Made in Italy–An Expanded View: An Interview with Michelle Ngonmo

Michelle Ngonmo. Photo courtesy of the Afro Fashion Association

by Francesca Granata

Expanding the narrative of “Made in Italy” is one of the goals that Michelle Ngonmo set for herself when she started the Afro Fashion Association in 2008. Born in Cameroon and raised in the Northern Italian city of Ferrara, Ngomo was the president of the Afro-Italian student association at her university and it is through this work that she started to realize the wealth of talent in fashion among Afro-Italians matched by a bewildering lack of opportunity. With the Afro-Italian association, Ngonmo created a platform to showcase and advocate for Italian designers of African descent. Her project gained greater visibility in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, which led Ngonmo, in collaboration with designers Stella Jean and Edward Buchanan, to take the industry to task and ask for concrete change. From then on, Ngonmo started the “We Are Made Italy” fashion shows highlighting Afro-Italian designers under the auspice of the Camera Nazionale della Moda and has just launched “Unseen Profiles,” a professional platform to aid the industry in hiring Italian BIPOC creatives. 

Of course, the concept of African fashion is in and of itself a problematic construct. As Erica de Greef and heeten bhagat have argued, it would be improbable to find commonalities in design produced in as vast a continent as Africa, with its different cultural traditions and climates. However, acknowledging these complexities, Ngonmo uses the umbrella term “Afro” as a method to advocate for designers, almost always Black, who are left out of the narrative of Italian fashion. Advocating for an understanding of Italian society and its fashion as pluricultural, the Afro Fashion Association also contributes to debunking the dangerous myth that Italy has been historically monocultural, white and Catholic—a notion, which has been advanced with particular force by the Nationalist parties in Italy. For instance, Ngonmo’s hometown, Ferrara, provides evidence of both Italy’s long multicultural history and its dangerous Nationalistic side. As recently as the beginning of the twentieth century, Ferrara was home to a thriving Jewish-Italian population, the majority of which either fled or was killed as a result of the 1930 “leggi razziali” racial laws.

Ultimately, Ngomo is helping to rewrite the concept of “Made In Italy,” that ubiquitous national selling point—and in a country where fashion reigns supreme, thus challenges the national narrative. Ngonmo spoke over Zoom from her home in Milan; the interview was conducted in Italian.

Claudia Gisèle Ntsama, “We Are Made in Italy”. Photo Courtesy of Afro Fashion Association

Fashion Projects: How did you come up with the idea of the Afro Fashion Association?

Ultimately, Ngomo is helping to rewrite the concept of “Made In Italy,” that ubiquitous national selling point—and in a country where fashion reigns supreme, thus challenges the national narrative. Ngonmo spoke over Zoom from her home in Milan; the interview was conducted in Italian.

Fashion Projects: How did you come up with the idea of the Afro Fashion Association?

Michelle Ngonmo: When I attended university, I was the president of the Italo-African students association at my university [in Ferrara]. Thanks to this position, I was able to organize a number of events which involved people in positions of authority, such as rectors at universities across Italy. This experience allowed me to travel all over Italy and come into contact with a great number of Afro-Italian students and students from Africa, who had studied either design and fashion and yet upon graduation were doing something completely different, very humble jobs such as housekeepers and waitresses. I started asking myself: “How is it possible that out of 100 people I met, there is not one that after their university studies was able to enter this world?” So I started hanging out with them and asking them a lot of questions. I came from a background in communications and journalism, so it was natural for me to start asking questions to understand the reason behind this phenomenon. Eighty-five percent of those I talked to said that they were never even called for a job interview. So I told myself, “Okay, this reality remains invisible, let me try to do something about it. Why not create a platform that can promote this type of creativity which is part of our everyday and of the society we live in?” And that’s how I started. I received a lot of pushback at the beginning. I self-funded it so I started with very little money and from there I started the Afro Fashion Association. I called the association “Afro Fashion” instead of “African Fashion” because I wanted to promote hybridity rather than making people’s origins the focus, because Italian society is hybrid. I started it in 2008.

FP: So it has been a while. How was your association received at the beginning? Has there been a shift in the reception/embrace of your work in the wake of the BLM movement gaining international recognition?

MN: As I mentioned, I encountered a lot of closed doors at the beginning. I tried to contact Italian fashion organizations either via email or in person, but I never received a reply. I am not sure whether it is because they were not interested in the concept or they did not believe that Italian fashion could in fact be multicultural. When in 2020, in response to the Black Lives Matter movement [and the death of George Floyd], all the Italian brands placed the black boxes in their social media accounts, I called Stella Edwards and told her, “You know what? If you look in the Italian fashion landscape, the only member [who is Black] is you.” And she answered, “You are absolutely right, we have to do something about it.” She is in a prominent position, so she could do more, since she could gather the attention of the press, etc…. And it’s something which, I think, requires a lot of courage. Because when you make these choices you could lose buyers and investors. Stella, however, has a lot of courage and force of will, so the two of us, together with Edward Buchanan, wrote a letter and addressed it to the president of La Camera Nazionale della Moda [the association that promotes Italian fashion] asking, “Do Black lives matter in Italian fashion?” Because as I mentioned, all the brands and the Camera della Moda had placed the black squares on their social, but we wanted to say, “Okay that’s great, but here we are having some difficulties. So let’s focus on the homefront and on Italian society.” And from there things started to happen. Stella, like her name suggests, really is a star. So it was thanks to her that at last the lights started to shine on our reality. And so from the question we started with “Do Black lives really matter in Italian fashion?” we ended up with “We are Made in Italy” to say that we are part of Italy, which is not simply an all-white Italy, but it is made of different races/shades. But besides that, we also produce Made in Italy, so the fashion industry should start to consider this more diverse, hybrid side of Made in Italy.

