Drawing on half-a-century of research in Zambia and regional scholarship, Karen Tranberg Hansen offers a vibrant history of changing dress practices from the late-colonial period to the present day. Exploring how the dressed body serves as the point of contact between personal, local, and global experiences, she argues that dress is just as central to political power as it is to personal style. Questioning the idea that the West led fashion trends elsewhere, Hansen demonstrates how local dress conventions appropriated western dress influences as Zambian and shows how Zambia contributed to global fashions, such as the colourful Chitenge fabric that spread across colonial trading networks. Brought to life with colour illustrations and personal anecdotes, this book spotlights dress not only as an important medium through which Zambian identities are negotiated, but also as a key reflector and driver of history.

‘National histories and cultures of fashion are entwined with global flows of goods and ideas as Hansen takes the reader deep into the intimate lives, dynamic styles, and evolving dress patterns of Zambians, from the power dressing practices of presidents to shoppers rummaging for new looks in second-hand markets.’

Andrew Brooks - King’s College London

‘Karen Tranberg Hansen’s comprehensive research on Zambian dress practices links their history to the global economy, making Dress Cultures in Zambia important for Africanists and general readers. A major contribution shatters the stereotype that importing used clothing harms local businesses. Instead, Zambian seamstresses and tailors create businesses for eager customers prizing their new garments.’

Joanne B. Eicher - University of Minnesota

‘This insightful analysis of the history of dress and the importance of being seen as stylish in Zambia, in the context of a changing ‘global clothing landscape’ associated with internet access and environmental concerns, underscores the value of long-term and intensive fieldwork in a particular place.’

Elisha Renne - University of Michigan

‘Hansen’s Dress Cultures in Zambia is not merely a sequel to Salaula, her groundbreaking study of secondhand clothing in Zambia. It is a masterpiece in its own right, a multi-layered tapestry where she dexterously weaves together intricate patterns that reveal changing sartorial landscapes and performances.’

Ch. Didier Gondola - Johns Hopkins University

‘Sociologically astute, historically sensitive and anthropologically innovative, rich in personal anecdote and filled with African voice, Karen Tranberg Hansen distils five decades of empathetic ethnographic engagement into a lively and fascinating story of the gendered politics of Zambian dress across a century. This is African studies at its best.’

Andrew Bank - University of the Western Cape

‘In this accessible, erudite, and thorough monograph, Karen Tranberg Hansen illuminates the cultural entrepreneurship through which Zambians have innovatively drawn on local knowledge, politics, and global influences to forge their sartorial culture since the colonial period to the present. Drawing on her own published and unpublished research on Zambia dating back to the early 1970s and more recently on scholarship of consumption, Hansen argues that this sartorial culture serves as a potent site on which Zambians have historically (re)negotiated class, race, and gender relations, as well as identity, status, and power. In projecting dress as a discursive space, her fascinating work showcases the centrality of sartorial practice to understanding socio-cultural and political change in Zambia and beyond. Hansen’s new study will not only engage general readers, economists, historians, and students of consumption alike but, like her widely-acclaimed book, Salaula, it is also destined to become a classic contribution to the historiography of southern Africa as a whole.’

Walima T. Kalusa - former Research Associate, Cambridge University