Introducing: 'Decolonial Reflections'
FRD’s founder, Kimberly Jenkins and Senior Researcher and Editorial Manager, Dr. Laura Beltrán-Rubio discuss the motivations and expectations for the new column.
The team at FRD is proud to announce its newest column, “Decolonial Reflections,” which will be a space that features essays reflecting on the process, stakes and experiences in decolonizing fashion. Listen to or read the transcript below of FRD’s founder, Kimberly Jenkins and Senior Researcher and Editorial Manager, Dr. Laura Beltrán-Rubio, as they discuss the motivations and expectations for the column.
If there’s anything you wish us to cover in this column, please let us know by contacting us.
Listen to the audio version below:
Read the conversation below:
Kim Jenkins: Hi, this is Kim Jenkins, founder of the Fashion and Race Database, the first and most trusted education platform that provides dedicated research and program on how the construct of race has shaped the history, industry and culture of fashion. I have served as a professor at leading universities for nearly a decade, and partnered with businesses and institutions to expand our understanding of how and why we wear what we wear matters.
Laura Beltrán-Rubio: Hi, I’m Laura Beltrán-Rubio, Senior Researcher and Editorial Manager at The Fashion and Race Database. I specialize in Latin American and Indigenous textile and fashion arts, and my mission is to diversify global fashion by creating bridges between the fashion industry and academia.
Kim: We’re excited to share with you our brand news section at The Fashion and Race Database called “Decolonial Reflections.”
So, Laura, let’s talk about why we found this section necessary. I was thinking when we first started bouncing around this idea, “We’ve already been talking about decolonizing fashion,” and I thought that it would be nice to have a column that really kind of deconstructs that, since there’s, sometimes for people, some mystery around what that word means or what does it involve, how can someone be involved in that process of decolonizing?
And so, given the fact that we are just kind of working through it and thinking through it as an everyday practice, perhaps there could be a column where we could just write about and record or film different ways that we are exploring it, getting it right, getting it wrong, just doing this sort of practice of it, not just from our own point of view, but from other voices that we could enlist to talk about what this means to them.
Laura: Yes, absolutely. And for me, I think a very important part, and we’ve talked about it in the past as well, is that decolonizing tends to be misunderstood. A lot of people do it, and we hear the word everywhere, but we don’t really know what it is. So much so that internally here at The Fashion and Race Database, we’ve discussed if we should even use that word.
I personally moved away from it for a little bit. I think I’ve started to embrace it again more recently, but I think having this column is essential, not just for us at The Fashion and Race Database—to grapple with these questions, but then also to share our reflections, our ideas with the public, and hopefully also start new conversations with new people and new contributors.
Kim: Absolutely. When I think about what decolonizing means, I have been thinking through it for several years. I grapple with it due to the complexity of acknowledging all the intersections of myself as a person, as a woman identifying as a woman, identifying as a Black woman, identifying as a Black woman living in the United States of America, and scaling out further as a Black woman living in the United States, in the West, so I can be considered enjoying Western privileges, which further complicates my relationship with decolonizing on a daily basis.
You know, what can I realistically do to decolonize? Is there a need for me to decolonize anything? How natural does it come to me? But again, coming to that word “privilege,” just thinking through the complexity and not only enjoying a great deal of privilege in the world right now, but also acknowledging levels of oppression that I still experience on a day to day basis as a racialized woman.
And so there is this need for decolonizing certain aspects of the self or the system that we’re operating under. So, when it comes to, in our world of fashion studies, decolonizing fashion, this section will really help, be sort of soothing, almost a diary or a journal for us to kind of think through this and stumble through it and march through it and all of those things.
So right now, when it comes to decolonizing fashion, that’s going to be at least engaging in the practice of reflecting on who I am, how I identify, how I present myself in the world acknowledging my privilege, but also what are some of the things that I want to disrupt about my appearance that I acknowledge is the longstanding result of colonialism? From my skin to my hair to my clothes to the way I speak.
Laura: Yeah, absolutely. I can totally identify myself with a lot of what you’ve been saying. As a Latina who actually grew up in Latin America, has been moving around for over a decade now. I lived in the United States for a while, now I live in the UK, and I think the most shocking part of moving away from my home country in Colombia was realizing, first of all, that I had way too many privileges, but then also realizing or maybe starting to understand how I fit within these other racial hierarchies in other places as well, because I know that I pass as White.
And in Latin America I would probably be considered just White. But then becoming Latina in a way, in this state has shown me all the complexities of race. And it has opened my eyes to how colonized I am as a human being. Even the fact that I’m speaking in English right now with you, I think, is part of how colonized I am.
And it is important to just notice that and question it and evaluate how we are doing in life and how we fit into all of these systems of power. And I think that’s an important part of decolonizing. It’s not necessarily an end goal. It’s not necessarily just a list of things that you can do or that you can say, but it’s a lot about the process.
And about questioning all of these structures, noticing our privilege and understanding how it might damage other people or causes of violence in some ways, or just contribute to systemic forms of oppression, and then maybe even seeing what we can do about it, then starting to take action to actually generate some change. And I think an important part of it is also maybe even trying to find ways to convince it for all the wrongs to offer and pave the way for reparations as well. Yeah, I think that’s what decolonizing sort of means—put very shortly—to me.
Kim: I love that you said that and how you took it from the individual to the global.
I think the first step in decolonizing that has taken a great deal of, well, okay, I wouldn’t say a great deal, but some deal of unlearning has been scaling out from individuality to community, which is just really, in my mind, the heart of decolonizing in Western philosophy, Western psychology, Western sociology, all of the things I learned, and even when I would teach in the classroom is about fashion and individuality. It’s all about the self. The “you” just you, you know, and just how you are fashioning yourself and not thinking about, well, I don’t teach someone to not think about others, but with the idea of individuality, it dismisses this identity of the whole of the community. And for many Indigenous communities globally, it has been all about the circle, the tribe or the community, the family, the unit all moving together, sharing, not capitalizing and only acquiring for self.
And so “sharing the knowledge,” “passing down,” “exchange,” all of these words that can sometimes be foreign in Western contexts of just giving up for the community and just considering the community, what you said just really got me thinking about that and how important that is, and how that, for some people, might take a great deal of unlearning also: just this idea of thinking about the whole and community and not just the self.
And scaling out as you did, thinking about just the global aspect, the environment. How does what we wear not only bring us together or connect us to build a sense of community and support each other, but how is it not causing harm to the environment, and how are we creating environmental or ecological sustainability? I’m really glad that you pointed that out also.
Should we talk about some of the topics that a section or column like “Decolonial Reflections” will start to cover or will attempt to cover?
Laura: I think that’s a great idea. In general, “Decolonial Reflections” will gather ideas and, as its title suggests, reflections on decolonizing fashion.
And this can be just as we did a couple minutes ago. It can be, from a personal perspective, how we engage with our own practices of bodily adornment, but then it can also be through observations of the fashion system or other fashion and design practices that maybe point to systemic issues in both fashion and design and around them.
Kim: Starting to kick things off as we explore this. We’ve invited a guest writer, Maj who is going to be thinking through the act of fashioning the body, thinking through personal narratives and lived experiences and knowledge. So really excited to have Maj join us this season. To start off the conversation of what this looks like.
So we invite you to check out our new section, “Decolonial Reflections” at The Fashion and Race Database, and let us know what you think. Is there anything that you would like to see us cover in “Decolonial Reflections?”