This project examines cultural appropriation not as a fixed moral category but as a shifting cultural mechanism, one that reveals how power, authorship, and visibility operate within contemporary fashion. Rather than approaching appropriation as a simple binary (right/wrong, respectful/exploitative), the research investigates the conditions that make certain cultural gestures permissible, celebrated, or condemned.

The study focuses on how fashion circulates cultural symbols, aesthetics, and narratives across borders, often without acknowledging the historical, emotional, and political weight these elements carry. 

Vivienne Westwood serves as a key case study: her work demonstrates how cultural references can move between homage, recontextualisation, and provocation. Through her, the project asks when appropriation becomes a form of cultural critique, and when it becomes extraction.

At its core, the research argues that appropriation becomes problematic when circulation detaches from context, when symbols are consumed as style rather than language, or when visibility privileges certain bodies while silencing others. It also considers moments of respectful exchange, collaborative authorship, and cultural cross-pollination, challenging the assumption that any cultural movement across communities is inherently harmful.

The project positions cultural appropriation as a lens through which to analyse fashion’s deeper structures: who holds cultural power, who benefits from aesthetic borrowing, and who is erased in the process. Ultimately, it argues that understanding appropriation requires moving beyond outrage and into critical literacy, recognising how culture travels, and at what cost.