National Identities

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Analyzing nationalized clothing: nationalism

theory meets fashion studies

Alexander Maxwell

To cite this article: Alexander Maxwell (2021) Analyzing nationalized clothing: nationalism theory
meets fashion studies, National Identities, 23:1, 1-14, DOI: 10.1080/14608944.2019.1634037

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2019.1634037

Published online: 15 Aug 2019.

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NATIONAL IDENTITIES
2021, VOL. 23, NO. 1, 1–14
https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2019.1634037

Analyzing nationalized clothing: nationalism theory meets

fashion studies
Alexander Maxwell
History, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Many key problems in the study nationalism theory can be Nationalism theory; fashion
examined through the lens of clothing practices. This article theory; banal nationalism;
relates the study of clothing to nationalism theory. It suggests clothing; everyday
nationalism
clothing is an example of Billig’s ‘banal nationalism.’ Asking who is
forbidden, obliged, or permitted to wear nationalized clothing
reveals how patriots imagine the national community. Plans to
introduce a national costume hint at the imagined locus of
sovereignty. Finally, debates over the authenticity of national
costume mirror the Warwick debate. Clothing thus forms a useful
object of study for nationalism theorists.

This article proposes a research agenda for analysing nationalized clothing. Nationalized
clothes, here understood as clothes consciously designed or worn primarily to signify
membership in some imagined national community, are only a small subset of all clothing.
Nevertheless, pursuing a particular series of research questions about nationalized cloth-
ing easily links the study of sartorial practices to major themes in nationalism theory.
Existing theoretical guides to clothing have mostly neglected nationality as a variable,
and fashion theorists have somewhat neglected nationalism. Though a ground-breaking
study by John Flugel (1930) acknowledged that clothing communicated ‘something of
sex, occupation, nationality, and social standing,’ Flugel concluded that meanings ‘con-
nected with the sexual life have an altogether predominant position’ (p. 15, 25). Roland
Barthes’ analysis of ‘the fashion system,’ justly described as a ‘fashion classic’ (Carter,
2003), even declared that ‘any vestimentary system is either regional or international
but it is never national (Barthes, 2013, p. 5). Maryln Horn’s ‘interdisciplinary study of cloth-
ing’ listed twenty-eight ‘factors affecting clothing decisions,’ but of those twenty-eight,
only the ‘social-psychological’ factor, elaborated as ‘self, role, and group identity,’ suggests
anything close to nationality (Horn, 1968, p. 418). Malcolm Barnard (2002) declared that
clothes may display ‘occupation, the family, sex, gender, age or race,’ or ‘class occupation,
sex, and so on,’ or ‘the power of the state,’ or ‘membership of, or affiliation to, a particular
religious group,’ but none of his numerous examples concern nationalized garments
(pp. 61, 63, 66, 67). Nationality is conspicuous by its absence from a notable study by
Diane Crane (2000), which concentrated on ‘class, gender and identity,’ though Crane

