The Garden of Allah
Fashion was the thing itself – the “new,” the heart supposedly, of
what was desired. By the outbreak of World War 1, it was taking
several forms, including outrageous “royalty” promotions, the fashion
show, and the fashion extravaganza. In 1913 Rodman and John Wanamaker
presented what was perhaps the most impressive early fashion spectacle
of them all: The Garden of Allah.
Organizers of the world’s fairs, from the early 1890s on, interpreted
[the Oriental] themes, but especially at the fairs held in San
Fransisco, Buffalo, and St. Louis. Movies and the commercial theatre
also turned to the Orient to drum up trade. Ironically, in the very
years when the US government was restricting the immigration of
Chinese and Japanese people into this country, American cities were
creating Japanese gardens in botanical parks, and merchants were
reveling in the money value of Chinese culture and aesthetics.
Literary critic Edward Said links this orientalism to Western
imperialism and argues that personification of non-Western peoples as
impulsive, primitive, uncivilised, and prone to uncontrollable
passions and desires merely served to inflate Western self-esteem. By
insinuating that non-Westerners were children and thus incapable of
caring for themselves, orientalism justified Western predominance and
the occupation and appropriation of foreign property.
