ABSTRACT
Fashion constantly (re-)fabricates styles as potential identity markers. A style close to an imagined ‘original’ identity feels more authentic and gets, therefore, validated. Authenticity is often staged and socially constructed by personal and collective meanings of nostalgia. In the absence of the ‘original’, the fashion system holds the copy as the authentic. A copy can acknowledge its cultural references or it can result from cultural appropriation (often finding its source in minority groups and subcultures). The appropriation of nonconforming styles temporarily validates those trends and brings relevancy—but also a commodification of the divergent styles and a de contextualisation of their original meaning. In this essay, I will discuss some of the terminology used in the context of cultural (mis-)appropriation in fashion with a focus on their relation to authenticity and nostalgia: ‘class tourism in fashion’, ‘working-class porn’, ‘cultural appropriation of subcultures’ and ‘appropriation of cultural heritage’.
