Politics of dress

Abstract

Diverse political histories of Sri Lanka ignored the importance of dress as an expression of political identity. The surprising point noted here is that the kings and the political elites of this period were astute interpreters of the self semiotics of dress in their programmes of self representations and their efforts to legitimize access to political power. The invention of king’s dress became part of the essential component of ‘invented tradition’ and later as the sovereigns experienced with democracy and dictatorships, and they invoked dress as a symbol of their vision of the ‘nations’. Furthermore kings represented as political leaders and they used dress to create more subtle political constituencies partly affiliation or religion.

These created constituencies could be mobilized and publicly recognized through distinctive deployment of their unique dress. In history dress incorporating clothing, hair style, foot wear, body adornments and head wear served as important signifiers of ideological values and political aspirations as well as struggle for political power.

The study is focused on how the kings of 16th century represented themselves and crafted political identities through their dress. The paper examines the 16th century king’s dress especially; the period had first interactions of Western political power. Besides explore how these particular kings and respective elite’s manipulation of sartorial dress practices in order to negotiate for a higher status not just in the arena of local political, but in the global hierarchy of nations. Dress holds symbolic capital constantly shift through time and space. The study tracks these fluctuations and analyzed semiotics of dress in political life of the king.