Adorning Adversaries, Affecting Avenues

Adorning Adversaries, Affecting Avenues
Author: Abena Lewis-Mhoon
Publisher:
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2005
Genre: African American fashion designers
ISBN:

This thesis examines the late nineteenth and early twentieth century African American designer and her role in the American fashion industry. It covers literature written about African American women's dress and adornment during this time period, the African "memory" and the cultural continuum, the critical role and importance of the African American seamstress as a designer, corporal and sartorial restrictions placed on African American women and their impact on fashion design in Washington, D.C. In addition to fashion and everyday clothing, it examines the standard of beauty, the history of slave clothing, beauty shops and hairdressing.

Dressed in Dreams

Dressed in Dreams
Author: Tanisha C. Ford
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2019-06-25
Genre: Design
ISBN: 125017354X

One of Essence's "10 Books We're Dying To Toss Into Our Summer Totes" From sneakers to leather jackets, a bold, witty, and deeply personal dive into Black America's closet In this highly engaging book, fashionista and pop culture expert Tanisha C. Ford investigates Afros and dashikis, go-go boots and hotpants of the sixties, hip hop's baggy jeans and bamboo earrings, and the #BlackLivesMatter-inspired hoodies of today. The history of these garments is deeply intertwined with Ford’s story as a black girl coming of age in a Midwestern rust belt city. She experimented with the Jheri curl; discovered how wearing the wrong color tennis shoes at the roller rink during the drug and gang wars of the 1980s could get you beaten; and rocked oversized, brightly colored jeans and Timberlands at an elite boarding school where the white upper crust wore conservative wool shift dresses. Dressed in Dreams is a story of desire, access, conformity, and black innovation that explains things like the importance of knockoff culture; the role of “ghetto fabulous” full-length furs and colorful leather in the 1990s; how black girls make magic out of a dollar store t-shirt, rhinestones, and airbrushed paint; and black parents' emphasis on dressing nice. Ford talks about the pain of seeing black style appropriated by the mainstream fashion industry and fashion’s power, especially in middle America. In this richly evocative narrative, she shares her lifelong fashion revolution—from figuring out her own personal style to discovering what makes Midwestern fashion a real thing too.

The Clothes on Her Back

The Clothes on Her Back
Author: Ayana Aisha Flewellen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2018
Genre:
ISBN:

In the midst of social reform and the rise of mass produced goods that defined the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Black women were pinning their hair up with combs, lacing glass beads around their necks, dyeing coarse-cotton fabric with sumac berries and walnuts, and fastening buttons to adorn their bodies and dress their social lives. This project addresses one central question: How did race, gender, and class operations of power and oppression shape African American women's identity formation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Texas? This project addresses this question using archaeological and documentary evidence, by investigating why African American women engaged in particular practices of dress and adornment in Texas from 1865 to 1910. I focus my research on the clothing, adornment, and grooming artifacts recovered from the Levi Jordan Plantation (LJP), where African American families lived and labored as tenants, wage laborers, and sharecroppers. Under the umbrella of my central question, I ask: 1. In what ways were sartorial practices embedded in relations and ideologies of race, gender, and class, and how did Black women negotiate these operations of power and oppression through dress? 2. Given the relationship between fashion and the construction of hegemonic notions of femininity, are Black women's clothing and adornment practices representative of resistance and/or conformity to these notions? Is there evidence of formations of a distinctive Black womanhood? 3. As African American women moved through various spaces (at home, at work, and in public spaces) during a time of heightened racial oppression, how were their choices regarding dress influenced? In what ways were their sartorial practices situational to the spaces they occupied? Through a Black feminist intersectional lens, I attempt to answer these questions by interpreting the ways practices of dress engaged in by African Americans at the LJP were shaped by race, gender, and class operations of power and oppression within spheres of labor at home and beyond. This work examines how these operations of power and oppression shaped and were shaped by constructions of Black womanhood - as seen through sartorial practices - within spheres of labor, as well as through the threat of racialized and gendered violence, the desire for self-expression, and processes of social reproduction.

