 Hi, everyone. Kim Jenkins here. It's an honor to be part of the fashion culture futures symposium. I was asked to share a presentation that expresses some of the work that I do as an educator and researcher, specifically when it comes to contemporary fashion representation and race, which is my specialization. So I have put together a little slideshow for you in anticipation of the conversation that I will be having with three distinguished guests that will hopefully get you thinking a little bit about the role of fashion history, the implications of racism, and the importance of positive representation. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen now. And I'm going with the limits and possibilities of fashion reflecting on race and representation, a lecture in two parts. And so in this presentation, I want to talk about what the role of dress and fashion and style can have when it comes to limiting us in society and also what it makes possible, what do we need to transcend certain socially constructed obstacles throughout history. So for the limitations of fashionable dress, I want to just share a couple of historical moments. And so one that I share in my course, fashion and race, is the Negro Law of 1740 in South Carolina. And this is sort of an archived document here of it. And what I want to share this with you is just kind of taking you all the way back into the 18th century, where we are seeing how clothing and materials can be used to mark and exclude certain groups of people, specifically Black Americans in the United States. So I just want to read a little segment here of just how we were able to, well, they were able to legislate excluding certain groups of people through dress. So this 40th section of the act of 1740 regulates the apparel of slaves, unless you are sort of working as a Liveryman, and prohibits Black people from wearing anything finer, other or of greater value than Negro cloth, which I'll explain in just a moment to you. Duff holes, curses, Ogner birds, blue linen, coarse garlics, calicoes, checked codons, basically anything that was considered valuable or fancy dress. This is the extent in the United States of America to which laws were put in place to exclude and oppress Black people from engaging in fashionable dress, being able to access and wear on their bodies the fanciful clothing. And so as the document mentions Negro cloth, in case you haven't heard of Negro cloth, it's the sort of umbrella term to describe essentially the worst kind of clothing that was reserved for Black enslaved people to wear all the way through the 19th century. And so this was used as a marker for individuals to easily see and read who was lower class in society and then who was in power as juxtaposed or vis-a-vis white individuals or slave-owning individuals. So this here that you see to the right is an example of sort of an outfit of what an enslaved individual wear, lacking color, lacking comfort, lacking anything sort of distinctive or making someone feel like they have any sort of integrity. So these are just examples of how design throughout history was used to mark an exclude. Another example I draw upon is this illustrative series called Life in Philadelphia. And so this satire here from 1830 is mocking Black people attempting to be fanciful or engage in fashionability. So it's showing them in a very unflattering light. It's showing them attempting to be fashionable, but they're wearing the outfits all wrong or their bodies are drawn to look distorted and things like that. So here you have the Black woman saying, what do you think of my new pope on it? And so I won't repeat what is on the illustration of what they have the man say. But these are just some of the examples again throughout history of what we have had to endure and transcend from being denied the opportunity to be fashionable or wear fanciful clothing, dress up and style ourselves. And then when we do have access to clothing and try to be fanciful, we are mocked. And this sort of satire, which was widely published, you know, sort of this inside joke that people would read and laugh at, oh, look at these Black people trying to be fashionable, but they'll never get it. So kind of moving forward a century, it gets me thinking about where do our bodies fit in an industry designed around whiteness? And so just kind of looking at these photo cards here used in the modeling industry, and it's not representative of all that modeling agencies use, but pretty indicative of what's been common in the last 20 years, 20 to 30 years in the fashion industry, which you can see here is pretty homogenous. And while homogeneity is useful in the fashion industry just across the board in having these kind of quote unquote standardized or uniform bodies coming down the runway, it also is glaringly white. And so you see Black bodies struggling to fit in into these standards, especially when you also have models discriminated against for their hair texture, the size of their nose and lips, the shapes of their bodies, and having to feel forced to fit into these moles. A peer of mine, model Ashley Chu, I wanted to use her here. She's a model and artist, among many things. But several years ago in 2016, she was just really so fed up with being excluded as a model and just having to endure all these obstacles compared to her white colleagues when it comes to going on go sees and trying to get jobs in the fashion industry. So she painted this tote bag that says Black models matter and she'd carry it around. And she had this to say, people don't realize it, but the fashion industry is really cutthroat. People will tell you straight up if they don't want Black models or natural hair. Skin pigmentation doesn't matter either, light, medium or dark, you're going to be treated as Black. I feel this is why Black models matter to be such a buzz because it's been an issue for a while. There's nothing worse than getting turned down for your natural composition. And this has been, as we all know, persistent for decades, all of the obstacles to engaging in fashion, participating in fashion, being accepted in the fashion industry from luxury fashion to fast fashion. So one example here I have at the top left is when Trayon Christian, then 19 years old, was stopped inside of Barney's New York in 2013 for trying to purchase with his own money at $350 belt by an Italian designer. Due to the fallout of what happened of being followed out of the store, the city of New York ended up having to pay out Christian in 2016, several years later. Also I have this picture of Narnia Shev Willis, designer of the ghetto until proven fashionable sweatshirt. And this statement that she's making here is something that many Black folks have been saying in response to the fashion industry. And what it's speaking to, in case you haven't heard of this phrase, is oftentimes Black people in the past entry, through all of these things that we have been trying to push through and navigate, being excluded, we come up with our own style. And whether it's braided hairstyles, long stylish nails, gold jewelry, anything like that. And that is uniquely our