sugarpea said:
Ignorance about another culture does not necessarily mean that you consider yourself to be superior to it. There were European colonialists, but that does not mean that all Europeans are colonialists.
Fashion generalises, fetishises and moves away from authentic culture, true, but that's because it expresses a designer's vision, which is necessarily something different from the authentic culture that inspired it.
I'm mixed race -both my parents were came from countries colonised by the British, that later inspired fashion, who presented it in a vague and fetishistic way. The 'Oriental' theme done by Tom Ford, amongst others, mixed Chinese cheongsam and Japanese kimonos, and festishised the idea of the pleasing Geisha girl -'Bollywood' was a mish mash of sequins, denim and vague sari-ish fabrics. I didn't find any of this offensive -Ford wasn't portraying 'the Orient', he was portraying what he, influenced by certain visions of 'the Orient', envisiged. Words like 'africa' and 'bollywood' in this context are a collection of images and ideas, revised by designers every season (at the moment 'africa' means prints and lots of brown), they're fashion words... it's a different language-game to, for example, the political language-game.
A designer doesn't necessarily need to know the entire history of men's control of women to feature corsetry. It's not even possible to know the entire, exhaustative, history of something... sometimes I research my art meticulously, and sometimes I just respond to a vague mood plucked out of the collective unconcious -both, I think, are valid.
If the designer is just inspired by beauty, this can't be condemned. If the clothes are beautiful, surely they are inspiring in themselves, and transcend the atrocities of the past.
. So, I apologize if this in anyway bother someone to read the posts 
it must by Alexander Mcqueen ?? I recognise the model with her mouth stretched open.. I think it was from his collection
