International journal of fashion studies, Oct 1, 2022
Decolonizing debates have the potential to revitalize fashion studies by placing greater emphasis... more Decolonizing debates have the potential to revitalize fashion studies by placing greater emphasis on the way we practise, and the conditions under which we see, hear and speak about fashion imagery. Decolonializing projects and anti-racist activism suggest new methodologies and transformational insights, which are riddled with contradictions and personal vulnerabilities. This article reflects on museums and fashion photography as spaces of decolonial reckoning and paradox. Understanding and coming to terms with positionality, a crucial factor in decolonial praxis, emerges as a continually unfolding process of action and compromise in which the researcher may ultimately ground herself.
Fashion and Ethnicity is a book-length monograph that explores how fashion expresses and exploits... more Fashion and Ethnicity is a book-length monograph that explores how fashion expresses and exploits ideas about race and ethnicity. Although there are some good critical evaluations of fashion and globalisation, and a multiplicity of studies of particular instances of ethnic identity and fashion, there is currently no overview that specifically addresses fashion and ethnicity as interrelated cultural constructions. This book presents a new critique of the meaning of fashion and its systems by foregrounding ethnicity. The work interrogates and challenges the tendency to construct concepts of ‘fashion’ and ‘ethnic dress’ as opposites, where fashion has been equated with western modernity, and ethnic dress with non-western tradition. It examines recent scholarly debates on alternative non-western fashion systems and presents original historical and contemporary case studies in ethnic identity and fashion to create a new critical evaluation of what fashion and ethnicity mean in relation to each other. The sense of social belonging and individuality that fashion engenders can include ethnicity, yet often seems to transcend matters of race, nation and ethnicity through a set of cultural dynamics linked to globalisation and histories of cultural imperialism. A central concern throughout the book is to elucidate political and cultural definitions of fashion and ethnicity. Individual chapters are structured around the history of fashion and empire, issues of nationality and race (including white ethnicities), diasporic identities, and the body. Provocative questions are asked about the uses and abuses of the term ‘ethnic’ in the fashion media that have wide-reaching implications for the producers and consumers of fashion. Berg Publishers has worldwide distribution and are an internationally recognised academic publisher with a high profile in the field of fashion studies. Fashion and Ethnicity relates clearly to research themes of social responsiveness and engagement, internationalism, diversity and global citizenship. It will challenge social and ethical agendas on the representation of fashion and ethnicity, and will make an internationally important contribution to the field of fashion studies
Decolonial approaches foreground the necessity for design historians to rethink their methodologi... more Decolonial approaches foreground the necessity for design historians to rethink their methodologies and terms of debate to recognize the impact of colonial legacies. Only then is it possible to make changes toward social and cognitive justice. This piece explores new models for working collectively with history and memory across oral registers to include the colloquial and moments of pause, of taking breath. In mid-2020, four design historians teamed up to develop experimental, multimedia methods of working to explore new critical design histories. By using “otherwise” methods to look, listen, and read closely, this piece foregrounds the making of space for new interpretations of thinking and writing. The tensions between memories, stories, and histories are interpreted and challenged using concepts such as breath, voice, palimpsest, circle and rhythm. Exploring translation, opacity, embodiment, positionality, and nonlinearity emerged as crucial to questioning the terms under which ...
In this Special Issue, we explore decolonizing fashion studies not as a destination but as non-li... more In this Special Issue, we explore decolonizing fashion studies not as a destination but as non-linear process, ever revised, re-evaluated, revisited and relived. Situated within a space of self-questioning, the authors in this Special Issue embrace unresolved contradictions and unresolvable paradoxes inherent to the very being of fashion. They are participants, aware that there is no pure pre-colonial space to return to, no ‘authentic’ pre-colonial dress to resuscitate, accept the multiple means to liberation that emerge through layered/interconnected/tangled histories. In pieces about India, Nigeria, Senegal, Argentina, the United Kingdom and the United States, contributors demonstrate that oftentimes decolonial efforts reinscribe the very power relations they seek to dismantle as a seemingly inescapable condition of capitalist modernity. Yet these conflicted efforts make valuable contributions to social justice. Turning these problems into our theme, we see incompleteness as a pat...
If hairdressing is the simultaneous cultivation of hair, self and society, then cornrows are a bu... more If hairdressing is the simultaneous cultivation of hair, self and society, then cornrows are a bumper crop. This article was commissioned by MacGuffin magazine for a special issue on 'rope' to explore some social and personal meanings of the cornrow hairstyle in contemporary fashion
From publisher's description of book: Situated at the crossroads of visual culture and consum... more From publisher's description of book: Situated at the crossroads of visual culture and consumerism, this essay collection examines visual merchandising as both a business and an art. It seeks to challenge that scholarly ambivalence that often celebrates the spectacle but denies the agenda of consumerism. The volume considers strategies in the imaging of selling from the mid nineteenth century to the present, in terms of the visual interaction that occurs between the commodity and the consumer and between body and space
The dressing of hair creates a division between the socially marked, culturally constructed body,... more The dressing of hair creates a division between the socially marked, culturally constructed body, and the frank nakedness of an undressed body. This concluding chapter examines how identities are both culturally and biologically constituted, and discursively and physically experienced. It reflects on how hair and hair practices figure in the construction of human subjectivities.
... The Museum at FIT., New York, Gift of Adele Simpson, 69.172.33B. ... Clearly clothing in trad... more ... The Museum at FIT., New York, Gift of Adele Simpson, 69.172.33B. ... Clearly clothing in traditional China was not simply a matter of fashion or taste or social status, although it was all of those too; it was perhaps most importantly a signifier of cultural identity and superiority. ...
