Couture & Consensus: Fashion and Politics in Postcolonial Argentina (review)

Regina Root’s pioneering work on fashion has been extremely important to those interested in the study of Latin American material culture. She has made evident the tools that the study of fashion brings to our understanding of political and gender dynamics. This book draws on previous work, but in reading its full range of material the reader is impressed with the breadth of her argument and its relevance for scholars of nineteenth-century Argentina. The introduction opens with the 2001 crisis, a time of “reassessing the ‘fracturing of memory’ that makes up the present-day process of national reconstitution,” and a period when “artists and authors have appropriated the historical vocabulary of color and fashion to reformulate the tenets of collective identity” (p. xvii). This book attempts to contextualize this appropriation by interpreting the hidden meanings of the colors and symbols used. After all, since the early days of the independence movement dress represented “emerging political interests that would play a significant role in shaping the future Argentine nation; in fact, fashion appears to have reflected uniquely national concerns long before any consolidation process had been enacted” (p. xxiii).

After reading this book and considering the evidence provided one is left to wonder why nobody has analyzed fashion in this connection before. As Root notes, clothing “has functions so apparent that they become easily dismissed, trivialized, or forgotten” (p. 95). The purpose of this book is to reveal these functions in order to analyze, for example, how a simple hairpiece known as a peinetón reveals the changing role of women in the public space. In what is perhaps the best section of the book, Root masterfully studies the meaning that this decorative element had in asserting female agency. Those interested in the nineteenth century will find the study of fashion as the assertion of presence a very useful concept in assessing how women participated in politics at this time. In another brilliant chapter, Root studies how writing about fashion “would contribute to the creation of a national identity and the formation of a model political body” (p. 97). Her study of female writers and emancipation is equally remarkable. It follows the pioneering work of Francine Masiello, but enhances it with the analysis of fashion. This chapter establishes that “fashion is a carefully constructed language that one can use to prescribe limits and proclaim liberation, to establish social categories and delineate political loyalties” (p. 128). The book’s epilogue shows how the symbols of political consciousness analyzed—the peinetón, crimson-coded poncho, white shawl, or stamped t-shirt—extend “the symbolic dimensions of ‘representation’” and “reverberate with new messages and meanings” (p. 160).

There are very few disappointments in this fascinating book. One is the lack of a proper bibliography in addition to references in the notes. In addition, I found myself sometimes confused about the connection between fashion and the specific period to which the author was referring. For example, it would have been helpful to have reminders that explained the context that allowed the emergence of publications directed by women. In the same vein, I found the epilogue very disruptive. Jumping from the nineteenth century to contemporary Argentine politics did not seem very effective, even when the material discussed was in itself very interesting. It is true that fashion plays a significant role “in rearticulating the past, empowering sectors of the population, enacting change and ‘producing’ cultural meaning” (p. 159), as this is clearly demonstrated throughout the book, but the reader is left wondering about the specific meaning of this in terms of nineteenth-century culture. In brief, jumping from the fashion writings of Gorriti and Sinués de Marco to the shawls worn by the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo requires a temporal adaptation that is impossible to make with the tools provided by the book. That said, this is a work that not only reveals the importance of...