What is it about?
This article explores the history of the specifically South Indian-Hyderabadi fashion for sherwani coat and fez cap which appeared during the late nineteenth century. Through analysis of the style's origins and evolution, it highlights the discrepancy between highly polemic local and colonial written accounts of fashion, and the realities that emerge from images and garments of the period, which show the period as one of considerable sartorial experimentation and creativity, drawing on diverse influences from Ottoman Turkey and Britain to the historical Deccan. While highlighting how the style became central to the articulation of emerging ideas of regional identity and difference, it explores the ambiguous ways in which understandings of colonialism and different kinds of cultural authenticity became conceived and embodied through dress.