Dress and Adornment

Dress and Adornment
Author: Sandra Klopper
Publisher: Struik Publishers
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2001
Genre: Design
ISBN:

People's dress and adornment follow the dictates of fashion, but they are also a means of giving expression to social, political or religious values. Southern African peoples, whose clothing combines traditional and Western elements, are represented here.

Stylin'

Stylin'
Author: Shane White
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2018-10-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1501718088

For over two centuries, in the North as well as the South, both within their own community and in the public arena, African Americans have presented their bodies in culturally distinctive ways. Shane White and Graham White consider the deeper significance of the ways in which African Americans have dressed, walked, danced, arranged their hair, and communicated in silent gestures. They ask what elaborate hair styles, bright colors, bandanas, long watch chains, and zoot suits, for example, have really meant, and discuss style itself as an expression of deep-seated cultural imperatives. Their wide-ranging exploration of black style from its African origins to the 1940s reveals a culture that differed from that of the dominant racial group in ways that were often subtle and elusive. A wealth of black-and-white illustrations show the range of African American experience in America, emanating from all parts of the country, from cities and farms, from slave plantations, and Chicago beauty contests. White and White argue that the politics of black style is, in fact, the politics of metaphor, always ambiguous because it is always indirect. To tease out these ambiguities, they examine extensive sources, including advertisements for runaway slaves, interviews recorded with surviving ex-slaves in the 1930s, autobiographies, travelers' accounts, photographs, paintings, prints, newspapers, and images drawn from popular culture, such as the stereotypes of Jim Crow and Zip Coon.

Liberated Threads

Liberated Threads
Author: Tanisha C. Ford
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2015-09-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1469625164

From the civil rights and Black Power era of the 1960s through antiapartheid activism in the 1980s and beyond, black women have used their clothing, hair, and style not simply as a fashion statement but as a powerful tool of resistance. Whether using stiletto heels as weapons to protect against police attacks or incorporating African-themed designs into everyday wear, these fashion-forward women celebrated their identities and pushed for equality. In this thought-provoking book, Tanisha C. Ford explores how and why black women in places as far-flung as New York City, Atlanta, London, and Johannesburg incorporated style and beauty culture into their activism. Focusing on the emergence of the "soul style" movement—represented in clothing, jewelry, hairstyles, and more—Liberated Threads shows that black women's fashion choices became galvanizing symbols of gender and political liberation. Drawing from an eclectic archive, Ford offers a new way of studying how black style and Soul Power moved beyond national boundaries, sparking a global fashion phenomenon. Following celebrities, models, college students, and everyday women as they moved through fashion boutiques, beauty salons, and record stores, Ford narrates the fascinating intertwining histories of Black Freedom and fashion.

The Archaeology of Clothing and Bodily Adornment in Colonial America

The Archaeology of Clothing and Bodily Adornment in Colonial America
Author: Diana DiPaolo Loren
Publisher:
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2011-07-01
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 9780813038032

"Highly readable but also innovative in its approach to a broad array of material from diverse colonial contexts."--Carolyn White, University of Nevada, Reno "Loren brings together a sampling of the extensive literature on the archaeology of clothing and adornment to argue that artifacts of the body acquire their meaning through cultural practice. She shows how dress serves as social discourse and a tool of identity negotiation."--Kathleen Deagan, Florida Museum of Natural History Dress has always been a social medium. Color, fabric, and fit of clothing, along with adornments, posture, and manners, convey information on personal status, occupation, religious beliefs, and even sexual preferences. Clothing and adornment are therefore important not only for their utility but also in their expressive properties and the ability of the wearer to manipulate those properties. Diana DiPaolo Loren investigates some ways in which colonial peoples chose to express their bodies and identities through clothing and adornment. She examines strategies of combining local-made and imported goods not simply to emulate European elites, but instead to create a language of new appearance by which to communicate in an often contentious colonial world. Through the lens of historical archaeology Loren highlights the active manipulation of the material culture of clothing and adornment by people in English, Dutch, French, and Spanish colonies, demonstrating that within Northern American dressing traditions, clothing and identity are inextricably linked.

The fabrics of culture

The fabrics of culture
Author: Justine M. Cordwell
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 537
Release: 2011-07-22
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 3111631524