By Fashion Correspondent Joseph Lamour

Thanks to the Obamas are in order, fellow African Americans! Black people–like me!–can look in a closet and not immediately reach for the saggy jeans and other “street wear codes.”

At least, according to Elle France.

For the first time, the chic has become a plausible option for a community so far pegged [only] to its street wear codes…

-Nathalie Dolivo, in French Elle
Tendance [Trend] – Black Fashion Power

Nathalie Dolivo, a writer for the magazine’s blog, seems to think that since the Obamas are so fashion-forward, they serve as a public forum to inspire African Americans to dress more fashionably in 2012. First of all, lady, this is the fourth year of Barack’s term. You’re a little late with this intensely racist idea, aren’t you?

That’s not even the worst of it. Dolivo goes so far as to coin the term, and this hurts me to type it, “black-geoisie”.  Now, we really should institute a “Sh-t Fashion Magazines Say” to add to the hundreds of others on YouTube. We have a wealth of material to work from. First we had Slave Earrings. Then we had the whole Rihanna, N*ggabitch debacle. To which Rihanna herself replied with a heartfelt “F*CK YOU”. And now this. It seems like American magazines are on their best behavior! Good work.

Dolivo uses a picture of Janelle Monae in the post to show how far we’ve come from over-sized pants, but Monae is a musician who’s particular style existed since her music was first released in 2003, well before this “black fashion renaissance” (Dolivo’s words, not mine) was to have taken place. And of course, much before public consumption as well.

The post has since been removed from Elle France’s website. Without an apology, I believe the magazine is hoping they can deny the post was published–or published in error, at least , if caught (too late for that!). Elle, you can’t un-ring a bell.

“The time when Pendleton came into existence, the 1900s, was the all-time low for native communities,” Metcalfe says. “This is at the height of the reservation era, when we were confined, we were essentially prisoners on these small plots of land. But in that same breath, while our cultures were under threat from this outside force, that’s when we turned internally to protect what we had, and we also get some of the most beautiful beadwork and most beautiful jewelry coming out of that period of great stress.

“Connected with that great assimilation movement was the height of collecting. The late 1800s was when a lot of our stuff left our communities. On the one hand, you have this push for trying to absorb or get rid of ‘The Indian Problem.’ Then, they were taking all of the items that embody that culture, to collect them and put them in museums and claim ownership on them.”

In the 1970s and ’80s, top American designer Ralph Lauren became enamored with Navajo rugs, Plains beadwork, and Apache pottery. He launched his Santa Fe line of clothing featuring concha belts, petticoat skirts, “Indian patterned” sweaters, and blanket jackets in 1981 as another defining aspect of American culture. In the 1990s, the Pendleton and other Native American-inspired designs swelled in popularity again with the return of “Southwest” style and rise of “new country” music.

In recent years, Pendleton has been going to town with collaborations using the iconic Indian trade blanket patterns. It had sold these patterns to Vans, famous for making skateboarder shoes; produced high-fashion lines with Manhattan couture company Opening Ceremony; and it is even offering products through Urban Outfitters. With Levi’s, Pendleton launched a line of jean jackets and cowboy shirts called Navajo Cowboys, hiring Navajo rodeo champions like Monica Yazzie as models.

- From “Why the ‘Native’ Fashion Trend Is Pissing Off Real Native Americans,” by Lisa Hix

I seem to have found a rather telling typo on Temperley London’s website. Temperley, if you do not know is a couture house that clothes stars for red carpet events (like Jennifer Lopez), and while perusing their website (I was curious about how much Molly Sims dress was on The Rachel Zoe project) I found something called “Latino Leather” pants in a…. very tan… hue…

Am I hallucinating? Or…

See the above image. I also see them spelled as “Lantino leather pants” so I was hoping Lantino was a type of fabric… or something in another language… so I googled.

0 relevant results.

I yahoo-ed.

0 relevant results.

For god sakes, I even bing-ed.

0 relevant results.

Shouldn’t someone at Temperley explain this? Are there no people of color viewing their website other than me? Jennifer? Jennifer’s people?

Out of exasperation I google translated. “Lantino” is Latin for Lantin (say that three times fast).

Lantin is a word meaning “radiant wrapping” in Inca. I found that little gem in an online Inca dictionary. I doubt that’s what they meant, but even if that’s what they did mean, it still leaves the INTENSELY unfortunate “Latino” typo. Am I being crazy or is this actually something? Did they actually name these leather pants after the skin tone of a race of people? And even if they didn’t and this means something relating to fabric, why didn’t they name them something else?