CONTACT Alexander Maxwell alexander.maxwell@vuw.ac.nz

© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 A. MAXWELL

added that clothing displayed ‘not only social class and gender but frequently occupation,
religious affiliation and regional origin, as well’ (p. 3).
Theorists of clothing have, perhaps, concentrated on class and gender because class
and gender are the most important themes in the story clothes tell. When clothing
does have national significance, however, the salience of other social variables intersects
with the national meaning, revealing a social context to the national message. Conse-
quently nationalized clothing offers scholars a chance to understand the gender and
class content of imagined national concepts, or more generally, to study the intersection-
ality of nation, class, and gender.
Any theoretical overview of how clothing studies might interact with the study of
nationalism must confront the reality that the scholarly literature on nationalism has
become, in the words of Rogers Brubaker (2009), ‘unsurveyably vast’ (p. 21). Indeed, his-
toriographical overviews of nationalism theory themselves form an increasingly daunt-
ing literature (Harris, 2009; Ichijo & Uzelac, 2005; Kuzio, 2007; Lawrence, 2005; Llobera,
1999; Özkırımlı, 2000; Smith, 1971). This article suggests that several influential concepts
from nationalism theory can be studied through sartorial practices, but cannot attempt
an exhaustive survey of nationalism theory. Nor, indeed, does this article aspire to
compile an exhaustive bibliography of works examining national clothing. This article
concentrates on generalizable theoretical insights, most of which could be illustrated
with a wide variety of case studies. I can only apologize to readers whose favourite
studies are neglected.
This article has four sections. The first section applies Michael Billig’s concept of ‘banal
nationalism’ to clothing studies, suggesting that banal nationalism can help solve the
problem of reception, and thus the extent of national indifference. The second section
considers to Benedict Anderson’s idea of the nation as an ‘imagined community,’
suggesting that plans to reform national clothing make useful objects of study: such
plans specify who was forbidden, obliged, or permitted to wear national clothing, thus
clearly delineating national membership. The third section suggests that the ‘sovereignty’
Anderson ascribes to the imagined community also has a sartorial counterpart, since plans
invest some actor with the right to impose a certain design. Differing concepts of what
might be called ‘sartorial sovereignty’ correspond to different concepts of the nation.
The fourth and final section argues that debates about the origins of national clothing
styles mirror the so-called ‘Warwick debate’ about the antiquity or modernity of national-
ism itself, not least in their unresolvability.

1. Banal nationalism and clothing

Michael Billig’s concept of ‘banal nationalism’ forms an obvious starting point for the study
of nationalism in clothing. Billig (1995, p. 44, 49) contrasted the ‘hot’ nationalism that may
‘arise in times of social disruption’ and manifests itself in ‘forceful social movements,’ with
a ‘banal nationalism’ imagined as ‘embedded in the ordinary lives of … millions of people.’
He illustrated his point with a memorable discussion of unwaved flags hanging in post
offices. Flags, Billig observed, are sometimes
consciously waved and saluted symbols, often accompanied by a pageant of outward
emotion. Others – probably the most numerous in the contemporary environment –
remain unsaluted and unwaved. They are merely there as symbols, whether on a forecourt
 NATIONAL IDENTITIES 3

or flashed on to a television screen; as such they are hardly given a second glance from day to
day (p. 4).

Billig concluded that unwaved flags provide ‘banal reminders of nationhood, they are
‘flagging’ it unflaggingly’ (p. 41). He also discussed flags in the context of ritualistic cer-
emonies, such as the daily flag salute in American schools, suggesting that ‘the signifi-
cance of the ceremony is not diminished if it is treated as routine’ (p. 51). Correctly
observing that ‘flags are not the only symbols of modern statehood,’ he observed that
‘coins and banknotes typically bear national emblems’ (p. 41).
Objections can be raised about Billig’s work. Some commentators have criticized Billig
for ‘privileging … a top-down approach’ (Skey, 2009, p. 337), since Billig only considered
what Brubaker (1999) called ‘state framed’ nationalism and neglected what Brubaker
might call banal ‘counter-state’ nationalism (p. 67). Nevertheless, Billig’s observations
are easily extended to examples of nationalism from below. They can also apply to
clothing.
Billig’s analysis of top-down banal nationalism most straightforwardly applies to cloth-
ing proscribed by the state, such as military uniforms and police uniforms, which some-
times even include flag motifs. Just as Billig’s disciples have extended his analysis to
semi-official institutions, such as television and radio (Aslama & Pantti, 2007; Castelló,
2007; Cormack, 2000; Law, 2001; Perkins, 2010; Vidacs, 2011; Yumul & Özkirimli, 2000),
so too can nationalism scholars apply Billig’s ideas to official uniforms imposed by non-
state institutions: for example, school uniforms (McVeigh, 1997), sport uniforms (Cronin,
1999, pp. 49–59), scout uniforms (Mechling, 1987; Proctor, 2002; Springhall, 1971), and
so on (Fussell, 2003, p. 21).
Official uniforms, though typically imposed from the top down, often resonate with
public opinion, and occasionally spring up from the grass roots. In an excellent study of
revolutionary France, Aileen Ribiero (1988, p. 67) found that civilians began wearing
clothes that evoked the uniforms of the National Guard: ‘the playful enthusiasm for mili-
tary attire … influenced men’s fashions in the first months of the Revolution’. A century
later, African veterans of the First World War also caused anxiety among white English
elites by wearing service uniforms that ‘had become honorary clothing’ (Edwards, 2014,
p. 14). In both cases, subaltern enthusiasm for uniforms discomfited elites. Military uni-
forms, furthermore, can influence civilian clothing styles in times of peace. Scott Myerly
(1996) noted in the British context that ‘many military motifs have been adopted for civi-
lian dress’ (p. 149) both for men and women, providing numerous examples, even if some
military innovations, such as cuffs or pocket flaps, may have spread from utilitarian
motives.
Loyalty to uniforms, whether official or unofficial, sometimes persists even after the rel-
evant officials have passed into history. In the late eighteenth century, Habsburg sumptu-
ary laws and peer pressure imposed on Hungarian noblemen an unofficial uniform
characterized by a distinctively embroidered jacket. As the century progressed, the
uniform style spread to other social ranks (Lukács, 2008). Indeed, the style ultimately
inspired women’s fashions in the early twentieth century (Dóra, 2011). The social meanings
of these various costumes evolved as history progressed, but the distinctive embroidery
always retained its patriotic connotations.
4 A. MAXWELL

