Blue jeans, printed T-shirts, and black leather jackets are some of the most common symbols of resistance in clothing. They have become visual shorthand for a certain type of power that political scientist Erica Chenoweth calls “civil resistance.” It is a power rooted in optics and is subversive rather than dominating. It is the power of the marginalized to assert themselves in the face of authority.
There is tension between resistance clothing and “fashion.” The former is considered a vital tool of individual agency and collective protest – a way to make a group’s (or individual’s) identity clearly visible by means of a single symbol. Fashion, however, is often viewed as surface-level appropriation that transforms resistance garments into empty commodities.
But the relationship is not so simple. There is not always a binary division between political agency and stylish commodity: resistance can be concerned with style, and fashion can be a vehicle for resistance.