Fashioning Resistance.
A reading list double feature: "Fashioning the Other" and "Fashioning Caribbean Identity and Resistance," we revisit past essays and highlight a POC-led sustainability organization in Harlem...
This week at the Database…
FRD Researcher Laura Beltrán-Rubio continues her examination of how dress and characteristics worked to “other” groups and individuals, FRD Research Assistant Kai Touissant Marcel explores how Caribbean traditions such as Carnivale hold deep significance, and we revisit two past stories – one on the cheongsam and another on featuring Blackness on the cover of Vogue. Our latest Directory spotlight introduces you to Harlem-based sustainability program Custom Collaborative.
– Kim Jenkins, Founder
From the Library
Fashioning the Other
Fashion is an essential tool in the construction of ideas about the “Other.” By questioning concepts of “ethnic dress” and “world fashion”, researching the clothing worn by enslaved servants and analyzing nineteenth-century discourses of Otherness, studying the semiosis of cross-cultural encounters, and identifying the development of the “exotic other” in dominant cultural discourses, this reading list offers five different perspectives from which to understand the strategies for fashioning the “Other.”
– Laura Beltrán-Rubio, Researcher
Fashioning Caribbean Identity and Resistance
Fashion has been used as a tool by people in the Caribbean and the Caribbean diaspora to build national and regional identities and also as a means of resistance. These five sources delineate historical and contemporary moments in which dress and design have been utilized to disseminate and signify cultural knowledges specific to the Caribbean.
– Kai Touissant Marcel, Research Assistant
‘The Library’ and the ‘Reading List’ is where we collect and organize countless educational sources all in one place. Referenced by educators, students, fashion enthusiasts and curious minds, this multi-faceted repository provides an expanding selection of tools for learning about all matters connected to fashion, appearance, power and the impact of ‘race.’
Essays & Opinion
The West's Appropriation of the Cheongsam
The sexualization of the cheongsam in the West started in the movie industry when actresses such as Anna May Wong and Nancy Kwan starred in movies that catered to American audiences. [...] As one of the few Asian women popular in Hollywood at the time, Kwan’s statements cemented its new sexualized identity in Western media and laid the foundation for the “Chinese Bombshell” stereotype.
– Alex Perry, Guest Contributor
Transcending Blackness in Vogue's September Issues
This Vogue September cover and editorial represented more than a historic precedent of two African-Americans gaining temporary autonomy over a traditionally Eurocentric publication, it symbolized a transcendence of blackness into high art.
– Darnell-Jamal Lisby, Guest Contributor
‘Essays & Opinion’ delivers thought-provoking research and analysis along with provocative takes on timely or underrepresented matters.
The Directory
Custom Collaborative
Custom Collaborative envisions a global women’s apparel industry in which garment makers are fairly compensated for their labor and consumers have access to well-made, sustainably sourced clothes that fit and affirm all bodies.
Custom Collaborative trains, mentors, and advocates for and with no/low-income and immigrant women to build the skills necessary to achieve economic success in the sustainable fashion industry and broader society.
The discourse on fashion and race threads through a vast network of like-minded endeavors. ‘The Directory’ catalogues other sources of information and inspiration.
That’s it for now. Please stay safe and we’ll see you next week.
Yours in service and solidarity,
The Fashion and Race Database Team
Daniela Hernandez, Media Editor
Anthony Palliparambil, Jr., Content Editor
Kimberly Jenkins, Founder