If popular enthusiasm for official uniforms reflects popular enthusiasm for the state, or if
popular enthusiasm for unofficial uniforms reflects enthusiasm for a popular national
movement, then the study of clothing provides a fruitful method for addressing a notor-
ious and perennial difficulty in nationalism studies: the problem of reception. Active patri-
ots produce abundant high-value source material for the study of nationalism, yet
articulate patriots are, by definition, unrepresentative, since most people are not active
in nationalist politics or national agitation. Indeed, recent scholarship on nationalism
has consciously focused on what recent scholars (Bjork, 2009; Zahara, 2008) have memor-
ably called ‘national indifference.’
When national agitators find followers, national indifference gives way to national
mobilization. Several studies have attempted to theorize the process of nationalization,
often employing the metaphor of ‘national awakening’ (see also Argyle, 1976; Maxwell,
2010; Chatterjee, 1986, p. 51; Hroch, 1985, pp. 26–28). Yet even if nationalist entrepreneurs
find customers, not everybody is buying. Assessing market share and brand loyalty can
also be difficult, particularly when studying the predominantly illiterate peasant popu-
lation that early patriots sought to mobilize for their various national causes. Yet even if
peasants are to be presumed indifferent to nationalism barring evidence to the contrary,
the real problem is the difficulty of finding evidence.
How can historians know one way or the other how illiterate peasants felt about
national ideas? Perhaps peasant clothing practices provide some answers. Travellers
and missionaries give abundant anecdotal evidence about the clothing practices;
whether travellers take pleasure in exotic garb or condemn its barbarism, or whether
they celebrate the spread of civilized fashion or bewail the decline of traditional costumes,
they provide information about what clothes people were actually wearing. Paintings,
engravings, and crowd photographs also indicate what styles enjoyed popularity. If
large numbers of people wore nationalized clothing, then perhaps the national idea actu-
ally enjoyed some currency.
The historical record suggests, for example, that during the French Revolution peasants
in the countryside actually wore the tricolour cockade (Devocelle, 1992; Heuer, 2002;
Ribeiro, 1988), that Ottoman subjects genuinely took to the fez (Kara, 2005; Quataert,
1997), and, perhaps most spectacularly, that Chinese people from all walks of life wore
the Zhongshan jacket, widely if erroneously known as the ‘Mao jacket’ (Harrison, 2000,
pp. 191–192; Wilson, 2003, pp. 239–240). On the other hand, the ‘national costume’ of
Swedish King Gustaf III met with little resonance (Albrecht, 1992; Rangström, 1999), Italians
mostly ignored the fashion recommendations proffered by the fascist state and its insti-
tutions (Arvidsson, 2003; Grandi & Vaccari, 2004; Paulicelli, 2004; Pinkus, 1995; Schnapp,
1997), and Nazi Germany signally failed to transform Vienna into a fashion centre to
rival Paris (Guenther, 2001; Veillon, 1990). The popularity of a nationalized clothing can
thus provide relevant evidence about the popularity of a particular national project.

