Contact zones multiplied after 1500, encounters mediated visible through dress. European travellers to all continents carefully recorded dress. Populations resident in the Americas, Asia and Africa also noted dress systems of incomers, their deficiencies as well as their benefits. From Japan to the plains of North America, dress mediated contact in what we might call the global contact zones within varying political scenarios, geographies and economies (Pratt 1991).
This panel addresses these sustained interactions as reflected in patterns of dress, within globalizing eras. The study of bodily embellishment is driving a re-assessment of global contacts and connections, the agency of various world communities and the economic consequences of choice in dress (White 2012; Riello 2013; DuPlessis 2016; Lemire 2016, 2018). Our panel will add further critical momentum to this scholarly trajectory, assessing economIES of adornment as globalizing politics and cultures shaped and reshaped clothing systems in world regions.