FP: When I read about your project and the name of the fashion shows you organized We Are Made in Italy of course I thought it was in response to the way Italy is often imagined as culturally religiously and racially homogeneous. That is, predominantly Catholic and white, particularly within the right-wing and nationalistic parties. I was wondering whether the situation is changing, and whether fashion can help in this change? Because together with food, fashion is so central to Italian national identity, much more so than in the U.S. Italy imagines itself as a fashion nation. Is that why you chose to work in the fashion field?

MN: There are the three Fs that describe Italy: Food, Fashion and Furniture. At the time I started the association, I didn’t really meet many Italo-African chefs, but in fashion there was so much talent available. And yes, fashion is this incredible means of communication in Italy. It really sets the tone and makes the rules. So choosing fashion to start this process of raising awareness was absolutely a conscious choice.

FP: Do you think the concept of Italian fashion and perhaps Italy more generally is changing? Is it no longer so homogeneous, but rather pluricultural?

MN: I think that small steps are being taken. We cannot expect change to happen in a day or a year. It’s a change that will need its own time, but yes for sure it’s starting. At first there was an instrumentalization of the issue and the way the media covered it. I wrote an article about it recently but I would like to say that fashion is not simply “showcasing,” otherwise designers never enter the market. Our credo is, Great, let’s show that we have this talent, these designers in Italy, but we also have to prepare the industry to include this type of creativity, which is part of the fashion that’s made in Italy. I don’t want to diminish the importance of having these designers included in the official calendar of Milano Fashion Week, and the change that happens from it.  From September 2020, when we started the We Are Made in Italy initiative, we have received circa 1,000 curricula of designers who are Afro-descendentas and are based in Italy, who prior to our initiative did not believe they could have a future in Italian fashion. In fact, in the January issue of Vogue [Italia] there is an article with my interview that speaks about this. In response to this reality, we created a platform called “The Unseen Profiles” where we gather for the benefit of the industry CVs of BAME[1] people in Italy. Because very often, when we speak to the industry in Italy regarding the lack of diversity and inclusion, they answer that they don’t have access to resumés from a diverse pool of talent, but in actuality there is a great number of people trained in the field that cannot wait to start working.

Joy Meribe, “We Are Made in Italy” Fall/Winter 2021-2022. Photo courtesy of Afro Fashion Association

FP: Can you tell me a bit more about the We Are Made in Italy fashion show?

MN: The We Are Made in Italy fashion show takes place twice a year (in February and September). We showcase five designers that we select and mentor. We started in September 2020, and the same group that showed in September 2020 also did in February 2021. Then we selected a new group for September 2021 and we are preparing the show for February 2022 with the same group. So we give them a chance to show both the summer and the winter collections.

FP: You used the word “Afro” instead of “African,” as you said, in part not to make reference to an entire continent. Of course, there are a great number of different cultures, traditions, and climates in this enormous continent that is Africa, so it’s hard to speak of an “African” fashion. Why did you use this umbrella term “Afro” instead of saying, for instance, Cameroonian or Nigerian fashion?

MN: To me, the term “Afro” makes reference to a style, whereas Africa is a continent made of 54 countries and I did not have the presumption to represent 54 countries. Often we speak of African fashion, but it’s like saying European fashion. What does it mean exactly? Little to nothing. In European fashion, you have Italian fashion, French fashion, etc, so it’s pretty much the same thing in Africa, even though with Africa we might refer more to geographical areas to indicate similarities. I chose the word “Afro” because I wanted to make reference to the style as opposed to the countries. The style could make reference to colors, prints or certain kinds of cuts (because various regions of Africa have different cuts). So that’s why I chose the word “Afro.”

FP: What are the plans for the future of the “Afro Fashion Association”?

MN: With the association, we are now offering a number of services which reflect the background of our team. We collaborate a lot with universities. We organize Fashion Labs, workshops that can last from ten to thirty hours. We started to develop these initiatives both in Milan and Rome, with the Politecnico of Milan, the Universitá` Cattolica in Rome and its center Modacult and with the Universitá Roma Tor Vergata. Besides that, we coordinate the first department of Fine Arts in Cameroon. And the association is growing little by little. Like I mentioned, we are launching “Unseen Profiles,” the new project of the association—a platform to allow companies to have access to resumes from BAME candidates. It is the first platform of this kind, as previous ones really focused on promoting their talent, whereas this one is focused on professional development to also change the narrative. We have arrived at a moment in which we have to focus on people’s capacities rather than their ability to bring testimony. Many times people ask me to tell them my story. But I believe if we want to change the narrative we should focus on people’s knowledge and skills on what these designers are doing, in the same way we do with white designers in Italy. When other people are interviewed they ask them about their work. I wonder why at times people expect from me the story of the “The Little Match Girl,” as if I came from a migrant boat and should be a source of pity. That’s not my experience. I came from a mom and dad who work as teachers and I should not be written about as someone who instills pity in people. “Oh look she is black, but she is making it.” If we need to change the narrative we have to talk about BAME designers in Italy in the same ways we talk about other designers and concentrate on their work.

FP: Do you think there’s a certain paternalism in Italian society?