2. Clothing reform plans and the limits of the ‘Imagined community’

Plans advocating a national costumes also prove fruitful objects of study. The daydreams
of sartorial patriots must be tracked through intellectual history. Patriots may defend an
ostensibly traditional costume, or propose some innovation, or both at the same time.
They may insist on a complete ensemble, or merely advocate a national accoutrement,
 NATIONAL IDENTITIES 5

such as a cockade. They may advocate a static national uniform, or seek to nationalize
ever-changing fashions. Whatever garment or garments sartorial patriots fetishize,
however, their plans prove revealing.
Firstly, patriots attempting to nationalize clothing, whether a nationalized ensemble, or
a particular piece of nationalized clothing, have some social circumstances in mind where
members of the nation don the relevant garments. Some nationalized clothes were ima-
gined as ceremonial costumes for special occasions, such as a royal coronation. Theatrical
costumes might expressed national sentiment on the stage. A costume worn only by a
small group of people on ceremonial occasions may reveal something about the national
ideas of the people who wear it, as a lively literature on nationalism and theatre suggests
(Lee, 2007; Romani, 2015; Sweigart-Gallagher, 2014). A costume worn in non-ceremonial
circumstances, however, provides more impressive evidence of genuine national senti-
ments. Scholars of nationalism should, perhaps, prioritize the study of clothes intended
for everyday use, rather than examining ceremonial or occasional costumes.
Secondly, patriots promoting national clothing had in mind a certain population who
was supposed to wear it. Some sartorial patriots imagined a costume for elites, others a
costume for peasants, others a series of costumes to display and reify social ranks.
Some imagined a male costume, others a female costume, others a unisex costume,
and still others separate costumes for men and women. If patriots imagined a costume
as ‘national’, however, the population wearing it becomes a metaphor for the national
population.
Insofar as obligatory national clothing seeks to unite members into group, however, it
often sheds the most light on how patriots imagine the nation’s internal structures. A
‘national costume [traje nacional]’ proposed for Spanish women in 1788, for example, con-
tained eight ranks, and assigned women to those ranks based on the status of their hus-
bands or fathers (M.O., 1788). The costume thus implied a fairly rigid social hierarchy that
treated women primarily as dependents of men (Kitts, 1995, pp. 205–208; Smith, 2000).
The red caps of the French Revolution, by contrast, lacked any ranks, but excluded on
the basis of gender: the National Assembly mandated them for men in patriotic clubs,
but forbade women from wearing them (Harris, 1981; Soboul, 1964, pp. 223–225). Revolu-
tionary egalitarianism evidently did not extend to women. Even the zhongshan jacket of
Mao’s China could display social information through the choice of colour (blue, green, or
grey), and the use of patterned fabric, belying the initial impression of a national commu-
nity ‘largely undifferentiated by class, gender or age’ (Chen, 2001). Obligations typically
reveal more than prohibitions, particularly when they can be analysed not just as patriotic
fantasies but as social practices.
Scholars might therefore analyse sartorial patriots by asking who exactly was supposed
to wear the national clothing, and in what circumstances. Conveniently, the main ques-
tions scholars of nationalism should ask about nationalized clothing form the fashion-
related acronym ‘FOP’: who is Forbidden, Obliged, and Permitted to wear the clothing?
Each of these three elements deserve attention.
Forbidding particular clothing links directly to the important question of the nation’s
boundaries. Legislation may prevent foreigners from wearing particular garments, but
more frequently affects subalterns within a particular society. Minorities may be forbidden
to wear a distinctive minority costume in order to enforce their inclusion, or alternatively
forbidden to wear the majority costume in order to enforce their exclusion. Imperial Russia
6 A. MAXWELL

