Rosemary Overell: Vogue has cultural theft angle covered

Miranda Kerr dressed as a geisha shows the superficiality of much cultural appropriation but using it on a mainly Japanese audience has changed the politics.

Opinion

Fashion icon's Japanese edition turns tables on misappropriation of tradition, reclaiming it and selling it back.

Miranda Kerr sparked controversy last week when she appeared in Japanese Vogue dressed in a kimono. Critics wondered whether her donning traditional Japanese dress was "cultural appropriation".

This term has gained some press through discussions of No Doubt's use of Native American headdresses in their video for Looking Hot, Iggy Azalea's adoption of African-American style and Miley Cyrus' apparent borrowing from "ratchet" culture.

Cultural appropriation refers to white people "borrowing" from a non-white culture. Examples include burning incense, wearing a keffiyeh scarf and sending texts using "rap" language.

Kerr looks striking in "Oriental" garb. But critiques of the choice by Anna Dello Russo to style her as such speak to the broader issue of white people taking from non-white cultures.

Part of the issue is the privilege white people possess that means they can "play" at being a non-white person without the burden of discrimination.

Cultural appropriation is also problematic because it reduces whole countries and populations to a few exotic objects. Sometimes, such as with Native American headdresses, these objects are sacred and reducing them to fashion accessories evacuates that sacredness.

A headdress becomes equivalent to a fedora to a sarong to an obi and so on. It's like a cultural colonialism. The intrepid white fashion explorer "discovers" the spoils of the Orient, brings them home and sells them to white people.

Models wore feathered headdress in a Trelise Cooper show at NZ Fashion Week. Photo/Getty

Also at work here is the type of hipness one can gain from non-white cultural accessories. Iggy Azalea and Miley attempt to prove (with varying degrees of success) their hip-hop chops by performing African-American culture.

But the form Kerr's cultural appropriation takes is more insidious. As a model, she demonstrates the superficial mode which much cultural appropriation takes. While Iggy and (maybe) Miley appear committed to their style, however problematic, Kerr is dressed as a geisha on Vogue's cover, a samurai in its pages and will no doubt appear in other "exotic" outfits in shoots to come.

The ease with which she transforms demonstrates the privilege of play. But the praise and press the shoot has garnered also associates her appearance in Vogue Japan with sophistication and coolness. Fashion Rogue blog writes that Kerr is "elegant," Styleite calls it "tasteful". In this case, non-white cultural objects work as accessories used to shore up the white model's sophistication.

It would be remiss, and perhaps just as problematic, to lump all non-white cultures together in a similar way that a cultural appropriator does a headdress and a fedora. Japan has, for decades, functioned as a signifier of cool to Westerners (though Korea is perhaps now more favoured).

Though the kimono is traditional, its function on the cover of Vogue Japan is as a signifier of timelessness. Vogue being the archetypal arbiter of Western sophistication, its cultural significance is understated, tasteful style.

Kerr's styling is not intended to mimic real Japanese kimono aesthetics. Rather, it works to associate Japanese traditional style with the timeless image of Vogue. It's a more nuanced form of cultural appropriation than, say, Avril Lavigne's ham-fisted poaching of kawaii (cute) culture in her recent video Hello Kitty.

Kerr's appearance in Japanese clothing is also more complicated than the standard cultural appropriation as contemporary colonialism model. It is also important to consider the audience for Vogue Japan, which is mainly Japanese.

The politics of her "dressing up" might be different had she been on the cover of Vogue or Elle US in non-Western garb (like Pharrell).

A final complication is Japan's stereotyped position as expert poachers of Western cultural practices and styles.

By re-appropriating the kimono, Japanese Vogue in some ways speaks back to cultural appropriation. It restyles and reclaims the traditional garb and sells it back, not only to a Japanese audience, but to a global fashion public.

Rosemary Overell is a lecturer in communication studies at the University of Otago.

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