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The insensitive or exploitative use of style features associated with minoritized cultures or groups has rightly met with criticism and pushback in recent years, whether Afro-American hair styles on white catwalk models or native American headdresses as festival wear. Contestation over out-group use of religious symbols and sources is challenged in the name of religious communities, whether couture gowns decorated with Quranic verses or Hindu deities on T-shirts. Yet research into world fashion cultures shows also the longstanding interpenetration of dress cultures across multiple transnationalisms.

To illuminate contexts in which people design and wear garments and styles that are not their ‘own’, we sidestep a binarized value judgement between cultural appropriation vs cultural authenticity and problematize the ‘inspiration’ defence. Alert to diversity of opinion within cultural, ethnic, religious, and national groupings, we evaluate the differential impact of cross-cultural fashion experiences. We track the transnational movement of garment types in cultural and religious embodiment, such as the imposition of abayas on women visiting Saudi Arabia for work (Muslim or non-Muslim) and the cultural adaptation of abaya-led wardrobes by Emirati women for travel. We explore the intra-national adoption of regional and tribal textile arts by Indonesian designers melding national dress narratives for local and international markets, and the implications of class in the nostalgic styling of rural aesthetics among urban Indian fashionistas. We investigate the forms of cultural competency required to recognise, value, and adjudicate claims to fashion distinction and guardianship.