forbade Jews from wearing distinctively Jewish clothing hoping to ‘expedite the inte-
gration of Jews’ (Avrutin, 2010, pp. 39–50). The interwar Hungarian government, by con-
trast, forbade Jews to wear Hungarian military uniforms and school uniforms (Braham,
2000, p. 103). Both forced inclusion and forced exclusion thus paradoxically reflected a
similar desire to efface Jewish communities from the larger society.
Sartorial exclusions may target ethnicity, religion, class, race, or any other social vari-
ables. Indeed, some prohibitions are contextual, or combine social categories. In early
twentieth century Mexico, wearing traditional P’urhépecha clothing could lead to the
arrest, but only in Mexico City (León, 2013, p. 207). Such legislation targeted indigenous
peoples on both ethnic and economic grounds. A planned national costume that is elabo-
rately embroidered, requires expensive cloth, or even elaborate tailoring, will exclude the
poor, but sometimes inadvertently rather than deliberately.
Attempted clothing prohibitions are not the exclusive preserve of the state, or of
elites. For example, accusations that white Americans have committed ‘cultural appro-
priation,’ whether of foreign products such as henna or the sari (Maria, 2007), or min-
ority products such as hip-hop fashions (Alcoff, 2005, p. 217; Cutler, 2014, pp. 7–8),
reflect a desire to reserve certain clothes for members of a particular community and
deny them to outsiders. Minority activists may lack the state’s ability to enforce prohi-
bitions, but both elites and subalterns seek to maintain group boundaries by policing
clothing choices, and all may employ the tactics of public protest, ridicule, and/or
intimidation.
Obligatory clothing, in many ways, forms the mirror image of forbidden clothing. The
Nazi state notoriously obliged Jews to wear a distinguishing badge, showing that both for-
bidden and obligatory clothing may enact Anti-Semitic discrimination. The reciprocal simi-
larity extends to popular movements for particular clothing styles. Lata Singh found that,
during Gandhi’s campaign against British authorities, Indian efforts to promote national
clothing ‘ranged from the humorous to the physically threatening public ridicule of
those wearing foreign cloth’ (Singh, 2012, p. 110). The movement simultaneously prohib-
ited foreign fashions and enforced obligatory Indian khadi. If sartorial exclusions symbolize
and enact national exclusions, enforced sartorial inclusions symbolize and enforce national
mobilization with the threat of exclusion.
If rules about forbidden and obligatory clothing highlight the nation’s imagined bound-
aries, permitted clothing shows how those boundaries might become fuzzy or blurred. An
1806 royal proclamation from Bavaria, for example, required state officials to wear a
cockade, but decreed that ‘other Bavarian subjects, regardless of their rank, shall be per-
mitted to indicate the nation to which they belong by the national colours on their hat’
(Fahrmeir, 2000, pp. 201–202). The nuanced attitude toward citizen cockades perhaps
reflected the equivocal feelings of the Bavarian monarch toward national symbols: he
wished to harness patriotic feelings, but feared their revolutionary potential. Those per-
mitted but not obliged to wear national clothing might be second-class citizens, or
might simply be passive citizens spared active duty. The two categories were often
conflated. French Jacobins explicitly distinguished ‘active citizenship’ from ‘passive citizen-
ship’ or alternatively the titre de citoyen [title of citizen], restricted to adult men who could
meet a property qualification, from the t. de français [title of being French] (Heuer, 2002,
p. 30, 43). Revolutionaries eventually devised sartorial symbols for both categories: the
Phrygian or red cap (bonnet rouge) symbolized active membership in political life, and
 NATIONAL IDENTITIES 7

