The Pandemic Grounded Us as Travelers, but It Can Still Elevate Our Style
Photos courtesy The Common Thread Project
Many of us are frustrated by our inability to explore other countries at this time, but supporting a local fashion artisan can be a surprisingly effective alternative. Most fashion designers’ design processes are steeped in the influence of cultural values. By designing clothing and accessories that tell the story of their personal experiences, minority and immigrant designers are not only using design to stay connected to their roots, but to also share their cultural pride with others. Even when the designs incorporate a more Western aesthetic and silhouette, you can often find remnants of the “old country” in everything from the colors to the fabrics.
I’m a fashion anthropologist, and I’m working to highlight these designers’ efforts with Sidewalk Safaris, a set of cultural shopping tours to minority-owned boutiques based in predominantly marginalized neighborhoods. On our tours, we break down the cultural, historical, and political roots behind the style choices made by black and brown fashion artisans. We started our tour series in New York City’s Harlem, and we’re expanding to Atlanta, and Los Angeles. What we have found working closely with communities of local, minority fashion artisans is that it is impossible for them to design anything without being influenced by their culture.
In Harlem, a large number of our local partners are West African, which reflects the large community of Malians, Senegalese, and Nigerians who have lived in Harlem since the 1990s. They moved to Harlem because of its rich, Black history, coupled with the fact that it was one of the most affordable neighborhoods in New York, pre-gentrification. Their vibrant culture is exemplified in the products that they sell. In the boutiques Sidewalk Safaris visits, you can often find large swathes of mud cloth, also called “bogolan,” narrow strips of handwoven cotton stitched together into a whole cloth, then painted with patterns and symbols using a variety of natural dyes, including river mud that has been aged up to one year. You can also find waist beads, a traditional African accessory that consists of small glass beads on a string or wire worn around the waist or hips.
The most impactful contribution that these local artisans make to the American fashion landscape is a long tradition of customization, which stands in direct contradiction to the current fascination with fast fashion. Most of the designers we feature never make more than 10 of each piece in a collection, preferring to create only two pieces in each size.
Almost all of our featured boutiques have in-house tailors that will customize an existing design by color, silhouette, or length to best accentuate your favorite personal attributes. This focus on customization not only reflects the handmade traditions of their home country, but also reflects the culture of their host neighborhood. In the 1920s, when Harlem transitioned from being predominantly Jewish and Italian to predominantly newly relocated Black Southerners, most major retailers were segregated. As a result, there developed a robust collective of local tailors and seamstresses that could replicate the popular fashions of the day to a T. By shopping with us in Harlem, you are being exposed to traditional African culture, and you also access to the rich culture of Harlem as the Black Mecca of Manhattan. More importantly, by shopping locally, you gain the opportunity to explore yourself and your own “style story” more deeply as well.
Fashion as Personal Story
If designers are telling a story through their products, we as consumers become part of the narrative when we wear their pieces. Our clothing choices have a story to tell. They act as a form of non-verbal communication that unconsciously sends messages about who we are, where we come from, and what we value.
Shopping locally can be a way to show our commitment to learning about cultures and communities unlike our own, much as traveling internationally does. By supporting a local fashion business, you can get the same opportunities to be inquisitive as you would shopping at the local market in another country. The approach should be similar: Take the time to talk to local designers and boutique owners if they are present. Get a clear idea of the intentions behind their design choices and the cultural stories that they are trying to tell. Work to find critical connections with the creator of each piece.
Unlike major retailers like Zara and H&M, who have prioritized mass-producing non-distinct, basic pieces, local fashion producers know that their selections have to make a bigger statement. Supporting them means you are getting a personal invitation to experience their culture firsthand. And by making a purchase, you have the opportunity to make a personal connection with local artisans, as well as becoming an ambassador — not only for their brand, but for the culture that their aesthetic exemplifies.
You may have been born in Nebraska and not Ghana, but there are always critical points of connection to be made. Maybe you and the designer share the experience of being working, single mothers, or you love reading the same authors.
And by shopping local designers, we can show more than just appreciation for their culture. We can stand behind the causes that lift them up and that promote our vision for justice. This year’s events have opened up a previously closed window of opportunity for local, minority-owned brands to connect with previously unattainable customers, if the heightened racial and political sensitivities that Americans are currently facing are sustainable and not strictly performative in nature.
Fashion and Social Justice
Covid-19, coupled with George Floyd’s murder, has created an unprecedented fertile ground for local fashion companies to flourish.
Both consumers and the fashion industry are feeling compelled to take a harsh look at reality. And many white Americans could better relate in an acute way to George Floyd’s last words, “I can’t breathe” due to the collective heightened awareness of their own mortality this year. In the quiet created by a national quarantine, white Americans finally had enough space to personally comprehend Floyd’s fear like never before.
As someone who contracted Covid-19 early on, and almost died from breathing issues, I can see firsthand how my survival has created a seismic shift in my own thinking. It has ultimately resulted in a need to hold my life and the areas where I spend my energy, time, and money to a new and higher standard. I’m a Black Caribbean-American woman, but I never felt entitled enough to expect the businesses that I support and value to reciprocate. It is surprisingly disappointing how low my standards were to be reflected and accepted by brands I gave my hard-earned money.
But surviving Covid has reaffirmed my commitment to making more conscientious and intentional choices in how I consume. I am seeing this same commitment reflected in the new decision-making practices of my friends and family. We are collectively acknowledging that where we spend our money says a lot about who we are, what we value, and what we expect from our brands. The fashion industry has felt the effects of this. We see this by the many social media campaigns that not only encourage consumers to support local, minority communities and businesses, but also the active outing and policing of brands that are not.
Local, small businesses are primed to fill in the gaps. By providing a more culturally-specific experience, their products tend to be more sustainable and customizable than those found in mass markets.
Local vendors and designers have had no choice but to create unique items by hand because they lack the investment capital to mass-produce products. Local, minority designers are also deeply steeped in the fashion traditions of the places where they grew up. In most major cities, fashion is often the preferred entrepreneurial track of immigrants because it allows them the independence to build on the rich traditions of their home society in really personal ways. Most have learned how to sew from an elder family member who taught them generational, hand-based techniques. Though the artisans migrated to a new country for better opportunities, these time-tested practices remain a way to stay connected to the country of their birth.
In building a deeper connection with local artisans, it is important to be mindful of respecting their cultural boundaries when incorporating their pieces into your wardrobe.
Before you buy a piece, make sure that you have a clear and personal connection to it before you incorporate it into your own style story. This is the quickest and easiest way to avoid cultural appropriation. Another way to avoid the appropriation trap is to always give credit to, as well as share the story of, local designers with your various networks. Encouraging like-minded friends, with a similar style story, to patronize and support the local brands you love is also always appreciated. And while it may seem like extra effort as compared to anonymously shopping at your regular retailers, learning more about how your clothing is created is actually fun.
I have always said, “Shopping is better when you know the story,” but post-pandemic, I would expand that to say “Shopping is better when it tells your stories.”
Dr. Mikaila Brown is a fashion anthropologist. She has her own fashion line, has a doctorate in Anthropology and Education from Columbia University, is a professor at Cornell University, and runs cultural fashion tours in cities across the US. Learn more about her and her tours at The Common Thread Project or Sidewalk Safaris.