own in many ways. And you see people in society kind of look at that and call it, quote, ghetto or ratchet. But until the fashion industry decides that it wants to co-opt it and borrow it, borrow from it and trot it down its runway and put it on a white model, for instance. So that is when it becomes fashionable. So when it's on our bodies, it's considered ghetto, but then it becomes fashionable when it is appropriated and refined, quote unquote, or elevated by the fashion industry. But moving on from the oppressive aspects of what can happen with dress and fashion and how society has grappled with the Black body navigating through society, I want to kind of wind down and talk about resilience, the more glowing aspects of what we've been through. And I can even go back in history for that. This image here in 1903 of two Black actors dancing the cakewalk in Paris, you can see them in one of them in sort of drag dress. So these ideas of drag did not just suddenly come out of like the 1960s or 70s or even Paris is burning, this has been happening for over a century. And thanks to researchers and scholars, they're able to excavate all these images and show that these queer identities have been playing with dress, using dress as a tool for quite some time. And specifically, I want to point to this news clip in here to the right from the evening star. So over at a website I run called the Fashion Race Database. One of our researchers put together this piece on William Dorsey Swan, who was also known as the Queen, who in the 19th century was holding drag balls and was advocating effectively for queer rights in the 19th century. So we had this drag queen who was fighting for their legal rights and you know, taking this to court back then. So I encourage you to go over to fashionrace.org to read the full story that our researcher Adriana Hill put together. But these names need to be said and these stories need to be told. And also when we think over to the right here, this image of Michaela Cole, who was lensed by Tygo Mitchell for the Wall Street Journal magazine last year, oftentimes we see these sort of editorials put together where we are celebrating nostalgia, like old ways of dressing and harking back to like the 1950s or 1960s. And oftentimes we are reflecting on or thinking back to certain socialites. It's always Jacqueline Kennedy, amongst others, over half a century ago. But I love this image because you have Michaela here kind of slipping into these sorts of dresses and the jewelry worn back then that oftentimes would see white socialites or white models wearing. Even today when we have editorials that kind of try to look back at historical styles and things like that, you'll still see white models put in that place. So I really love seeing Michaela here, especially with this hairstyle that it's speaking to these kind of oftentimes what you see white hairstyles that white women have worn. So I just really love how disruptive this image is and also how elegant it is. Dominant ideals, we are still navigating this though. So when it comes to what we are transcending in fashion now, at long last, these moles that I was speaking to are being broken from oppressive narratives and images. So these dominant ideals that I'm speaking to that we have been navigating in the fashion world and in the world of beauty have been that you've had the fashion and beauty industry prioritizing thin or anti-fat, anti-curvy bodies, white bodies of course, white passing or white adjacent, also able-bodied. We'll get into that in our conversation today. Straight or heteronormative bodies. So I love this image here of Lizzo on the cover of the October issue of Vogue in 2020 to illustrate just how we're moving forward. And also, I just, you know, want to celebrate also this image of in, again, sort of in sort of this ballroom scene in 1989 in New Jersey. The fact that we have mastered the skill of survival and transcendence, and I have this to say, shattering through dominant narratives with our ingenuity and talent, shocking normative hierarchies with our beauty and blindness and sporting oppressive notions of appropriateness that attempts to other us or put us in our place. I believe that preserving our heritage and cultivating a knowledge itself is an everyday act of resilience. And I also want to emphasize that we are complex. We are not a monolith. We don't all dress the same, walk the same, talk the same. You know, the fashion industry also, and this is including the fashion education realm also like fashion universities, fashion schools. They love to just kind of put us in a box of urban fashion or urban design, as if that's all that we can do. And so we are complex. Fashion enables us to express the many possibilities of who we are and how we feel. Our clothes, and this is what I teach in my field of fashion studies, are closer and intermediary between self and society. This thing, you know, inside of these clothes is my body, my lived experience, my sense of self, and there is society surrounding me. And my clothes, my hair, everything is used as this kind of intermediary. It helps kind of reconcile how I feel about myself and who I feel I am and what I want to express. And it also navigates sociocultural norms. And I make decisions every day as to whether I want to confront them or not. So that is the power of dress. And that's why I love teaching this sort of thing. And I love this image. We use this at the fashion-based database in a section that we call our fashion history. And I created this column called our fashion history as a way to start collecting kind of crowdsourcing family photos from the black community globally that says we're here and we've always been here. Oftentimes when people think of fashion history or fashion history, photo albums, it just seems very homogenous. But it's really exciting to see black people come together and contribute photos of their family or themselves in the past. And that we can contribute and co-author this narrative of fashion history. So this image that you're seeing here is from Aaron Francis, who founded Vintage Black Canada. And this is Aaron's uncle, Errol, who won a Juno in Canada. So this is family in Canada, which is like the Grammys in Canada. And so that is his uncle, Errol, in a very kind of Prince-like outfit to the right with his parents for their anniversary. And so in closing, I want to say to the fashion industry that they have an opportunity to shed its outdated systems of thinking and operation. As we'll discuss today with various topics, it's time to not only prioritize diversity, but sustainability. What does sustainability mean? It is an all encompassing term that not only includes our issues and concern around the environment, but also the sustainability of human beings, especially black people. And it should also prioritize liberation. So a couple of images I'm going to close with is this gorgeous cover styled by Ibtamara in 2020 for the cover of Love magazine and also Corvijon Raymond here wearing this kind of top or jacket says, if you're just learning about Hermos, we forgive you. So thank you. I'll close with that.