MN: Oh my God! I didn’t want to use that word, but yes, there is a lot of paternalism towards BAME people in Italy.

FP: Talking about their work, the designers included in the We Are Made in Italy fashion shows all seem to pay a great level of attention to both craftsmanship and textiles—which are touted as attributes of both “Made in Italy” and “African fashion”? Do you find this attention to craftsmanship and textiles to be a characteristic of Italian designers of African descent?

MN: Well, yes some of our backgrounds reside in the handmade and the focus on details. For example, in the particular case of Cameroon, which is the country that I know most, the textile industries and fashion production at the industrial level do not exist, so you have people who have to rely on the handmade and work with great care. “Everything has to be perfect!” It is a knowledge that we have shared for generations. My mom, when sewing something, does it again and again, five or six times, because everything has to be perfect. So there is this heritage of with the material. So you will see many of these designers working with materials, even though they don’t necessarily work with them by hand. An example of this is Joy Meribe, one of the designers of We Are Made in Italy, who now shows on her own—she, in fact, opened Milan Fashion Week in September.

FP: Is she the same designer whose work I saw at the Museum at FIT, who used hemp fibers to make dresses?

MN: No, that’s Claudia Giséle Ntsama! One thing you should know is that there are great achievements with We Are Made in Italy. Claudia not only had her work acquired by the Museum at FIT, but is also now working at the Maison Valentino, which is a perfect match for her. We have another designer, Karim Daoudi, who has been able to find investors to produce accessories with his own brand. And there is Joy Meribe, who, as I mentioned, is now working as a designer full time, and is showing as part of the official calendar of Milan fashion week. And another designer, Mokodu, has started to work in France and collaborate as a costume designer for films. So we have worked to make sure these designers enter the industry. Going back to Joy Meribe, who was born in Nigeria, she incorporates handmade embroidery and prints that represent what Africa means to her—which is not necessarily the Wax prints. For the last collection, it was prints of the village where she grew up. So it is thanks to their culture that they create a hybrid Made in Italy, because these designers bring a creativity coming from two cultures rather than one.

Dress by the Afro Fashion Association for the exhibition “La Nuova Milano” at Museo delle Culture (Mudec), Milano. (Image courtesy of the Afro Fashion Association

FP: So it’s about the promotion of a Made in Italy that is flexible and changes over time to incorporate the changing face of Italian society and as you say it’s not monocultural. Ultimately, the concept of Made in Italy itself is relatively new and a postwar phenomenon. But do you think fashion still circles around Milan? Do you think of Milan as a cosmopolitan city in terms of fashion?

MN: I might be biased, but for me, Milan is central. Compared to Paris or London (which are the two cities I visited the most in terms of fashion weeks), I believe Milan remains the most cosmopolitan city in terms of fashion, but it is not fully aware of this. If they could embrace this side, this cosmopolitanism, it could be even more central. Other cities have been smarter and have embraced it more.

FP: Right! Some years ago, a lot of U.S.-based critics wrote about how there were no new designers in Italy and it was always the same names that circulated, whereas Paris was more open to new designers, to diversity and more cosmopolitan. And perhaps the issue was that Milan didn’t embrace its pluricultural side.

MN: Yes, but let’s hope that now they have finally started. For instance, the city of Milan has asked us to take part in a new project and contribute a piece to the Museo delle Culture (Mudec) for their permanent exhibition, in which we talk about the new Milan. So I drew the dress and asked a multi-ethnic lab to realize it to tell the story of Afro-Italians.

[1] BAME: A term primarily used in British English that stands for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic.

On "Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom": An Interview with Jonathan M. Square

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by Tzuni Lopez Montgomery

Dr. Jonathan M. Square is a historian whose work devotes a pronounced attention to the sartorial practices of enslaved subjects. His long-term digital archival project, Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom, appears on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, and YouTube, and has prompted the development of two limited run magazines of the same title and two conferences called “Fashioning the Black Body in Bondage and Freedom” (2017) and “Community Curating: Stitching Together the History of a People” (2017). He is currently a faculty member at Harvard University where he has taught the classes “Black Beauty Culture,” “Black Visuality In the Digital Age,” and “Fashion and Slavery,” and was formerly a faculty member at Parsons School of Design where he taught the class “Fashion and Justice.”  He has curated three shows on Harvard University’s campus including Odalisque Atlas: White History as Told through Art (2019), Freedom from Truth: Self-Portraits of Nell Painter (2019), and Slavery in the Hands of Harvard (2019).

We met on ZOOM, as this interview occurred during COVID-19 social distancing restrictions while I was in Los Angeles, CA and he was in Brooklyn, NY.

FP: Can you maybe speak to Fashioning the Self for people who are unfamiliar with the project? 

JMS: So I founded and edit the digital humanities project Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom. It’s a curated platform that explores the intersection between slavery in the fashion system, and I use a variety of social media platforms. The project so far has amassed close to eleven thousand followers just on its Facebook. On Instagram it’s about seven thousand. And the followers are academics, curators, costume designers, artists, and also just interested laypersons. 

FP: How did you develop this to begin with?

JMS: Well, the reason why it’s expanded so much is because the project initially just started with me sharing a lot of archival images of enslaved or formerly enslaved people. And I felt like I was cheating, I felt like I was just taking information that other people had created in the past and just sort of building a platform based on that. And I wanted to create original content. And that was the impetus behind the magazines. So not only do I want to share knowledge that’s already created, but I want to create my own knowledge and share it with the public.

