too pretentious to care

❝In removing the Navajo name from its products, Urban Outfitters has technically complied with trademark law, but it hasn’t addressed the larger problem of cultural appropriation. Fashion institutions and individuals have a long history of co-opting non-Western items and practices of dress for profit. In repackaging these items, the relevant cultures and histories are often misrepresented. Cultural appropriation underpins a system of consumer capitalism and racism that enables global corporations to profit from imitation goods while native designers struggle to earn a living. As a result, complex native cultural practices are represented as flat stereotypes.

Imitation cultural products reinforce fashion’s social dynamics, which celebrate cultural dress as exotic for some but reject it as backward when worn by minorities. While purchasing say, a native headdress, may lend already-privileged hipsters an aura of bohemianism and coolness, native people who invest economically, emotionally, and culturally in the same garment are interpreted as traditional and unmodern. By reducing cultural dress to a fashion statement, appropriation removes all of the political meaning, including histories of racism and imperialism, from cultural objects.❞