Policing Fashion in New York
by Guest Contributor Minh-ha, originally published at Threadbared
In New York magazine’s Spring Fashion issue, there are six feature stories on clothes, designers, and models including a story on a group of tenderfoot but fresh-faced white male models (”Fashion Week’s handsome rookies”), an interview with style icon Kate Moss on her clothing line at the much-anticipated and much delayed opening of TopShop in downtown Manhattan (recent reports have doors opening in April 2009), and a recession-minded article with an increasingly familiar theme, “Everything Here is Under $100″). In addition, there is the usual array of designer label advertisements and celebrity spokesmodels: Posh and Becks for Emporio Armani, Katie Holmes for Miu Miu, Gwyneth Paltrow for Tod’s, as well as an anonymous sea of puerile, well-heeled, ivory-faced Gothamites slinging everything from Marc Jacobs handbags to cocktails to lifestyles.
Jessica Lustig’s article, “The Fashion Thief,” was the only feature story or advertisement in the Fashion Issue that featured a person of color, any color. Lustig follows Kevahn Thorpe, an African American young man from Queensbridge Houses project in Queens, New York, as he is arrested and rearrested for shoplifting from high-end Manhattan shops like Prada, Bergdorf, Barneys, and Saks.
There’s a lot about this article that’s unsettling.
For instance, Kevahn’s love of fashion is pathologized and made irrational (he’s a “fashion fanatic . . . for whom jail was not too steep a price to pay”) as if coveting fashion in New York City is at all unusual. Moreover, Kevahn’s “crafting” (his preferred term for shoplifting) is anything but irrational. Part of the “crafting” for Kevahn is his careful study of fashion labels, their histories, designers, and floor arrangements. Also, repeated mentions of his single black mom and hardscrabble life in Queens reifies tired “culture of poverty” theories from the 1970s and 1980s that blamed black mothers, specifically, and black families, generally, for all the problems of the “underclass” rather than, say, systems of institutionalized racism and uneven distributions of material and social resources, power, and wealth that privileged middle and upper-class whites. But most disquieting for me about this article is its inclusion in New York’s Fashion Issue during Spring Fashion Week. While all the white models, celebrities, and socialites who crowd the pages of this and so many other magazines are implicitly citizens of the fashion world – their unquestioned rights to fashion’s material objects and its privileges substantiate this – the lone trespasser is a black man who is repeatedly surveilled and forcibly removed out of this world’s borders. His claims to fashion, self-fashioning, and self-actualization are publicly denounced by the headline which identifies him as a “fashion thief” but also by the numerous, mostly anonymous, readers of the article whose online comments against him rise to the level of vitriol.
The racial logic of this article is not unlike those found in other magazines – some of which have been mentioned in this blog (see Oops, Background Color, Redux, and Background Color, Redux II). African Americans as well as other racial groups, when they’re featured at all in fashion and style magazines, are routinely figured as abject, subordinate, or illegitimate bodies that serve to highlight the true white subjects of fashion.
(Photo Credit: NY Mag)
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Monie wrote:
You know I really couldn’t care less what the White fashion industry has to say about POC.
I just don’t get the constant surprise about the racism that pervades the (White fashion) industry. It’s been like this forever and will likely continue to be this way until POC’s completely ignore them. And by completely ignore I mean when we stop coveting LV bags and Versace and Prada and all the rest, then and only then will they realize there is a problem.
Until this happens we are part of the problem.
Posted 25 Feb 2009 at 1:12 pm ¶
Fiqah wrote:
SIGH.
There are almost too many things to unpackage and deconstruct here.
Like how a consumerist culture dictates that We Are What We Own. Like how that means something different to White people and PoC. Like how class exacerbates this issue. Like how being an outlaw and playing outside of the rules is okay for some of us, but damning for others. Like how fashion’s lack of accessibility is ruthlessly preserved by its proponents/creators/consumers as part of its overall cache (call it what you will, but its not an egalitarian-minded field; remember all the shit Mizrahi got for deigning to design ready-to-wear for Tar-jay?).
Yeah, I wanna address all this. But I need to have lunch first.
Posted 25 Feb 2009 at 2:00 pm ¶
Kelvin wrote:
In response to this article, I raise them Winona Ryder.
Posted 25 Feb 2009 at 2:21 pm ¶
Nelly wrote:
Kelvin, I can’t tell you how many fashion forums I’ve read where the commenters say Ryder shoplifted because of depression (or whatever other mental illness they decided she had). I guess those commenters conveniently forgot that Ryder also had a reputation for being a spoiled and entitled brat. I’m also guessing Kevanh Thorpe hasn’t gotten the same “consideration” and “sympathy.”
For what it’s worth, I don’t hate Winona Ryder. She’s been in some great movies, even if I think she’s a weak actress. I just hate that she was immediately absolved of all responsibility by people who aren’t exactly medical experts (”She’s not a thief. She’s just sick” “You can tell she’s depressed. She looks so sad since she broke up with Johnny Depp”). I saw the same arguments of depression and mental illness being used to immediately explain away the Ashley Todd hoax, too (”Well, racism is a mental illness”).
I just want to scream. Not just because it absolves those two of responsibility, but also because it shows a clear misunderstanding of mental health. The last thing mental health advocates need is more amateurs going around diagnosing people and spreading false information.
Posted 25 Feb 2009 at 3:04 pm ¶
The Cruel Secretary wrote:
@Fiqah–Perfectly stated as is. And, btw, get outta my head.
Posted 25 Feb 2009 at 3:16 pm ¶
Sarah wrote:
I agree with all of the posts so far…this type of behavior from the fashion industry towards people of color shouldn’t be a surprise anymore.
The industry will not change because it doesn’t have to0…designers, editors, buyers, executives, casting directors, agencies and etc. know that no matter how much they disrespect us, degrade us, stereotype and basically spit on us…that most of us are so insecure and zombied out that we will buy their products anyway…because everybody wants to belong…be cool…whatever…
when we withold our money…when rappers stop ryming about their sneaks and their hoodies…when female celebs of color start to make it a point NOT to carry the $5000 bags of brands that haven’t featured any models of color at all…then things will change…
so unless somebody wants to discuss organizing boycotts of the some the most offensive in the industry…then it doesn’t make sense to me to talk about it anymore.
Posted 25 Feb 2009 at 3:26 pm ¶
livininphilly wrote:
@ Kelvin #3, thank you for mentioning this as I was thinking about Winona Ryder the whole time I read this.
She was considered very much an insider to the point where at various times in her career she has actually been considered a trendsetter. I would be interested to compare the reaction to her shoplifting and the reaction to Kevahn Thorpe.
Posted 25 Feb 2009 at 3:35 pm ¶
hey wrote:
I was waiting for you guys to blog about this! This is my favorite quote from the article:
“Kevahn, meanwhile, was arrested over and over—always at department stores, he emphasizes, “never in no label stores,” like Prada, where the staff is perhaps more sensitive to the possibility that a young black kid drifting among the merchandise might be an up-and-coming entertainer or a rich private-schooler and not necessarily a thief. ”
So “sensitive to the possibility”, eh? Way to characterize people of color as the other, always suspicious, never just regular customers, but people that need to be watched. Either thieves or “up and coming entertainers”, not, you know, regular people who are out shopping. Jeesh. This is why I do most of my shopping online.
Posted 25 Feb 2009 at 3:53 pm ¶
foshothoyo wrote:
fashion is the midwife of white aesthetics. “haute couture” has always been a haven of ultra-wealth, white self-worship, and frivolous expenditure – all-too-often built on the backs of poor laborers in sweatshops in some occluded place.
the issue strikes me as a passive-aggressive response to the Kanye’s of the world – the new black elites (who are secretly unwelcome) who now have the money and interest to contribute to the fashion industry or participate in the culture.
As people of color continue to accrue wealth and status, the fashion industry will be forced to accomodate them in due time, but not yet. They are going to resist forays into their territory, but they won’t be able to hold out forever.
In a way, this piece shows how afraid they are, because they sense that they are gradually becoming obsolete. It reminds me of this clip that brought a joy to my heart that I haven’t felt in quite some time…watch from 7:00 until the waterworks turn on!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urpnjlqx6TM&feature=related
If this white man is crying, imagine what the fashionistas will do when there’s a black Armani.
I’m looking foward to it, myself.
Posted 25 Feb 2009 at 7:04 pm ¶
Lloyd Webber wrote:
OMG…It’s pretty scary actually, because this kid looks almost exactly like me. We even have the same glasses. A little off topic, I know, I was just a little taken aback by the resemblance
Posted 25 Feb 2009 at 7:41 pm ¶
Fiqah wrote:
Hey, gurl! :::waves at The Cruel Secretary::: I know, right? That whole telepathic link thing we got is eerie! I really must learn to comment AFTER meals, so here’s the newly outlined process: eat sammich and/or collards a la AJ Plaid –> comment intelligently on a thought-provoking post ’cause I ate –> pretend to work as I post to blog/bulk up novel.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 10:28 am ¶
CMyers wrote:
This is sad. Usually if we’re featured in fashion magazines, it’s in the back of the spread. I remember one spread in Glamour where the only black model was featured in a “hip hop safari” layout (no really, that was the title!) and a jungle layout. It was beyond disturbing. And if we make it into the advertisements, it’s even worse. One had the a white female in the foreground with a black female in the background sitting at a table with sesame street characters. Can’t remember what the ad was for, but it definitely wasn’t Sesame Street. …or oh God, the Nike ad that featured a woman explaining how word puzzles are too hard for her, she’d rather just run and not think. WOW. I have to dig those up…
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 11:42 am ¶
lunanoire wrote:
What, a hip-hop safari? That’s 2 stereotypes for the price of one!
It is amazing the difference in the level of service given at the mall compared to boutiques. They really know how to kiss up and make people feel special, with their free drinks (alcoholic and non) and snacks and “kind” words. I wonder if my father ate it up b/c 1. he’s a label monger for Polo, 2. insecurity b/c he grew up w/ a lot of rich kids though he wasn’t, 3. black men are so often assumed to be criminals, & 4. young, attractive women often work in those stores.
Identity through fashion labels promotes consumerism.
Posted 27 Feb 2009 at 11:34 am ¶