Maya Fashion
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Preview of pages above: The Protagonist Magazine.
“Maybe you are surprised about the title and ask yourself ‘What is Maya-Fashion?’ Or you try to recall what you know about Maya-Culture that could match? I am quite sure that only a few people have an idea what is meant with the term as it is not yet generally used. Neither most designers and fashionistas nor social anthropologists think in this category.”
In this publication we have a look at the Maya municipality of San Juan Chamula in the Highlands of Chiapas in southern Mexico, its people with their everyday clothes and dress practices – the description presenting some results of my ongoing research as a social anthropologist in the village since 1989. Is the dichotomy of ‘traditional ethnic costume’ vs ‘fashion’ an adequate and useful concept for looking at clothes among the Maya today? What do we know about day-to-day garments in Chamula? Which process of negotiation takes place when new fashions develop? What is the perspective of the Maya women in Chamula? Can we talk about ‘the Maya’?
Huse, Birgitta (2017) “Maya Fashion” in Shergill, Ram and Daen Palma Huse (eds)(2017) The Protagonist Magazine, Issue 3 (London), pp. 138-143
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