the cockade membership in the French nation, though admittedly both garments were
contested (Godineau, 1993; Harris, 1981).
The criteria for national membership vary: in different times and places, patriots have
invoked citizenship, descent, language, race, religion, and numerous other qualifications.
The increasingly ubiquitous analyses of ‘othering’ rests on a large theoretical literature
about the definition or delineation of national groups (Anthias & Yuval-Davis, 1992;
Lamont & Molnár, 2002; Manzo, 1996; Spinner, 1994; Wimmer, 2013). The boundaries of
the nation, whether sharp or fuzzy, and the methods proposed for policing them, thus
form central issues in the study of nationalism.
If the criteria for inclusion or exclusion form profitable objects of study, Benedict Ander-
son’s influential definition of the nation as ‘imagined community,’ imagined as ‘both as
inherently limited and sovereign,’ provides a useful way of analysing the nation’s imagined
boundaries. Anderson (1991, p. 6, 7) insisted nations were limited because they have
‘finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. No nation imagines itself
coterminous with mankind. The most messianic nationalists do not dream of a day
when all the members of the human race will join their nation.’ Since forbidding, obliging,
or permitting a national costume, or a specific article of national clothing, helps establish
national boundaries, the study of clothing practices sheds light on nationalism, and vice-
versa. Anderson’s famous definition of the nation thus has a sartorial counterpart in that
the limits of national costume symbolize the limits of the nation.

3. Sartorial sovereignty and taxonomies of nationalism

A sartorial counterpart also exists for other aspects of Anderson’s definition. The idea of
‘sovereignty’ can apply to national clothing by realizing that plans for nationalized clothing
inevitably propose some mechanism for imposing the patriotic sartorial regime. Daniel
Roche (1994) once suggested that a monarch introducing a military uniform ‘affirms a pol-
itical project by demonstrating omnipotence’ (p. 239). If we treat Roche’s ‘omnipotence’ as
a metaphor for Andersonian ‘sovereignty,’ then the right or ability to introduce or prohibit
certain clothes might be defined as ‘sartorial sovereignty,’ an counterpart to and metaphor
for political sovereignty.
Sartorial sovereignty has two main dimensions: Who will select the design of the
national costume, and who ensures that the recalcitrant will wear it? Both questions
deserve examination, since ideas about sartorial sovereignty have varied considerably.
The diversity of imagined sartorial sovereignties reflects the diversity of nationalist ideol-
ogies. The various plans for imposing national clothing replicate taxonomies of nationalist
ideologies.
The most popular taxonomy of nationalist thought is, perhaps, the infamous distinction
between ‘civic nationalism’ and ‘ethnic nationalism’ (Ignatieff, 1992, pp. 3–5; Plamenatz,
1975). The civic–ethnic binary has, of course, numerous detractors: its normative subtext
has sparked voluminous and forceful debunking (Brown, 1999; Brubaker, 1999; Chamber-
land, 1999; Nikolas, 1999; Shulman, 2002; Brubaker, 2004; Spencer & Wollman, 1998;
Spencer & Wollman, 2002, p. 96, 102-106; Yack, 1996). Brubaker (1999, p. 67), as noted
above, has usefully reformulated a similar distinction between ‘state-framed’ nationalism
from ‘counter-state’ nationalism, since some patriots invest the state with national sover-
eignty, others locate the nation and national sovereignty in some collective other than the
8 A. MAXWELL

