Reformation, a fashion brand known as a favorite among celebrities, released a collection of 20 items last week in collaboration with influencer and entrepreneur Devon Lee Carlson. The line seemed to fit perfectly into the current sartorial moment. There is butter yellow, there are vintage prints, there are skinny neck scarves.
But a breezy three-piece outfit from the collection — a baby blue midi skirt and a flowy camisole topped off with a long, thin scarf — has landed the brand at the center of a familiar debate: Where is the line between influence and cultural appropriation? Because, as many have pointed out online, the combination of pieces, which costs a total of roughly $400, looks a lot like a South Asian lehenga.
On Instagram, many of the comments on a Reformation post about the collaboration focus on appropriation, with one criticizing the look for being “straight up South Asian” without acknowledging the culture that inspired it. In a TikTok video that has garnered more than 16,000 likes, Sai Ananda, an actress in Manhattan, does a side-by-side comparison, showing a still from an early 2000s Bollywood movie in which an actress is wearing a lehenga that, she notes, has “a lot of similarities” to Reformation’s outfit.
“I’m pretty sure if I dig deep enough, I can find pictures of me and my friends from back in the early 2000s wearing something very similar on a playground at the temple,” Ananda said in a phone interview. “It’s completely fine to be inspired by different cultures, but I think there’s a level of respect that is required so you’re not erasing the cultural background.”
In an interview with Forbes, Carlson, who wore a pink version of the outfit to the collaboration’s launch party in March, said the collection consists of riffs on items from her personal closet. That particular outfit, she said, was her take on a vintage dress by British designer John Galliano that she received from her boyfriend’s mother. “It’s one of the few pieces in my closet that is too precious to share so I worked with Ref to design a two-piece set inspired by it.”
A spokesperson for Reformation said in an emailed statement that the brand respects “the origin of this criticism given South Asian culture’s influence on Western style” and said that “no item of clothing or trend can be considered in isolation without broader historical and cultural precedent.” Carlson did not respond to a request for comment.
Story continues below this ad
Kestrel Jenkins, the host of the “Conscious Chatter” podcast, which explores sustainable and ethical fashion, said in a phone interview that fashion, even with high-end designers like Galliano, has always drawn inspiration from different cultural aesthetics. But, she said, credit and acknowledgment are the key differentiators between borrowing ideas and appropriation, especially when the clothing items are repackaged at a high price by a brand in a powerful position.
“We’re living in an extra strange time where the idea of credit has become far and far less assumed as a basic part of doing business,” she said. “We have garments that are just being turned around as quickly as possible and with that speed, the attention to detail and the questions around what you’re actually doing become less intentional and thoughtful.”
The frustration among South Asian consumers is not solely focused on Reformation; it has been building since an incident last year that some refer to as “Scandinavian summer” in a nod to a video posted to TikTok by fashion rental company Bipty.
In that video, which has since been deleted, an employee of the company examines a trend in which women drape scarves across their chests in a look similar to what South Asian women call a dupatta. “The vibe, the aura, what is it?” the employee says. “It’s very European, it’s very classy.” She also refers to it as a “Scandinavian” style choice.
Story continues below this ad
The response to the video prompted Bipty to issue an apology from Natalia Ohanesian, the company’s founder, in which she said that the look was “clearly not European” and that her “teammate” had not intended to discredit any communities. She added, “We are very sorry to the South Asian communities that were offended.”
Regardless, the misstep spawned numerous parodies in which South Asian women posed in traditional staples, mockingly referring to them as “Scandinavian summer dresses.” Last month, the issue came up again when the British direct-to-consumer brand Oh Polly posted a video on TikTok of one of their new dresses that South Asian commenters said had a strong resemblance to a sharara, another traditional outfit.
Jenkins said incidents like these shine a light on a constant point of tension in fashion in which certain clothes are valued higher than others based on who is wearing them.
For example, if the Reformation outfit is “worn by, like, the ladies who lunch, right? Imagine the perception of that garment. Then, if that same garment is worn by an Indigenous person, the perception can be very different. And that right there is power dynamics blatantly at play.”
