What question did this study set out to answer?

The central aim is to explore how local fashion is appropriated by global brands and its implications for authorship and memory.

April 11, 2026Open Access

Fashion and resistance: The Dior-Bihor case

Key Points

The central aim is to explore how local fashion is appropriated by global brands and its implications for authorship and memory.
Analysis of the Dior-Bihor case study from 2017
Application of contemporary fashionology principles
Examination of local community responses to appropriation
Evaluation of costume-based resistance strategies
The Dior appropriation detaches the vest from its local origins and memory.
Bihor Couture's initiative reaffirms local authorship and collective knowledge.
The case reveals tensions between global fashion power and local cultural narratives.

Abstract

This study examines the Dior-Bihor case (2017) through the lens of contemporary fashionology, appropriation, and epistemological hierarchy within the global fashion system. The vest from Romania's Bihor region appropriated by Dior serves as an example of a process where form is detached from memory and authorship shifts from the local community to the fashion center. The paper employs concepts of the empty center, semi-periphery, and radical imagination to explain the structural mechanisms of symbolic and epistemological expropriation. The response by the Bihor Couture initiative demonstrates how a costume-based resistance can reaffirm collective knowledge, authorship, and social production relations, offering an alternative model of fashion authorship. The Dior-Bihor case thus illuminates tensions between aesthetics, power, and memory, opening space for critical and epistemological intervention in fashion.

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