Ethnic Clothing, the Exercises of Self-Representation, and Fashioning Ethnicity in Xishuangbanna, Southwest China

Ethnic clothing has long been a value-laden visual index to define, display, and, more recently, commodify ethnicity in China’s ethnic politics, especially its role in the imaging and othering processes by the state and mainstream society. The question that needs further exploration is the negotiating processes that ethnic members strategically engage as part of the encounters. Through bringing traditional Dai ethnic clothing back to style, a recent fashion in Xishuangbanna, southwest China, provides an opportunity to expand our understanding of the interplay between self-conscious sartorial practices, the exercises of ethnic self-representation, and the politics of ethnicity (re)construction in China’s contemporary minority regions. This article addresses not only what kind of collective Dai-ness (especially Dai femininity) these fashion-makers have crafted through their redesigning of Dai clothing but also their capability to carry out these exercises as central agents within the larger structure of the state. It particularly explores the question of “how it works”—the mechanism through which ethnic members navigate China’s political-economic-technological power circuits, rework the state and mainstream discourses as direct participants, and turn their sartorial practices into a communicative channel to reconfigure ethnicity in their own fashion.