Hippie Clothing Around World

Hippie Clothing the Same Around the World

Wherever I go, wherever I travel to, every single place that I have been that has seen the stampede of tourism, there has always been a little observation perpetually nipping at my heels:

The same clothing, crafts, souvenirs, and trinkets are sold for the consumption of tourists everywhere in the world. In a large part, it has the markings of a uniform market. With only a few splatters of local variation, tourist gift shops are very similar to each other across great regions of otherwise great cultural and geographic diversity:

You can buy the same wood carved figurine in the south of India that you can in the north of China, you can pick up the same knit handbag in Patagonia as you can in Nepal, and you can find “Tibetan” shops selling hippie clothes everywhere on earth that western tourists trod.

Hippie clothing is the same everywhere, and serves as a good model of the global blanket that has been laid over the “far away” industry: the vending of the exotic.

I use the term “hippie” to describe these clothes for a lack of a better word, but I have strong suspicions that hippies don’t even wear this stuff.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Istanbul, Turkey- March 8, 2009
Travelogue —Travel Photos –Travel Guide
Click on map to view route. Regional map

These colorful knit sweaters, flowery skirts, and patchwork blouses are sold everywhere in the world that attracts western tourists.

This clothing serves as a good example of the uniformity of the global crafts and clothing trade.

I find it interesting how the global textile vendors and manufacturers have tourist and travelers pinned down on all fours. They know that foreigners want to bring home gifts and souvenirs that prove that they went far away. Returning with a bundle of clothing that nobody in the world would be caught wearing is sure proof that you have been to the other side of the rainbow.

But it is all made in China.

They sell these hippie clothes in Turkey, but Turkish people do not wear them; they sell these clothes in Morocco, but Moroccans don’t wear them; they sell these clothes all through the tourist destinations of South/ Central America, Europe, India, China, and Japan, but it is my impression that the local people would become laughingstocks if they every attempted to wear them.

They also sell these clothes in my home city in the USA.

The shell of the exotic can often be cracked to find an ordinary old nut hiding within.

People eat what they expect to be fed.

Hippie Clothing the Same Around the World