ABSTRACT
From the iconic zoot suits of pachucas and high pomps of rockabilly chicas to the mainstreaming of chola style and ass-enhancing jeans, Latina fashion and self-styling practices are as much transcendent as they are anchored by oppositional formations, shifting popular trends, and transnational politics.1 Latinas have reached for recognition-a move from mere object to self-determining subject-through their creative deployments and passionate re-workings of aesthetic elements. While Latina style accommodates changing fashion trends, it is also marked by incorporations of historical representations like the sensually stylized flair of señorita femininity, the excessiveness of the hot, fleshy body, or the reinscription of old school, gangsterette wares. Commenting on Latina fashion and style, however, requires more than surveying iconic figures or popular taxonomies. To consider Latina fashion-what one wears-and style-how one wears ‘the what’—requires that we attend to the dialectical relationship among everyday style makers, mainstream fashion producers, and the fraught and fabulous socio-cultural processes through which dominant and subversive aesthetic practices enter into our collective imagination.2