state. Note that ‘counter-state’ nationalisms may or may not seek state power of their own:
‘state-seeking’ nationalisms are only a sub-set of ‘counter-state’ nationalisms.
Analogously, sartorial patriots may urge the state to impose national clothing from the
top down, or they may hope that popular opinion will enforce the costume from the grass
roots. Hopes that spontaneously mobilized public opinion can enforce a national costume
obviously appeals to patriots who imagine a nation transcending current political frontiers,
as in Germany before unification (Wurst, 2005). Nevertheless, patriots who imagine a
nation coterminous with a state may public opinion because they mistrust state power,
as in the United States (Zakim, 2001). Both situations illustrate the patriotic hope that
members of the public could collectively wield sartorial sovereignty, the latter situation
shows that grass-roots sartorial patriotism can coexist with ‘state-framed’ nationalism.
Attempts to promote a national community in opposition to the state must obviously
invest sovereignty in some non-state actor. Patriots ascribe sartorial sovereignty to some
special group within the broader national community, but the group invested with such
leadership varied considerably over time, and from patriot to patriot. During the European
Enlightenment, for example, patriots usually looked to an educated elite, since elite patri-
ots typically viewed themselves as the nation. During the nineteenth century, patriots
increasingly looked down the social scale for sartorial inspiration. Patriots from the
upper or middle classes increasingly saw the peasantry as the repository of genuine
national values, and cast themselves as interpreters or representatives of the nation,
rather than as the nation itself. As concerns plans for national clothing, Enlightenment
patriots wanted to design or select an ideal costume, while nineteenth century patriots
hoped to transform existing peasant costume into something national.
Much anti-colonial sartorial nationalism looked to subaltern classes for inspiration. For
example, the Indian campaign for khadi, or homespun cloth, even if it most dramatically
affected the sartorial practices of middle-class patriots (Gonsalves, 2012; Trivedi, 2007,
p. 79), extolled an explicitly subaltern style of dress: in a series of articles for the newspaper
Young India, he characterized his own loincloth as ‘in a line with the ill-clad masses’
(Gandhi, 1941, p. 357). Nevertheless, Gandhi directed his appeals primarily to merchants,
millowners, and householders, and more generally to ‘the middle class’ (Gandhi, 1941,
p. 27, 175). Viewed from the perspective of costume enforcement, Gandhi imagined sar-
torial sovereignty in the middle classes, much like Carey and the anonymous German dis-
cussed above. Viewed from the perspective of clothing styles, however, Gandhi looked to
the peasantry.
Some elite patriots, in short, imagine themselves as the nation’s proper representatives
while others glorify peasants or other subalterns as the genuine repository of national tra-
ditions. This fact shows that the imagined locus of sartorial sovereignty may shift within the
national community. Patriots who grant sartorial sovereignty to one class or another reveal
something about how they imagine the national will. Scholars examining a particular
instance of nationalized clothing can therefore profitably examine the imagined mechan-
ism for enforcing national dress, or the imagined origins of the nationalized clothing style.

4. National clothing styles and the ‘Warwick debate’: continuity or change?

Studying the imagined origins of a nationalized clothing style may frustrate or annoy those
scholars with a background in fashion history, since the actual origins of a particular style
 NATIONAL IDENTITIES 9

