Ford — an associate professor of Africana studies and history at the University of Delaware — does a brilliant job tracing the roots of fashion and its intersection with African-American culture, music and social movements.
“Our garments are archives of memories — individual and collective, material and emotion — that tell these rich, textured stories of our lives,” writes Ford. “To make it plain: our clothes make us feel things. All the things.”
Ford, an expert on pop culture and a rising star in academia, said she wrote the book because she wanted to celebrate Black innovation in fashion.
“We are the most creative folks, knowing how to do the most with the very least, in all the best ways,” she writes. “I wanted to pay homage to every Big Mama and Ma’dear who made sure that even if their kids had nothing but hand-me downs, they would be clean.
“I wanted to shout out the kids who had to go to school in said ill-fitting hand-me down jeans and turned that look into the vibrant baggy jean trend of the 1990s. I wanted to embrace the girls who survived on a steady diet of Vibe and Honey magazines and got called ‘ghetto’ for rocking two pairs of huge doorknocker earrings, turquoise Wet n Wild lipstick, and dookie braids, only to see White girls be praised as fashion-forward when they did it.
“I wanted to big-up everyone who rocked a knock-off when they couldn’t afford the real designer version. I wanted to give queer and trans folks in the ballroom scene their props for innovating much of what we call hip-hop fashion and beauty culture, without ever getting the credit they deserved. There’s a whole Black fashion ecosystem that exists because of and in spite of the mainstream fashion industry, which steals as many dreams as it inspires.”