International journal of fashion studies, Oct 1, 2022
Decolonizing debates have the potential to revitalize fashion studies by placing greater emphasis... more Decolonizing debates have the potential to revitalize fashion studies by placing greater emphasis on the way we practise, and the conditions under which we see, hear and speak about fashion imagery. Decolonializing projects and anti-racist activism suggest new methodologies and transformational insights, which are riddled with contradictions and personal vulnerabilities. This article reflects on museums and fashion photography as spaces of decolonial reckoning and paradox. Understanding and coming to terms with positionality, a crucial factor in decolonial praxis, emerges as a continually unfolding process of action and compromise in which the researcher may ultimately ground herself.
Fashion and Ethnicity is a book-length monograph that explores how fashion expresses and exploits... more Fashion and Ethnicity is a book-length monograph that explores how fashion expresses and exploits ideas about race and ethnicity. Although there are some good critical evaluations of fashion and globalisation, and a multiplicity of studies of particular instances of ethnic identity and fashion, there is currently no overview that specifically addresses fashion and ethnicity as interrelated cultural constructions. This book presents a new critique of the meaning of fashion and its systems by foregrounding ethnicity. The work interrogates and challenges the tendency to construct concepts of ‘fashion’ and ‘ethnic dress’ as opposites, where fashion has been equated with western modernity, and ethnic dress with non-western tradition. It examines recent scholarly debates on alternative non-western fashion systems and presents original historical and contemporary case studies in ethnic identity and fashion to create a new critical evaluation of what fashion and ethnicity mean in relation to each other. The sense of social belonging and individuality that fashion engenders can include ethnicity, yet often seems to transcend matters of race, nation and ethnicity through a set of cultural dynamics linked to globalisation and histories of cultural imperialism. A central concern throughout the book is to elucidate political and cultural definitions of fashion and ethnicity. Individual chapters are structured around the history of fashion and empire, issues of nationality and race (including white ethnicities), diasporic identities, and the body. Provocative questions are asked about the uses and abuses of the term ‘ethnic’ in the fashion media that have wide-reaching implications for the producers and consumers of fashion. Berg Publishers has worldwide distribution and are an internationally recognised academic publisher with a high profile in the field of fashion studies. Fashion and Ethnicity relates clearly to research themes of social responsiveness and engagement, internationalism, diversity and global citizenship. It will challenge social and ethical agendas on the representation of fashion and ethnicity, and will make an internationally important contribution to the field of fashion studies
Decolonial approaches foreground the necessity for design historians to rethink their methodologi... more Decolonial approaches foreground the necessity for design historians to rethink their methodologies and terms of debate to recognize the impact of colonial legacies. Only then is it possible to make changes toward social and cognitive justice. This piece explores new models for working collectively with history and memory across oral registers to include the colloquial and moments of pause, of taking breath. In mid-2020, four design historians teamed up to develop experimental, multimedia methods of working to explore new critical design histories. By using “otherwise” methods to look, listen, and read closely, this piece foregrounds the making of space for new interpretations of thinking and writing. The tensions between memories, stories, and histories are interpreted and challenged using concepts such as breath, voice, palimpsest, circle and rhythm. Exploring translation, opacity, embodiment, positionality, and nonlinearity emerged as crucial to questioning the terms under which ...
In this Special Issue, we explore decolonizing fashion studies not as a destination but as non-li... more In this Special Issue, we explore decolonizing fashion studies not as a destination but as non-linear process, ever revised, re-evaluated, revisited and relived. Situated within a space of self-questioning, the authors in this Special Issue embrace unresolved contradictions and unresolvable paradoxes inherent to the very being of fashion. They are participants, aware that there is no pure pre-colonial space to return to, no ‘authentic’ pre-colonial dress to resuscitate, accept the multiple means to liberation that emerge through layered/interconnected/tangled histories. In pieces about India, Nigeria, Senegal, Argentina, the United Kingdom and the United States, contributors demonstrate that oftentimes decolonial efforts reinscribe the very power relations they seek to dismantle as a seemingly inescapable condition of capitalist modernity. Yet these conflicted efforts make valuable contributions to social justice. Turning these problems into our theme, we see incompleteness as a pat...
If hairdressing is the simultaneous cultivation of hair, self and society, then cornrows are a bu... more If hairdressing is the simultaneous cultivation of hair, self and society, then cornrows are a bumper crop. This article was commissioned by MacGuffin magazine for a special issue on 'rope' to explore some social and personal meanings of the cornrow hairstyle in contemporary fashion
From publisher's description of book: Situated at the crossroads of visual culture and consum... more From publisher's description of book: Situated at the crossroads of visual culture and consumerism, this essay collection examines visual merchandising as both a business and an art. It seeks to challenge that scholarly ambivalence that often celebrates the spectacle but denies the agenda of consumerism. The volume considers strategies in the imaging of selling from the mid nineteenth century to the present, in terms of the visual interaction that occurs between the commodity and the consumer and between body and space
The dressing of hair creates a division between the socially marked, culturally constructed body,... more The dressing of hair creates a division between the socially marked, culturally constructed body, and the frank nakedness of an undressed body. This concluding chapter examines how identities are both culturally and biologically constituted, and discursively and physically experienced. It reflects on how hair and hair practices figure in the construction of human subjectivities.
... The Museum at FIT., New York, Gift of Adele Simpson, 69.172.33B. ... Clearly clothing in trad... more ... The Museum at FIT., New York, Gift of Adele Simpson, 69.172.33B. ... Clearly clothing in traditional China was not simply a matter of fashion or taste or social status, although it was all of those too; it was perhaps most importantly a signifier of cultural identity and superiority. ...
The Program of the V&A/RCA History of Design Research Seminar is now available. Any person with r... more The Program of the V&A/RCA History of Design Research Seminar is now available. Any person with research Interest in the field is very welcome to attend.
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