It started while I was doing the PhD at New York University. I actually, in a weird way, fashioned myself into a fashion scholar while I was doing the PhD. By the time I finished, I was identifying with the field of fashion studies. And the project, Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom, was actually an outgrowth of a course that I created. And when I created this course, I also created a Facebook page for the course as a way for students to engage with the course material outside of class using social media. And the course was cancelled because of low enrollment. But I had already set up the Facebook page. And I was like, “You know what? I’m going teach the class anyway using social media.”

Cover of the second issue of “Fashioning the Self”

Cover of the second issue of “Fashioning the Self”

FP: It’s more accessible in that way then, that’s great.

JMS: I felt sort of empowered by social media in a way that I don’t think would have been possible a decade ago. And also, when I teach, I like for there always to be some sort of outward facing component. I teach a class called “Black Beauty Culture” and in that class, for two semesters in a row, students created an online magazine. And I’ve often had my students curate pop-up exhibitions for a class. So, I’m always trying to include some sort of element that’s facing outward.

FP: I love the idea of teaching pedagogy being the starting point. Do you feel like the mold that you created originally for the Facebook page—that has now existed on so many other surfaces—has retained that same class oriented structure?

JMS: Absolutely. I feel like at the end of the day, over anything else, I identify as an educator. And even at times when I identify as a writer or a curator, I think the point of my writing and the point of my curation—or any of my creative pursuits—is to educate. So that’s always sort of the core of what I’m doing.

FP: Speaking of curation, can you maybe speak a bit more about the curatorial projects you’ve brought to life?

JMS: So last year I curated two shows that were on Harvard’s campus. One was called Slavery in the Hands of Harvard. And in that show I paired archival materials and documents that are in Harvard’s permanent collection, and I paired it with contemporary art. And the archival materials and documents that I chose sort of touched on Harvard’s connection to slavery. And I chose contemporary art pieces by artists whose work grappled with the legacy of slavery in some respect. So it wasn’t so much a fashion exhibition, even though there were elements of fashion theory in the show, if that makes sense. I also curated two solo shows of the work of a historian now artist—Neil Irvin Painter.

FP: So your primary historical focus tends to orient around fashion, and a lot of these large-scale institutions don’t tend to preserve fashion to the same extent. What history do you feel has been lost on account of the de-prioritization of fashion within those spheres?

JMS: Yeah, it’s interesting, Harvard has no fashion collection that I know of. And for students at Harvard that are interested in fashion, they actually suffer a little bit, because there’s really no place for them. They end up either doing art history or a humanities major. But it’s a shame because fashion is a key component to understanding history. And in my particular case, it’s a key component to understanding the history of slavery. And I feel like if you don’t consider the genesis of the fashion system—and in particular, the growth of the ready-made clothing industry—then you’re missing really important information about the development of slavery and its relationship to global capitalism.

People focus on slavery in academia. There’s a robust group of scholars who specialize in the history of slavery in American universities, but there’s less focus on fashion outside of art schools or fashion schools. And I think what’s lost is individuals. It’s easy—and I have to say, I’m really guilty of this too—to focus on structures, to focus on the economy, to focus on the government, to focus on networks of capital, and forget about human beings. But you know, slavery was a system that was made up of individuals with unique personalities who woke up and got dressed every morning. Enslaved people rarely had access to the press or to governmental bodies, but they had access to their own bodies and how they styled their bodies. And so I think there’s a lot of political information that’s encoded in how enslaved people dress themselves.

I feel like anything associated with the body is seen as base within academia. So if you study intellectual history, you know, you’re an economist or a political scientist, or a philosopher, anything about the “life of the mind.” Anything lofty, that’s considered worthy of academic inquiry. Anything associated with the human body is considered base, even though the mind is part of the body. Things like food studies or fashion studies get sidelined because they are considered effects of the economy. Fashion is just an effect of capitalism, they think. Fashion is just an effect of regime change, they say. Instead of it being in dialogue with each other—like fashion is shaping the economy. Food is shaping governmental regimes. Like it’s a dialogue, it’s not just a governmental imposition. So I think, yeah, the focus on fashion reorients the conversation by saying that it’s actually central to understanding something like slavery. Because if you’re not considering the genesis of the fashion system, then you’re not really understanding the history of slavery because fashion, to this day, is based in coerced labor.

FP: Do you feel like that’s the case within the curatorial context as well? Has there been much attention devoted to visually representing the enslaved experience within an exhibition space?

JMS: Ooh, that’s a tricky question. It’s tricky because pieces worn by enslaved people—there’s very few surviving pieces in fashion collections. I probably know of all of them.

 FP: Really? 

JMS: It’s probably, like, thirty-something pieces spread out throughout the entire country. Because, I mean, for most enslaved peoples, clothing was used for utilitarian purposes. And of course they had special pieces that they wore on Sundays, or on holidays, or on time off—but those pieces weren’t preserved in fashion collections. So to have a fashion exhibition of clothing worn by enslaved people would take a lot of effort. I would love to do it. Honestly, I think a lot of pieces—I mean, you would have to be very careful. They wouldn’t be able to be put on mannequins because they’re just too delicate. But I think what you can do is recreate pieces worn by enslaved people.

Installation shot of  the exhibition “Slavery in the Hands of Harvard,” 2019.

Installation shot of the exhibition “Slavery in the Hands of Harvard,” 2019.

