Abstract
This essay examines the role of the (counterfeit) fashion industry in shaping democracy, citizenship, and human rights ideals in the United States. Using the Harper's Bazaar “Fakes are Never in Fashion” anti-counterfeiting advertisement campaign as a case study, I explore how race, class, gender, law, and human rights discourse, coalesce to systematically maintain exploited garment workers voiceless/rights-less while simultaneously preserving the material interest(s) of a White, capitalist, patriarchal, hegemonic global order. This study presents important implications for larger discussions of rights and justice. Ultimately, this campaign demonstrates how, through the creation of a self-regulatory system that seeks to control the extent to which consumers and people of color participate in the (counterfeit) industry, and by appealing to domestic law to police global practices, elite fashion leaders are shifting the larger concerns for human and labor rights violations within the industry to one that allows elite fashion leaders to maintain a global monopoly on the luxury fashion goods production.
Recommended Citation
Solyom, Jessica A.
(2012)
"Tearing at the Seams of (In)visibility: Anti-counterfeiting, Harper’s Bazaar, and the Project of Neocolonization,"
Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research: Vol. 11, Article 5.
Available at:
https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/kaleidoscope/vol11/iss1/5