A Photographic Fragment of Transnational Fashion: Claude Lévi-Strauss' Snapshot of Avenida São João, Central São Paulo, 1937

This paper examines a photographic fragment left behind by the young French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss on his travels to São Paulo between 1935 and 1937. In capturing the contingent, the unobserved and the unstaged — those myriad details that make up the rich patina of everyday life — Lévi-Strauss’s singular image operates heuristically as a revelation of depth into the experiences and identities of the anonymous wearers he captures so candidly on film. The author weaves this precious trace of the past into a broader discourse that foregrounds fashion as a transnational form of modernity and proposes our reimagining of dress history in a decentered, global direction.