Visualizing Nationhood Through Dress: A Cultural Semiotics of Sri Lankan Postage Stamps

Dress acts as a visual medium for expressing national identity, cultural memory, and ideological power. This study examines how attire represented in Sri Lankan postage stamps functions as a multimodal semiotic code that constructs, negotiates, and communicates national identity, cultural memory, and institutional narratives. The study is thematically and semiotically focused; temporal references are included only for reader orientation and do not constitute a longitudinal analysis. Drawing on a curated corpus of 71 costume-related stamps issued between 1935 and 2020, the research uses a two-step analytic approach, Inductive Visual Thematic Analysis followed by Semiotic Content Analysis consolidated as the Ellawela Framework. Situated within a visual culture lens, this approach analyses how representations of traditional, cultural, and occupational attire articulate evolving discourses of gender, identity, power, ethnicity, modernity, and civic belonging. Together, the lens and framework provide a structured basis for examining how dress in philatelic imagery operates as a visual language shaping national identity through state symbolism. Findings reveal that attire in Sri Lankan stamps constructs national identity, shaping memory and privileging dominant cultural values. This article contributes to fashion theory by reframing stamps as visual archives of dress discourse, advancing understanding of how material depictions of clothing function as tools of national storytelling within postcolonial visual culture.