This chapter explores ethnicity and fashion in the nineteenth century for the new multivolume collection on the cultural history of fashion. The chapter is a significant contribution to an area that is very under-researched. By focussing on the key themes of slavery and freedom, colonialism and postcolonialism, industrialisation and indigenous craft traditions, the chapter gives an overview of the essential debates within dress history and fashion studies as they relate to issues of race. It argues for a less Eurocentric and more multidirectional understanding of the globalisation of fashion, and propose that the most crucial factors were the cultural and political mechanisms that mediated fashion exchanges across cultural boundaries.