By Guest Contributor Mimi Thi Nguyen, originally published at Threadbared

Awl writer Cord Jefferson just penned an incredibly thoughtful piece on the phenomenon of “nu prep” or what passes for “classic Americana” in men’s style. In “White People Clothing and ‘Old Money Green,’” Jefferson wonders what to make of garments whose appeal is narrated through unsubtle [...]

By Guest Contributor Alex Jung, originally published at RaceWire

Inconstancy, rather than a vice, has long been a strength of fashion. Empire waists, shoulder pads, and bubble skirts have all come in, out, and back again. Designers, too, fall in and out of favor with editors and the shopping elite who patronizes them. But lately, there [...]

By Guest Contributor Mimi Thi Nguyen, originally published at Threadbared
Dean Spade is a genius activist lawyer and legal scholar. (For instance, he is the founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit law collective that provides free legal services to transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people who are low-income and/or people of color. And [...]

By Guest Contributor Mimi Thi Nguyen, originally posted at Threadbared

I do mean to return to questions of vintage in the future –beyond that one great conversation I had with Minh-Ha– but I find right now I’m unable to devote much time or thought to its multidimensional, multifunctional phenomena. (More on my overstuffed schedule later.) However, [...]

by Guest Contributor Mimi, originally published at Threadbared

The following paragraphs are excerpts, authored by others, which might offer us (a collective us) an initial entry point into weighing the politics of vintage. The first comes to us from Catherine and her blog Renegade Bean, from a post called “Surrogate Memories From A Time Long Ago:”
I [...]

by Guest Contributor Minh-ha, originally published at Threadbared

Several days ago, Karl Lagerfeld, head designer and creative director at Chanel, debuted Paris-Shanghai: A Fantasy, a short film made to accompany the Chanel pre-Fall runway show. The 22-minute short was projected on an outdoor screen amid the Shanghai cityscape. (The film clip is below.)

Cross-overs between fashion and [...]

By Guest Contributor Mimi, originally published at Threadbared

There is a lot to appreciate about Fashion for Writers’s Meggy Wang, like her recent conversation with her new collaborator Jenny Z on “overdressing.” But one of the things I appreciate the most is how her outfit posts might be alternately imagined as a series of “found” photographs [...]

By Deputy Editor Thea Lim

I suppose it is a good sign that we can still be shocked speechless by the racism in pop culture, right? Because it means that we aren’t totally cynical and embittered. Right?
This morning we received a tip from reader Cassandra, letting us know about last night’s episode of America’s Next Top [...]

by Guest Contributor Minh-ha, originally published at Threadbared
While the much-ballyhooed Italian Vogue’s “All Black” issue last July 2008 was an overwhelming disappointment, it apparently succeeded in awakening the fashion industry to the fact that industries of beauty culture produce, circulate, and secure very limited ideas of beauty especially in relation to race and size. Unfortunately, [...]

by Guest Contributor Minh-ha, originally published at Threadbared
This post is supposed to be about the latest occurrences of blackface in fashion — specifically, the 14-page editorial featuring Lara Stone, a white Dutch model, painted black and shot by Steven Klein for the October 2009 issue of French Vogue and also Carlos Diez’s show at Madrid [...]

by Guest Contributor (and regular commenter) Jha

Steampunk! Variously described as an aesthetic, a genre within scifi/fantasy that sprouted from cyberpunk, and a subculture vaguely related to the goth counter-culture. Like many other things with vague origins and a tenuous identity that overlaps with others, it is hard to pin down what steampunk is.
The only that [...]

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse

models Joseph Ackon, Samira Carvalho and Ronaldo Martins for Osklen
Yesterday afternoon, I was talking to one of my colleagues when I noticed one of the most beautiful black women I had ever seen in my life walk through the door. Despite the young students running around at her feet, she remained calm. [...]

by Guest Contributor Mimi, originally published at Threadbared

Because this is a fashion plus politics blog, I want to post some very brief thoughts about the protests rocking Iran after what some observers are calling a fraudulent election, reinstalling President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against his main opposition, moderate reformer Mir Hossein Mousavi. (For news about the election [...]

By Guest Contributor Mimi, originally published at Threadbared
Whether deemed a “must have,” as some contestants on The Fashion Show insisted, or a hideous mistake, the so-called harem pant is back in a big, billowy way. But the resurgence of the harem pant in the long shadow of war in the Middle East –specifically, those conflicts [...]

Excerpted by Latoya Peterson

This recipe for femininity looks, to me, as if it is aimed toward a stereotypical Hong Kong billionaire’s wife. The clothes evoke a demure, under-control, decidedly non-rowdy (read: non-Western) type of woman who appreciates her role as an ornament of great value, and sits prettily and quietly in Gulfstream jets.
—Cintra Wilson, “Critical [...]