FP: You’ve previously said that a large part of your fashion interests is predicated on the fact that “fashion is one of the few arenas in which slaves could possibly exert a modicum of control.” If you’re utilizing the historical documents of the oppressor, as many collections tend to prioritize this point of view in the objects they’ve acquired, how do you manage to empower the viewpoint of the enslaved person? Especially when you don’t have access to sartorial material?

JMS: Yeah, I really like this question. I feel it lies at the crux of me as a scholar. It’s my daily struggle. Because, you know, I literally think about the experience of enslaved people on a daily basis. But, you know, most of the time, I don’t have access to any written testimonies or interviews with these enslaved peoples. And all we have is images—rarely a garment—so I have to grasp for straws. But I also think there’s a lot of opportunity in that, instead of thinking of it as a problem. I think it’s actually generative. So I try to let the objects speak for themselves. For example, in the Zealy daguerreotypes, there’s a lot of information that you can glean just from looking at the eyes of the sitters. Because the enslaved subjects of Zealy’s daguerreotypes weren’t able to leave any written testimony about their lives, you have to really do some critical seeing and close visual analysis, which is at the heart of what I do. But your question is really important, and I think a lot of scholars of slavery think often, about this question of agency, and resurrecting the stories of enslaved people. It’s something I try to do in my work, not just in my curation but in my writing, in my teaching, on Fashioning the Self.

FP: Within your Slavery in the Hands of Harvard show, you were using the university’s own collection, and needing to work through their own framework and the things that they prioritize. But you were able to create this reflective environment, where it was able to shine the mirror back onto the institution itself using its own objects. Can you maybe speak to that reflective process a bit and talk about how you chose the specific objects that you chose to showcase there?

JMS: Well, my process for curating the exhibition, I had two means of doing that. One was my own research. The other was my own reading on the topic and really important conversations.

So, in terms of with my own research, I did a lot of readings on the Zealy daguerreotypes, which were a series of photos that were taken of enslaved men and women on a South Carolina plantation. They were commissioned by a Harvard professor named Louis Agassiz. He hired a photographer who was based in Columbia, South Carolina whose name was Joseph T. Zealy. And Joseph T. Zealy photographed these enslaved peoples and sent them to Louis Agassiz, and Louis Agassiz essentially used them to back up his racist ideas about how, people of African descent were inferior. And they were archived at Harvard, and they were essentially forgotten about for decades. And they were found in an attic in the 1970s. And since the 1970s they’ve been the source of a lot of scholarship on visual culture and slavery.

And also I just had a lot of really powerful conversations with scholars and artists; so for instance, I spoke with the artist Nona Faustine, and we were talking about the Zealy daguerreotypes. And she told me, “you know, I read a book called Delia’s Tears, which is about one of the enslaved women who was photographed by Joseph T. Zealy. That was one of the inspirations for the series that I did.” So, I included one of her pieces in the show

I did a studio visit with the artist named Noel Anderson. And I told him, “You know, I’m curating this show on Harvard’s connection to slavery. Do you have anything that might work for this show?” He said, “I don’t, but I have an idea for a piece I can create.” He created this piece titled “Henry/Renty” for the exhibition. On July 16, 2009, Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested at his Cambridge home by police officer James Crowley, who was responding to a 9-1-1 caller’s report of men breaking and entering the residence. Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct, charges which were later dropped. The arrest sparked a national debate about the persistence of racial profiling, regardless of age, educational attainment, or prominence within scholarly communities. Anderson took this incident as a point of departure for this piece that explores power and control of the photographic image vis-à-vis black men. Though over a century and a half apart, the piece exposes continuities in discrimination in the African American experience.

I also spoke with a scholar named Caitlin DeAngelis Hopkins—who at the time was the Harvard and Slavery fellow—Harvard has since defunded this program, unfortunately, but I think they’re probably going to put more funds in it now given the conversations about race and representation that are happening. I think there’s more impetus around studying this connection. But at the time, they had a fellow, whose sole purpose was to study the University’s connection to slavery. And I met with her several times, and she actually told me about a lot of things that I didn’t even know about, even though I’d done a lot of research on the University’s connection to slavery. So for instance, she told me about the tuition bill that was paid for with sugar in the 18th century—and I actually hadn’t known about that document. So, I actually included a reproduction of that document in the exhibition, and I paired it with a reproduction of Kara Walker’s Sugar Baby installation.

I also created a piece, an artwork in the show, and I took my diplomas, and I painted over them. So, I had a conversation with myself (laughs) for the exhibition.

Jonathan M. Square “Slavery in the Hands of Harvard” 2019

Jonathan M. Square “Slavery in the Hands of Harvard” 2019

FP: I love the idea of curator as artist as well, and so the fact that you inserted yourself into this actual exhibition through your own work: what was that experience like? 

JMS: I’m not a trained curator. I’m an academic. So, my method of curation is very unorthodox in a lot of ways—I just sort of do it organically. But I’m also a creative person, and so, I don’t know, one day—I’ve always held on to my diplomas. Not because I have some sort of attachment to them, but just because it’s something that you’re supposed to do—I don’t really care about it, it’s just a piece of paper to me. It’s the process of doing the work to get the diploma that meant more to me than the actual diploma. But I’ve held on to them, they’ve gone from apartment to apartment in a little sleeve. And I slid them under my bed. And I was just sitting there, reflecting on being an African American man, having three degrees, being a professor, and knowing that these universities have this problematic history that they’re not really grappling with in any substantive way. One day I just pulled them out and started painting over them and I created these pieces. And I actually tried to draw a connection between diplomas and freedom papers carried by enslaved peoples.

FP: I feel like that carries such a strong affective nature, especially when considering who would be coming in contact with the work at an institution of higher education.

JMS: It’s funny, people were horrified when I would give tours of the exhibition and I’d say “I actually created this piece, and these are my diplomas I’ve painted over.” They’d ask me if they were copies. I would tell them that they were my actual diplomas to their chagrin.

FP: I love that. I feel like people apply a weird sanctity to them even though it’s really about the knowledge you gain from an institution rather than having the evidence that you’ve gone through the curriculum. Well with the conversations that are erupting on the mainstream on account of the Black Lives Matter movement about contemporary structures like the prison industrial complex, how do you see sartorial codes of resistance being represented in our contemporary moment?

JMS: Yeah, it’s interesting, because I feel Black lives are trending right now. But they’re not trending—, they’ve always been trending for me. It’s not a new thing. You know, every day is Juneteenth on Fashioning the Self. I’ve been doing these posts before this current moment; I’ll continue doing these posts after Black lives aren’t trending. When the novelty wears off. But I have to say that one thing that I’ve noticed is that I’ve gotten greater visibility. And that people are listening closer. So it’s sort of forced me to take my role as an educator and public intellectual more seriously.

[In regards to sartorial codes,] I see two things happening. I’m seeing some Black Americans retreating to what might be called respectability politics. So, for instance … in Omaha, Nebraska there was a march staged and several Black men in suits led the march. And part of me thinks that’s problematic because being a Black feminist, I actually think it’s Black women who have led the charge in most radical movements. So I kind of took umbrage with these Black men wearing suits and sort of leading the charge … suits won’t protect you from bullets. I feel like that lesson has been learned decades ago … I understand where they’re coming from; you have these ideas about Black men and we’re going to counteract that by wearing the suit which has long been associated with cis het maleness and respectability. So I get the impulse to do that, but I just don’t think—and it’s long been proven—that it’s not effective. Wearing a suit is not going to protect you from state sanctioned violence. And then, of course, I think on the other side, I think people are sort of leaning into their Blackness. And embracing the sartorial ingenuity of the African diaspora, whether it’s wearing prints that reflect African heritage in some respect, or wearing head wraps, or wearing something that’s a visual cue to African pride or African diasporic pride. So I see two sides, two sort of camps that are developing. 

FP: Do you have any new plans on account of the “new COVID world” where a lot of life is more enmeshed in the digital realm?

JMS: You’ve probably noticed that I’m very active on social media. And I’ve always been a big proponent of digital humanities projects. I think I’m almost like a higher education abolitionist if that makes sense. I want to democratize higher education, I think it should be accessible to everyone. I hate that people don’t go to school because it’s costly. I think that’s a shame. And I try to share the information that I have in my classes and make it available online. For example, if you go to my website, most of my syllabi are web based, and you can see what I teach in my classes, and you can click on the links and be sent to the readings. So you can almost take the class yourself if you want to. So I’m really trying to radicalize my pedagogical practice. And I think social media is really instrumental in that. But also, it’s a double-edged sword, I have to be honest. I think social media doesn’t always lend itself to thoughtful reflection and critical analysis. I am an aesthete. I’m a visual person, like I’m a material person. So I get—I get Instagram. I get Facebook, but what frustrates me about it is that everything has to be driven by a compelling image. And in the case of enslaved people, sometimes there’s some amazing stories, but sometimes there just isn’t that beautiful, compelling image to go along with it. And so, you know, there’s been times when I’ve worked really hard on a post or a YouTube video, but it wasn’t attached to an object or an image, and it just didn’t get the traction just because there wasn’t that visual element.

I’m really into radical approaches to higher education and expanding the conversation. I’m inspired by other academics, but I’m also inspired by artists, and I’m inspired by curators. I feel social media lends itself to those kind of conversations in a way that higher education doesn’t. I’ve been taking my IG Lives and posting them on YouTube in an attempt to create my own stand-alone institution.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Because, you know, I really love the idea of working for myself. And, I mean, honestly—in a world capitalist system, there really is no such thing as working for yourself. But, you know, a lot of these institutions are problematic in some way—and for a number of reasons, I’ve questioned being affiliated with them or being attached to them. And sometimes I feel more comfortable being attached to a platform like Facebook, or Google, or YouTube. Even though they’re problematic too. They’re problematic. But I don’t come face to face with it the way I do in institutions. So I’ve been really interested in building a more robust online presence.

           

 

 

 

 

 

Fashion Curation Panel on March 9th

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Join us for a panel on fashion curation Saturday, March 9th from 2-5pm at Parsons School of Design (65 West 11th Street Room B500, New York, NY 10011). The panel celebrates Hazel Clark and Annamari Vänskä's highly recommended book Fashion Curating (Bloomsbury, 2018) and the new issue of Fashion Projects, which covers the same topic.

The panelists are:

Marco Pecorari, Ph.D. Assistant Professor and Program Director, MA Fashion Studies, Parsons Paris 
Sarah Scaturro, Head Conservator, The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Simona Segre Reinach, Associate Professor of Fashion Studies, Bologna University
Karen van Godtsenhoven, Associate Curator, The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Annamari Vänskä, Ph.D. Adjunct Professor of Fashion Research, Department of Design, Aalto University 


Moderated by: 

Hazel Clark, Ph.D., FRSA, Professor of Fashion Studies and Design Studies, Parsons School of Design
Francesca Granata, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Fashion Studies, Parsons School of Design; editor of Fashion Projects

Thank you to Valerie Steele and Tanya Melendez for letting us coordinate the event with the Museum at FIT “Exhibiting Fashion” Symposium on Friday, March 8th

A Review of “David Bowie Is”

Jay Ruttenberg reviewed "David Bowie Is" for Fashion Projects in January, 2015, as the show was concluding its run at the MCA in Chicago. On the occasion of the exhibition's takeover of the Brooklyn Museum, here is the review once more….

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by Jay Ruttenberg

Striped bodysuit for Aladdin Sane tour, 1973. Photo: Masayoshi Sukita. © Sukita / The David Bowie Archive 2012.

“David Bowie Is,” the museum retrospective of the singer that recently concluded its run at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, featured virtually every artistic medium imaginable. Included works extended to music, film, video, fashion, and, in Bowie’s portraits of his Berlin running buddy Iggy Pop, painting. One display case featured the star’s long-retired cocaine spoon—a redundancy, considering the exhibition’s inclusion of his “Life on Mars?” video.

The show originated at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and made its sole U.S. stop in Chicago, where it was greeted with the crowds and fanfare of a blockbuster. The outpouring of interest seems sensible: Absent from public performance for nearly a decade, Bowie is pop’s missing man. His mark remains everywhere; he is nowhere. “David Bowie Is,” which was produced with the subject’s cooperation, if not curatorship, made a resounding case for his significance. To view the exhibition’s many rooms detailing his work in the 1970s was to peak into the 1980s. The phlegmatic British vocals that would dominate a corner of ’80s pop and the nervous mutability of music and media that would define Madonna (to say nothing of Gaga) have roots here; arguably, so does Michael Jackson’s cheesy white Thriller suit. In one displayed video, 1979’s “Boys Keep Swinging,” Bowie appears as his own backup singers, garbed in the elaborate gowns and wigs of female drag. What seems shocking about the video, however, is the main image of Bowie ostensibly as himself, clad in the dark suit of a prototypical mid-80s yuppie. It’s this look—which, for the record, predates Bret Easton Ellis’s debut by six years—that appears to be the video’s true act of drag.

A museum show about a pop star inevitably runs into limitations. In an exhibition of a painter, visitors directly confront the subject’s primary source: the painting is the ultimate art. Even for a multidisciplinarian such as Bowie, the true art lies in his records and performances; the stuff inside display cases can seem secondary, if not trivial. But the aim of this exhibit, where headphone-clad visitors roamed as an army of enthralled zombies, was immersion. It was presented with high-minded care and, at least when covering the years that matter, the exhaustiveness of a box set. Over 400 items were on hand: photographs, handwritten lyrics, a monstrous set of keys from the musician’s Berlin apartment, even an old pocket map for the West Berlin subway. There were also more than 60 stage costumes, most fetchingly the pear-like black-and-white jumpsuit that Kansai Yamamoto designed for the Aladdin Sane tour. Even all these years on, we discover new sides to the pop star: Meet Ziggy Stardust, the world’s most glamorous hoarder.

But the exhibition’s showstopper was drawn from nobody’s closet. Rather, it was the famous video of Bowie performing “The Man Who Sold the World” on Saturday Night Live, in the waning days of the 1970s. The video deserved greater prominence at the MCA, if not an entire museum to call its own; it also would have benefited from the other two songs recorded for the episode. Nonetheless, the clip could move mountains. Bowie is accompanied by Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias, vanguard figures from the nocturnal club world, both clad in monochromatic Thierry Mugler dresses. The men carry Bowie to his microphone as if he is a children’s toy. Wearing a cardboard tuxedo that was designed by the singer and Mark Ravitz under the spell of 1920s Dada, Bowie sings with the bemused detachment of a Martian. Space alien analogies always fit Bowie—after all, we are talking about the Man Who Fell to Earth—but they seem particularly apt for the SNL appearance. At the taping, he was newly returned from self-imposed exile in West Berlin, introducing irrefutably avant-garde notions to a mainstream arena. (Not for nothing did Kurt Cobain cover this song in Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged set.) The ’80s—which thwarted the world’s rock stars where no drug or label chicanery ever could—were mere days away. Bowie seemed intent on ending his decade of dominance in spectacular style. The appearance is not an act of subversion so much as it is a sterling media performance—pop as art and back again.

Jay Ruttenberg is editor of The Lowbrow Readerand of its book, The Lowbrow Reader Reader. He has written for The New York Times,The Boston Globe, and other publications.

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Album cover shoot for Aladdin Sane, 1973. Photo: Brian Duffy. © Duffy Archive & The David Bowie Archive.

On the Beauty of the Already Known: A Review of the 'Rik Wouters & The Private Utopia' Exhibition at MoMu Antwerp Fashion Museum

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Installation by 'Honest by' Bruno Pieters in collaboration with Marie Sophie Beinke. Photo: Stany Dederen

by Roberto Filippello

In the face of current accelerationist tendencies in political and social theory pointing toward an intensification and repurposing of capitalism, the exhibition "Rik Wouters & The Private Utopia," on view at MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp until February 26th, auspicates the return to a slow temporality that allows for the exploration of intimate connections with oneself and with others, suspending the pervasive mediation of the virtual into our everyday lives.

Ensembles by Christian Wijnants.&nbsp;(Photo: Roberto Filippello)

Ensembles by Christian Wijnants. (Photo: Roberto Filippello)

 

The exhibition commemorates the 100th anniversary of Rik Wouters's death. This Belgian fauvist painter (1882-1916) devoted a large part of his oeuvre to the exploration of serene and intimate domesticity through portraits of his wife Nel. His longing for a bucolic way of life, detached from urban frenzy, was informed by David Thoreau's transcendentalist inquiry into simple living as a conduit for personal introspection, and took artistic form in a series of unfinished canvases depicting scenes of harmonious homeliness.

 The exhibition, thanks to a multi-disciplinary curatorial philosophy, combines different media to dissect ideas, phenomena and aesthetics. Paintings and sculptures by Rik Wouters are displayed alongside ceramics, interiors and clothing by a number of Antwerp contemporary artists (BLESS, Atelier E.B., Berlinde de Bruyckere, Ben Sledsens) and fashion designers (A.F. Vandevorst, Ann Demeulemeester, Veronique Branquinho, Haider Ackermann, Bernhard Willhelm, Walter Van Beirendonck, Christian Wijnants, Dries Van Noten, Jan-Jan Van Essche, Martin Margiela, Marina Yee, Bruno Pieters, Anne Kurris) who have each in their own way addressed the desire to regain the secure intimacy of domestic life. Unfolding through seventeen thematic sections, such as 'Indoors,' 'Looking Outside,' 'Sculptures and Ceramics,' and 'Handicrafts,' the exhibition traces a visual narrative of how simple living has been translated into figurative and applied arts by artists and designers seeking shelter in an intimate creative environment, away from the turmoil of contemporary urban societies.

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Dirk Van Saene's ceramic from Essaouira (Photo: Roberto Filippello)

 A renewed interest in artisanal techniques such as weaving, ceramics, and dyeing, as well as the usage of materials found in nature, are the key principles of the so-called "slow movement" to which this exhibit gives voice. As a reaction to the industrialization of fashion and its often unbearable hectic pace, the designers featured hereby make objects that are imbued with affective potential insofar as they result from a pondered and lived-through handcrafting practice. Their personal corporeal interaction with the matter reflects a utopian longing for an authentic way of being, living, and doing in the world. Antwerp-based fashion designer Christian Wijnants, for instance, dyes wool by hand and assembles collages of fabric using various application techniques such as knitting, embroidery and crochet. This hints at a bodily doing that disentangles fashion-making from the maze of corporate regulation and outsourced production to focus on the intimacy of affective engagement with fabrics and textures.

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Ensembles by Walter Van Beirendonck (Photo: Roberto Filippello)

 

Reframing one's life in Thoreau's woods or in Thomas More's fictional island society, however, is not the only way to materialize utopic living. Throughout the exhibition, utopia comes to coincide with the beauty of the already known, figured through the making of Dirk Van Saene's home crafts, Bernhard Willhelm's crocheted accessories, or through the night silk gowns of A.F. Vandevorst, Ann Demeulemeester and Haider Ackerman. In a sensationalist era where technologies set out to design posthuman bodies, the familiarity with domestic attire conjures a sense of safety and tranquillity freed from the obsession with aesthetic futurism. According to Roland Barthes, the mark of the utopian is the quotidian (Sade, Fourier, Loyola).

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Installation by Marina Yee. (Photo: Roberto Filippello)

It is this kind of utopia that the exhibition ends up exploring: rather than advocating the 19th century idealist project of going back to nature, which was indeed dear to Rik Wouters, who moved to the edge of the Sonian Forest to live together with like-minded utopian artists. The exhibit seems to embody the concrete possibility of finding beauty and joy in the domestic setting. Utopia, as an affective structure, can be materialized through the regaining of what we already know in order to propel its yet undisclosed potentiality into the future. It consists of living with pragmatic and optimistic imagination: using the past, or the pre-existent, to act presently at the service of a better future.

Marina Yee, a member of the historically renowned fashion collective 'Antwerp Six,' which laid the foundation for current Belgian fashion culture, began to turn away from fashion's cyclical consumption in the 1980s and since then has worked at her own pace, focusing on sustainability and artistic development. In the exhibit, an oil painted replica of a 19th century camisole and a sculpture made of glass, silver, copper, wire and leather by Yee are on display. Bruno Pieters, with his collective ethical label 'Honest by Bruno Pieters' questions the norms and regulations enacted by mainstream fashion by sharing with the customer how the garments are manufactured, the hours required for their completion and the pay received by the seamstresses. These details constitute the core of his utopia for a sustainable future.

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Maison Martin Margiela's blanket becoming one with the interior. (Photo: Roberto Filippello)

 

These designers share a creative practice grounded in the ambition to redesign clothes, interiors and all the objects of the everyday life beyond the unethical limitations posed by industrialization, imagining a future in which applied arts contribute to human and environmental well-being. Such a perspective is invested with the optimism of finding beauty in the creative process and of letting the consumer participate in it: while acceleration has failed to produce a collective sense of accomplishment, slow movement and sustainability foster a sense of belonging in which harmony may be intimately felt and shared.  

Roberto Filippello is a fashion editor and writer whose academic expertise lies at the intersection of fashion studies and queer theory. He is an alumnus of the Master of Arts in Fashion Studies at Parsons The New School, where he has taught courses on the history of fashion and critical analysis of fashion photography. His current research focuses on the articulation of queer affectivity in fashion and pornography.