Powering through times like these. Are you ready?
Fashioning Black Hair, Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican dress, 'Conversations on Decoloniality and Fashion,' and more
Hello everyone,
As we returned to our virtual offices at The Fashion and Race Database this past week, we were reminded of our mission in fashion, education and culture. In the wake of continued and heightening unrest, we hope that the platform we have created both enlightens and empowers you. This is a space to gather and uplift racialized people who wish to dismantle the machinations of systemic oppression, and it’s a space to welcome our allies who are prepared to get to “work” in support of our mission. The goal as we move forward isn’t to achieve a reversion to “normalcy,” but to achieve resiliency in times like these. We are called to the challenge, “How are you showing up?” “What are you doing to resist white supremacy?” Doing the work is an ongoing practice, and it is enriched by seeking the resources to educate yourself if you are an ally, and the resources to achieve a knowledge of self if you are systemically oppressed. The database is here to provide both of those resources and the goal is to reach and support as many people as possible, working towards a culture of fashion that liberates minds and challenges oppressive thinking and practices.
This week’s letter brings you the latest resources we are cultivating and publishing. Thank you for your support!
From The Library: Fashioning Black Hair & Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican Dress
Image Credit: Uncoveredlens. ‘Charismatic young African American lady against cloudy sky.’ 2020.
FRD Research Assistant Kai Marcel turns out attention to the role of hair in fashioning Black identity and has curated a reading list surrounding this topic:
Hair is an essential part of visual and cultural identity and this selection from our library explores representations of Black hair throughout art, fashion, and history. Hair discrimination has been one of the primary ways that Black people in colonized societies have been othered. Through the discursive knowledges of racialization that govern many of our collective social institutions, Black hair is made political. Here, various authors explore the subject of Black hair and its relationship to power, beauty, resistance, and identity.
Textures: The History and Art of Black Hair (Book) by Tameka Ellington & Joseph L. Underwood
A Visual History of Iconic Black Hairstyles (Articles) by Madison Horne
Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America (Book) by Ayana D. Byrd & Lori L. Tharps
Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and African American Women (Book) by Noliwe M. Rooks
Hair in African Art and Culture (Book) by Roy Sieber & Frank Herreman
Image credit: The Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II awarding high status clothing to successful warriors. In Bernardino de Sahagún, “Historia General de las cosas de Nueva España,” Vol. 2, 1577, fol. 306v. Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, mss.bmlonline.it.
FRD Researcher Laura Beltrán Rubio has assembled a collection of sources for you to learn about pre-contact Mesoamerican dress:
Dress was a marker of identity to the peoples of Mesoamerica before the Spanish invasion. To the Aztecs, the wearing of appropriate clothing was strictly controlled by both custom and law. For the Maya, dress took both the ephemeral nature of objects of adornment and a more permanent role as an item of display in imagery and glyphic texts. These five books discuss how the early Indigenous cultures of Mesoamerica shared a variety of practices and aesthetic interests. In pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, dress was an important tool for communicating political and social status and power, gender and sexuality, as well as ethnic, regional, and religious identities.
Body: Mapping Ancient Maya Dress (Book) edited by Nicholas Carter, Stephen D. Houston & Franco Rossi
Indian Clothing Before Cortés: Mesoamerican Costumes from the Codices (Book) by Patricia Rieff Anawalt
Insignia of Rank in the Nahua World: From the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century (Book) by Justyna Olko
Wearing Culture: Dress and Regalia in Early Mesoamerica and Central America (Book) by Heather Orr & Matthew Looper
Turquoise Diadems and Staffs of Office: Elite Costume and Insignia of Power in Aztec and Early Colonial Mexico (Books) by Justyna Olko
‘The Library’ 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.’
Objects That Matter: The Kiondo
Carol Muthiga-Oyekunle is a Kenyan-American artist and accessories designer and a guest contributor to the database. An object that matters to her is the Kiondo, a basket native to central Kenya, with its origin story obscured in high fashion, from Balenciaga to Céline:
The Kiondo is traditionally a round, striped, woven sisal and leather strapped basket, made and used by Agikuyu women from central Kenya, to carry out daily domestic tasks. The size depends on its use mainly as a container to transport farm produce, firewood, and water in gourds. For Agikuyu people, the origin and symbolism of the Kiondo has prolific meaning. Contemporary iterations of this object have been created to cater mainly to the tourist industry, focusing more on popular fashion aesthetic appeal than authenticity.
We invite you to learn more about this tote, rich with profound meaning.
Image credit: A Kenyan small woven basket. Kikuyu, early 20th century 6-1/2 inches high (16.5 cm) The soft woven basket with braided string handle, black, orange, red and natural bands. From the Toledo Museum of Natural History: The Personal Collection of Carl Akeley. Image by Heritage Auction. HA.com
'Objects That Matter' gathers numerous fashion objects outside of the Western lens and provides a brief history, showing why they matter, as many of these items have been widely appropriated or referenced.
Essay: ‘Through the Gaultier Glass: Couture, Colonialism and Cultural Appropriation’
Guest contributor Samantha Haran is a fashion and culture writer, academic tutor, creative and Honours Law student at the University of Queensland in Australia. In her essay, ‘Through the Gaultier Glass: Couture, Colonialism and Cultural Appropriation,’ Samantha interrogates the pervasive nature of mis-appropriation in high fashion:
Cultural appropriation in haute couture such as Gaultier—that draws on elements of the “oversimplified” India into high European culture for creative and economic benefit—is a tangible manifestation of Orientalism. By appropriating Indian culture, the West (with Gaultier as the agent) ultimately consolidates this over-simplistic and essentialist knowledge about India so that it can be accepted by a Western audience.
Read on, as Samantha builds her argument in the context of a legendary designer.
The Directory
This week, Media Editor Daniela Hernandez highlights the academic initiative, the Research Collective for Decolonizing Fashion:
The Research Collective for Decolonizing Fashion was established in 2012 to move beyond the stubbornly persistent Eurocentric and ethnocentric underpinnings of dominant fashion discourse and to construct alternative narratives.
The discourse on fashion and race threads through a vast network of like-minded endeavors. ‘The Directory’ catalogues other sources of information and inspiration.
The Calendar
Angela Jansen and Erica de Greef, leaders of the Research Collective for Decolonizing Fashion, are kicking off a new conversation series called ‘Conversations on Decoloniality and Fashion.’ Conversations will be held online every first Saturday of the month from 8-9pm GMT.
Learn more about this series and how you can get involved.
A global network of events, conversations and opportunities will continue to evolve the discourse on fashion and race. ‘The Calendar’ remains on the pulse and keeps you looped in.
That’s it for now. Please stay safe and we’ll see you next week.
Yours in service and solidarity,
Kim Jenkins
The Fashion and Race Database Team: Rachel Kinnard, Daniela Hernandez, Kai Marcel, Laura Beltrán-Rubio