The influence of British rule on elite Indian menswear: the birth of the Sherwani

‘The Influence of British Rule on Elite Indian Menswear: The Birth of the Sherwani’ is a study of the influence of politics on fashion and the resulting development of new garments. This research is designed to demonstrate the effect on elite Indian menswear of the two centuries of British rule in India. It is an effort to understand how the flowing garments worn by elite Indian men in the 18th century gradually became more tailored and fitted with the passage of time. The study uses multiple sources to bring to light lesser known facts about Indian menswear, the evolution of different garments and especially of the sherwani. The sherwani is a knee-length upper garment worn by South-Asian men, and is considered to be India’s traditional menswear. My study highlights the factors responsible for the birth of the sherwani and dispels the myth that it was a garment worn by the Mughals. Simultaneously, this study examines the concept and value of ‘tradition’ in cultures. It scrutinises the reasons for the sherwani being labelled as a traditional Indian garment associated with the Mughal era, when in fact it was born towards the end of the 19th century. The study also analyses the role of the sherwani as a garment of distinction in pre- and post-independence India.

Music copyright in the digital age: creators, commerce and copyright - an empirical study of the UK music copyright industries

Copyright markets, it is said, are ‘winner takes all’ markets favouring the interests of corporate investors over the interests of primary creators. However, little is known about popular music creators’ ‘lived experience’ of copyright. This thesis interrogates key aspects of copyright transactions between creators and investors operating in the UK music industries using analysis of various copyright related documents and semi-structured interviews with creators and investors. The research found considerable variety in the types of ‘deal’ creators enter into and considerable divergence in the potential rewards. It was observed that new-entrant creators have little comprehension of the basic tenets of copyright, but with experience they become more ‘copyright aware’. Documentary and interview evidence reveals creators routinely assign copyright to third party investors for the full term of copyright in sound recordings: the justification for this is questionable. An almost inevitable consequence of this asymmetry of understanding of copyright and asymmetry of bargaining power is that creators become alienated from their copyright works. The empirical evidence presented here supports historic and contemporary calls for a statutory mechanism limiting the maximum copyright assignment period to ten-years.