may not correspond to patriotic fancies. Here, the interests of fashion history and nation-
alism studies may diverge. A clothing style, or a particular garment, may be successfully
nationalized with a spurious myth of ancient origins. If the goal of fashion history is
debunk the spurious myth and uncover the real story, the goal of nationalism studies is
to explain how and why such myths resonate with a target population.
Fashion historians tend to analyse national costumes in terms of a problematic spec-
trum between the genuine and the invented: Regina Bendrix has rightly criticized
debates about the true origins of national garments for their ‘dichotomous vocabulary
of authenticity’ (Bendrix, 1997, p. 104; see also Tweit, 2007). This false dichotomy strikingly
resembles a strident yet increasingly stale controversy in nationalism studies about the
modernity or antiquity of nations. The controversy is often called the ‘Warwick debate,’
after a public debate Ernst Gellner and Anthony Smith held in 1995 (see Smith &
Gellner, 1996). Smith insisted that nations have deep and ancient historical roots rooted
in ethnic symbols, an approach he called ‘ethnosymbolism’, while Gellner, representing
the ‘modernist’ approach, argued that nationalism emerged only toward the end of the
end of the eighteenth century and became widespread during the nineteenth.
As it happens, clothing features prominently in one of the most famous contributions to
the debate between modernism and ethnosymbolism. In his memorable study of the Scot-
tish kilt, Hugh Trevor-Roper (1983) showed that the ‘lost Highland peasant culture’ that
Scottish gentlemen sought to commemorate actually emerged as the product of British
industrialization. While the kilt drew some inspiration from existing Scottish dress, its
modern form was first devised by Thomas Rawlinson, an English Quaker and industrialist,
and popularized in part by an officer in the British army. Trevor-Roper’s exercise in debunk-
ing national myths offended some Scottish experts (Hearn, 2000, p. 179; Ray, 2001, p. 26),
but Neil Davidson (2000) probably speaks for most nationalism theorists: ‘Trevor-Roper’s
summary … should be savoured in all its dark irony’ (138). The kilt nevertheless retains
its national significance: popular belief in its authenticity survived, and coexists with,
Trevor-Roper’s debunking.
In general, peasant clothing must undergo standardization and modification in order
to become a national costume. Transforming the diversity of peasant clothing into a
recognizable single costume inevitably requires some break from past sartorial practice.
On the other hand, advocates of national costume consciously sought continuity with
existing sartorial practices. Scholars may legitimately view the kilt, or any other national
costume, as a break with previous sartorial practices, but those scholars who seek conti-
nuity can also find it.
Continuity and change thus coexist, and scholars who emphasize one side of the coin
over the other reveal more about their own expectations, values, and personalities than
about their ostensible object of study. Originally an attempt to answer a question Ichijo
and Uzelac (2005) memorably posed as ‘when is the nation?,’ debates over the degree
of continuity or change have long generated more heat than light, since they confirm a
banality: scholars find what they look for. Those seeking change find change, those
seeking continuity find continuity. In any event, no amount of scholarly discussion can
resolve the various debates about whether, or the degree to which, a given sartorial tra-
dition was ‘invented.’ Analysing national costumes from this perspective, however, dis-
tracts attention from other potentially more fruitful questions about what nationalized
clothes meant to those who wore or advocated them.
10 A. MAXWELL

5.Conclusion: clothing as a lens on nationalism

The insights of nationalism theory may bring new perspectives to fashion historians.
Country specialists already do excellent case-study work analysing the meaning of
clothes in a particular context. Comparative studies, however, can benefit from applying
Benedict Anderson’s thoughts on nationalism to the study of clothing. Fashion historians
can study the ‘imagined’ national content of clothing, the ‘inherently limited’ population
wearing it, and the ‘sovereign’ authority implicitly claimed by those who design or enforce
a costume.
Since national clothing forms a metaphor for national sovereignty, the right to impose
or enforce a design reveals to scholars how patriots imagine the locus of legitimate power
within the nation. Insofar as patriots view the community wearing the national clothing as
a metaphor for the nation, scholars can also study about the imagined limits of the nation
through the FOP questions: who is forbidden, obliged, or permitted to wear the costume?
The imagined extent of the national costume reveals the imagined limits of the nation.
The study of sartorial practices, furthermore, helps address the difficult problem of
reception. Insofar as clothing is ubiquitous, its nationalization sheds light on banal nation-
alism. If wearing a national costume implies patriotism, the study of clothing practices
measures the extent of national mobilization. The popularity of nationalized clothing
can therefore shed light on national indifference.
Not all issues in nationalism theory have a sartorial counterpart. The finer nuances of
constitutional law cannot be debated through clothing choices; so too can elaborate or
complex national ideologies be expressed only through words. Nevertheless, scholars
will find in clothing history a rich source of material that speaks to several important ques-
tions in nationalism studies.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Alexander Maxwell is senior lecturer in history at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
He completed his PhD at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He taught in Wales and Nevada
before joining Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. He is the author of Choosing
Slovakia, patriots against fashion and the forthcoming Everyday nationalism in Hungary.

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