NATIONAL FASHION IDENTITIES OF THE INDIAN SARI

Understanding the concept of national Fashion Identity is pertinent, before exploring the meaning of the National fashion identities of the Indian sari. According to Sandra Niessen, western dress went out into the world on the backs of missionaries, traders, colonial administrators, the military and their wives. The way they clad their ‘civilized appearance’ was inextricably blended with an associated set of behaviours related to hygiene and demeanour. She further states that in colonized society, success was signalled by the appearance of having adopted European norms. The retention of indigenous dress, particularly if it failed to cover bodily regions that European norms required to have covered, was considered an immediate sign of uncivilized primitiveness.