teasing and appeasing Western arbiters of political legitimacy. For Hussein, as well as for the security agents of the Sudanese government, clothing signifies publicly whether an individual is compliant with the public order regime, or whether he or she wishes to test the arbitrary nature of its limits.
