Dangerous Designs

Parminder Bhachu is Professor of Sociology at Clark University, Massachusetts, USA. She was formerly Henry R. Luce Professor of Cultural Identities and Global Processes, and Director of the Women’s Studies program. She is author of Twice Migrants (1985), and is co-editor of Immigration and Entrepreneurship (1993) and Enterprising Women (1988).

• Introduction PART I Travels of the suit 1 Cultural narratives of the suit 2 Ethnicized consumption PART II Design narratives 3 Pioneering fashion entrepreneur: Geeta Sarin 4 Second-generation design globalizer: Bubby Mahil 5 Selling the nation: revivalist Indian designer Ritu Kumar 6 Selling art clothes in classed markets Conclusion: national elites versus diaspora design entrepreneurs PART III Suit marketers 7 Daminis: a commercial community mama’s shops 8 Networking marketers of ready-made suits PART IV Sewing cultures: sketching and designing 9 Diasporic sina-prona: sewing and patterning cultures 10 Designing diasporas through sketches. Conclusion: disruptive markets from the margins

'Parminder Bhachu is the most authentic and imaginative intellectual of the diaspora that I have come across. Parminder is on the cutting edge - a sophisticated analyzer of multilayered identities and cultural locations . . . and wears great salwar-kameezes too.' - Gurinder Chadha, Director of Bend it Like Beckham, Bhaji on the Beach and What's Cooking'Simply put, this is must read for any Asian Woman reader ... Buy this book!'' ...shows how the hardware of transnational networks enables competing discourses of fashion to project conflicting visions of modernity onto a global scale.' - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies