Welcome to our new home!
The Fashion and Race Database Project has relaunched today.
It's time to decentralize and decolonize the study of fashion. Are you ready?
Hello, everyone!
For the past two months, I have been working to relaunch The Fashion and Race Database and today is the day. The site has officially gone ‘live’ with a whole new design and increased functionality.
It began as an early project between 2016-2017 with fellow scholar Rikki Byrd, called ‘The Fashion and Race Syllabus,’ and in 2017 I embarked upon a larger project that sought to gather sources that teach about ‘race’ from a global perspective.
In that early iteration, fashionandrace.com, I gathered books, articles and media that organized the global discourse on ‘fashion and race.’ Since then, I have received countless emails and DMs on social media from people around the world telling me how useful the website has been for their work!
Once Ryerson University (Toronto) offered me a full-time, Assistant Professor position last summer, I left my part-time position at Parsons School of Design in December and took advantage of the funding and support offered to make this ambitious project more impactful.
I found web designer RJ Ramey from Auut Studios in late April this year, and he translated all of my ideas into an engaging platform for you to enjoy. My driving questions were, “How can I create an invaluable online resource that is filled with the tools needed to better inform society? How can I make fashion academia ‘cool’ and accessible? How can I create unique research and publishing opportunities for BIPOCs?”
I invite you to head over to the new site, look around and hang out for a while. You’ll notice that I have a team now (!!!) and you’ll also probably notice that we need more content (lol), but that’s coming soon!
In fact, next week we are preparing to launch an exciting Summer Fundraising Campaign (hooray for compensating intellectual labor!) and I can’t wait to tell you all about it so you can take action.
Yours in service and solidarity,
Kim