Dress and morality in Romania

Abstract

This thesis is an empirical study of the morality of dress in Romania. Based on participant and non-participant observation in retail and wholesale settings as well as eighty in-depth interviews conducted throughout eleven months of fieldwork with Romanian merchants and consumers from the capital city, two cities and two towns, it argues that dress speaks to agents’ identity, it inscribes their choices in social order, it classifies them and acts as an index of their moral worth.

By looking at four types of clothing (non-branded, new authentic brand item, counterfeit brand item and preowned brand item), this thesis argues that the morality of dress is informed by both its physical and social properties. Moreover, it argues that the physical properties of dress become morally and socially charged and shape its worth. Furthermore, this thesis argues that dress is used as a prop for presentability and as an implement to gain an edge in social interaction. It argues that the morality of place is translated into notions of worth of objects and agents. It looks at claims of entitlement agents lay in their consumption of branded commodities and the way their accounts become objectified in the portrait of the morally aware consumer. At the same time, it deals with the importance of dress as a cue of interaction and the role it plays in the negotiation of social order. Last but not least, it addresses the ability of dress not only to further social interaction, but also to limit and contain it.