Part of the issue is the privilege white people possess that means they can "play" at being a non-white person without the burden of discrimination.
Cultural appropriation is also problematic because it reduces whole countries and populations to a few exotic objects. Sometimes, such as with Native American headdresses, these objects are sacred and reducing them to fashion accessories evacuates that sacredness.
A headdress becomes equivalent to a fedora to a sarong to an obi and so on. It's like a cultural colonialism. The intrepid white fashion explorer "discovers" the spoils of the Orient, brings them home and sells them to white people.
Models wore feathered headdress in a Trelise Cooper show at NZ Fashion Week. Photo/Getty
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Also at work here is the type of hipness one can gain from non-white cultural accessories. Iggy Azalea and Miley attempt to prove (with varying degrees of success) their hip-hop chops by performing African-American culture.
But the form Kerr's cultural appropriation takes is more insidious. As a model, she demonstrates the superficial mode which much cultural appropriation takes. While Iggy and (maybe) Miley appear committed to their style, however problematic, Kerr is dressed as a geisha on Vogue's cover, a samurai in its pages and will no doubt appear in other "exotic" outfits in shoots to come.
The ease with which she transforms demonstrates the privilege of play. But the praise and press the shoot has garnered also associates her appearance in Vogue Japan with sophistication and coolness. Fashion Rogue blog writes that Kerr is "elegant," Styleite calls it "tasteful". In this case, non-white cultural objects work as accessories used to shore up the white model's sophistication.
It would be remiss, and perhaps just as problematic, to lump all non-white cultures together in a similar way that a cultural appropriator does a headdress and a fedora. Japan has, for decades, functioned as a signifier of cool to Westerners (though Korea is perhaps now more favoured).
Though the kimono is traditional, its function on the cover of Vogue Japan is as a signifier of timelessness. Vogue being the archetypal arbiter of Western sophistication, its cultural significance is understated, tasteful style.
Kerr's styling is not intended to mimic real Japanese kimono aesthetics. Rather, it works to associate Japanese traditional style with the timeless image of Vogue. It's a more nuanced form of cultural appropriation than, say, Avril Lavigne's ham-fisted poaching of kawaii (cute) culture in her recent video Hello Kitty.
Kerr's appearance in Japanese clothing is also more complicated than the standard cultural appropriation as contemporary colonialism model. It is also important to consider the audience for Vogue Japan, which is mainly Japanese.
The politics of her "dressing up" might be different had she been on the cover of Vogue or Elle US in non-Western garb (like Pharrell).
A final complication is Japan's stereotyped position as expert poachers of Western cultural practices and styles.
By re-appropriating the kimono, Japanese Vogue in some ways speaks back to cultural appropriation. It restyles and reclaims the traditional garb and sells it back, not only to a Japanese audience, but to a global fashion public.
Rosemary Overell is a lecturer in communication studies at the University of Otago.
theconversation.edu.au