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 tlie breadth of her argument and its relevance for scholars of nineteenthcentury 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 die 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).