In the midst of her excellent takedown of Urban Outfitters’ “Navajo” appparel line, Sasha Houston Brown focused on one suspiciously-named piece of underwear:

I doubt that you consulted the Navajo Nation about using their tribal name on sophisticated items such as the “Navajo Hipster Panty”. In fact, I recently became aware that the Navajo Nation Attorney General sent your company a cease and desist letter regarding this very issue. I stand in solidarity with the Navajo Nation and ask that you not only cease and desist selling products falsely using the Navajo name, but that you also stop selling faux Indian apparel that objectifies all tribes.

Wednesday, Sasha passed along an update to the story from the Indian Country Today Media Network: a few days after UO spokesman Ed Looram said the company had “no plans to modify or discontinue any of these products,” the word Navajo has been completely scrubbed from its’ website.

In a release, the Navajo Nation Justice Department told the Associated Press Wednesday the move was “more consistent with the corporation’s responsibilities than previously demonstrated.”

As of Wednesday, items with the word “Navajo” in their description are now referred to as “Printed,” like the infamous Hipster Panty, which went from this:

to this:

Of course, the name “Hipster Panty” still makes it sound like it was made out of hair from Zooey Deschanel’s unicorn PBR puppy or whatever. But regardless, congrats to the Navajo Nation on this victory, and to Sasha and everyone who posted about this issue for pushing UO into the change!

By Guest Contributor Minh-ha T. Pham, cross-posted from Threadbared

Alondra Nelson, author of the much-anticipated book Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination (University of Minnesota Press 2011) talks to me about The Black Panther Party’s Free Clothing Program, one of the organization’s many community programs. Nelson’s book, which Henry Louis Gates calls “a revelation” and Evelynn Hammonds describes as “indispensable” for understanding “how healthcare and citizenship have become so intertwined,” deftly recovers a lesser-known aspect of the BPP: its broader struggles for social justice through health activism.

On a more personal note, I’m utterly thrilled to be introducing Threadbared readers to Alondra Nelson! She’s an intellectual powerhouse of the first order whose research stands as far and away some of the most exciting and relevant stuff I’ve encountered in critical race and gender studies in some time. In addition to her intellectual capaciousness (follow her on Twitter to see what I mean!), she is unsparingly generous in her willingness to share knowledge, support, and tips for the best mascara a drugstore budget can buy. And she’s agreed to sign copies of her book which 3 (three!) lucky readers will win – keep reading to find out how!

MP: Alondra, as you know I’ve been dying to talk to you about  this photo of the Black Panther Party’s Free Clothing Program by Stephen Shames. It’s one of my favorite fashion photos because it captures so well what I can only describe as a state of sartorial joy – that happy feeling I get sometimes when I’m wearing a favorite outfit or trying on new clothes (even if only new to me). I mean, this kid is seriously feeling his look and himself – and I absolutely love it! What are your reactions to this photo?

Black Panther Party Free Clothing Program. A boy tries on a coat at a party office in Toledo, Ohio, 1971. Credit: Stephen Shames.

AN: This Shames photograph is striking and wonderful. There is definitely “sartorial joy” there. And, pure unadulterated happiness, too! The boy in the photo—his smile, his pose, his evident pride—conveys the thrill I think we’ve all felt during some especially successful shopping venture at a sample sale, thrift shop or department store. We unfortunately learn to dim our delight as we get older. This image is a welcome reminder to savor life’s little pleasures.

The photo also prompts a less cheery reading. The boy is wearing many layers of clothes and here he is adding yet another layer. He’s stocking up. Maybe he is in great need of clothing. Perhaps his enthusiasm is not the thrill of consumption, but the satisfaction of having this very basic need met.

The Black Panther Party’s 1966 founding manifesto stated “We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.” Helping disadvantaged communities to meet these needs was one of the activists’ main goals. To do this, the Party established a wide array of community service or “survival” initiatives, including the People’s Free Clothing Program depicted here.

Then there are the images within the picture; the images on the wall. There is the iconic poster of Huey Newton seated in a wicker chair brandishing both a sword and a rifle. There are several pieces of art that appear to be the work of Emory Douglas, the Party’s Minister of Culture. There’s also a familiar portrait of Eldridge Cleaver floating just above the boy’s head. This “gallery” links the boy’s sartorial joy and practical needs to the Black Panthers’ style and their politics.

MP: I love that. It really articulates my sense of the significance of the Black Panther Party’s health-based programs, which I think go beyond physical survival. That Eldridge Cleaver’s iconic image is part of this scene of sartorial joy really suggests to me that the BPP understood the political and psychic significance of clothing, that “health activism” for the BPP had much broader implications than physical health. Can you elaborate on this?

AN: Yes, that’s absolutely right. The Party appreciated that clothing could be both a basic need and a form of self-expression.

Also, the Black Panthers’ had a broad and politicized understanding of well-being that I describe as “social health.” Social health was their vision of the good society. The Party drew a connection between the physical health of individuals and social conditions in the U.S. They believed that achieving healthy bodies and communities required a just and equitable society.

The Black Panthers took a similarly holistic approach with their health activities. They provided basic health care services at their People’s Free Medical Clinics, for example. At these clinics one could also get free groceries or clothing, or advice on how to deal with a difficult landlord or help finding a job. For the Panthers, all of these issues were interconnected.

MP: Do you think it’d be fair to say that in the popular imaginary, it isn’t the group’s community programs for which they’re best remembered but their distinctive look? I’m thinking about the circulation and consumption of the BPP’s fashion practices and styles (e.g., Afros, berets, and military jackets) today in fashion magazines (under the sign of “radical chic”) and in the Internet (one blogger offers advice on how to “recreate the Panther look”). How important was the distinctive look of the BPP to its political mission and legacy then and now?

AN: The Black Panther Party emerged during a golden age of mass media: at a time when artists like John Lennon and Yoko Ono were pioneering some of the earliest music videos, when Marshall McLuhan was proclaiming the “medium” as “the message,” and when racially stereotypical television shows such as “Amos ‘n’ Andy” (which ran in syndication until the late 1960s) were giving way to integrated dramas like “The Mod Squad” and “Star Trek” (the latter of which was the setting for American TV’s first interracial kiss). Media mattered; image mattered.

Given this context, the fact that the Black Panthers were not only bold, but also beautiful, definitely contributed to their association with style in the popular imagination up to today. And, what the Shames photo of the boy captures so well is the fact that the Party’s image and its mission could overlap.

At the same time, we shouldn’t let our collective memory of the Party be so preoccupied with its imagery that we lose site of the activists’ urgent critique of racial and economic inequality and their efforts to imagine a better society. As Angela Davis stressed in her stirring 1994 article “Afro Images: Politics, Fashion, and Nostalgia” (a MUST read!), we shouldn’t reduce a “politics of liberation to a politics of fashion.”

MP: Stephen Shames, the photographer responsible for the above photo, is also responsible for many of the photographs that serve as visual references for “radical chic”. Can you talk about his relationship to and role in the BPP?

AN: Because of his evocative photographs, Shames has been one of the most important historians of the BPP. Many familiar, iconic images of the Party reflect Shames’ unique vision and talents. He also photographed aspects of the BPP’s work and organizational culture that are less well-known, whether it was decpicting hundreds of bags of groceries spread out like a lawn in an Oakland park or capturing blood being drawn from a child’s finger during at one of the Panthers’ sickle cell anemia screening programs. I am honored that he allowed me to use one of his photographs for the cover of Body and Soul.

MP: Thanks, Alondra! I can’t wait to read the book!

Body and Soul will be available for purchase on November 1 but you can claim your FREE copy before then! Visit the original post at Threadbared and talk about your favorite book/film/image of the Black Panther Party to win one of the three autographed copies of Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination. The drawing will take place one week from today on Monday, October 24.

By Arturo R. García

Not long after Adrienne Keene’s column last week, comedian Daniella Pineda sent us this spot-on mock advert subverting “Urban Infitters” and the like.

The video’s only 1:37 long, so I don’t want to spoil it, but here’s the set-up: designer DW Díaz (Pineda) walks us thru her new line, inspired by a recent viewing of Legends Of The Fall, and her realization that “Native Americans are so cute!” And from there things turn toward the fashionably horrifying. Enjoy!

(L-R) Thakoon F/W 11, Louis Vuiton S/S 12, Thakoon F/W 11

By Guest Contributor Rafael Flores, cross-posted from Fashion Mole

Fashion’s conflicted love affair with Africa is on again. Louis Vuitton featured cobalt and berry Masai prints for its S/S 12 menswear show last June, while Thakoon fused Victorian tailoring with traditional East African patterns for F/W 11. Critics unanimously exalted both collections. Nicole Phelps of Style.com hailed Thakoon’s showing as “his freshest, most alive collection in a while,” and The New York Times Magazine proclaimed Louis Vuitton as the “winner” of Paris Fashion Week for menswear S/S 12, with radiant quotes from SHOWstudio, who hailed the collection as “hugely handsome, confident and clear.”

Sure, the clothes were beautiful, as they tend to be from practiced and esteemed labels like Louis Vuitton and Thakoon. But the use of African aesthetics for the financial and cultural benefit of the West conjures a host of unanswered questions: Is this practice exploitative? What image of Africa does it create in the West? Should designers give back to the communities from which they benefit?

Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907; painting-analysis.blogspot.com)

Fashion critics have largely praised Galliano and Gaultier’s use of African aesthetics in the context of “diversifying fashion.” In a review of The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, a retrospective of Gaultier’s work at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Robin Givhan of The Daily Beast writes: “Gaultier looks outward at the swirl of life that engulfs him. And he is fully and optimistically engaged with it. Gaultier’s multicultural inspiration, which spans the entire breadth of his career, beginning in 1976, reminds us of the beauty of cultural diversity.”

Looks from Dior Couture '97

“No attempt is made to recover an emic, or inside, sense of what primitive esthetics really were or are… The point of view of Picasso and others… is the only focus of MOMA’s interest… By their absolute repression of primitive context, meaning, content, and intention… [the curators] have treated the primitives as less than human, less than cultural – as shadows of a culture, their selfhood, the Otherness, wrung out of them.”

The New Yorker summarized this argument: “In other words… people of color don’t exist unless whites say they do – and, even then, they exist only as they are seen by whites.”

A portrait of Senegalese women from the 50s by Senegalese photographer Seydou Keita (via origidij.blogspot.com)

One way Western designers could convey a deeper appreciation for Africa is by offering adequate historical or cultural context of their designs when they reference aspects of African culture. If Louis Vuitton offered more background information on Masai prints for his S/S 12 show, for example, viewers would have a better idea of what Masai prints signify and how they became so prominent among Masai tribes. The information could be placed in a pamphlet that accompanies the show’s gift bags or sits on each seat in the audience. This, to me, would ameliorate the feeling that the label was exploiting African culture and give the sense that the label was celebrating it.

Another way fashion could start projecting a more respectful perception of Africa is by incorporating African textiles into their designs. Today, most African-print textiles are manufactured in Europe or Asia – they’re African-inspired, not African. As writer Maya Lau suggests in a Huffington Post piece entitled Senegal’s Accidental Hipsters, the African textile industry is largely foundering in countries like Senegal. Investment in textiles from these countries would 1) feed into the local economy 2) maintain traditional, or at least local, ways of producing textiles, and 3) cultivate a more human relationship between Western fashion and Africa. If Western designers continue to use African prints, sourcing fabric from Africa would give both Westerners and Africans monetary benefits (it would be cheap for Western brands to manufacture in Africa and it would power the African economy) as well as social benefits (it would begin a symbiotic relationship between the West and Africa).

Yet another way for Western designers to convey a deeper appreciation for Africa is by giving back to the communities from which they borrow. After using Masai prints for his F/W 11 collection, Thakoon has done just this. According to Thakoon.com, the label will donate all proceeds from a particular Limited Edition Masai Plaid Scarf to an international children’s relief organization working to reduce rates of malnutrition in the Horn of Africa – the area where Masai Tribes are located. The donor-benefactor relationship isn’t ideal; however, it is one way for Thakoon to give back to the community that offered him so much for his latest collection.

The relationship between the West and Africa is long and complicated, and because of this, there are no real answers as to how to create a healthy relationship between Western fashion and Africa. Here, I’ve tried to offer some solutions and have highlighted others that are currently in the works. More than finding the best solution, however, I hope that designers start thinking more critically about their relationship with Africa and the best way for them to face the conflicts inherent in utilizing African designs. This way, at least fashion can begin to celebrate cultural diversity in a way that feels new, thoughtful, and genuine.

Last Thursday, Crystal Renn, the model who recently appeared in a Vogue Japan spread with her eyes taped in ways that were suggestive of an old theater makeup trick meant to make white actors look “Asian,” offered an explanation and defense of the cosmetic practice. Tape, it should be noted, is only one of many tools in the arsenal of this particular form of racial drag, also known as yellowfacing – a practice that is literally older than America. Contrary to popular headlines suggesting that “yellowface is the new blackface,” there is nothing new or novel about yellowfacing. One of the earliest incidences of yellowfacing in the U.S. occurred in 1767 when Arthur Murphy presented his play The Orphan of China in Philadelphia.

What interests me about this moment of racial drag or “transformation,” as Renn’s called it, are the reactions to it and her own explanation of the decision to tape her eyes. In last week’s published conversation with Jezebel editor Jenna Sauers, Renn insists that she “wasn’t trying To ‘look Asian’ in that eye tape shoot”. And I wanted to believe her. I have great respect for Sauers. Her writing has always displayed a great deal of thoughtfulness and acuity and she’s been a generous supporter of Threadbared for a long time. For all these reasons, I approached Sauers’ conversation with Renn as a generous reader, willing to be convinced. After all, Sauers initially assumed Renn was yellowfacing too. If she could be surprised with Renn’s explanation, I thought I might be too.

Here’s how Renn explains the eye-taping:

• In a way you become something else.
• No, it tends to be when there’s more makeup and drama. And the point is transformation.
• To transform is the greatest part of my work. It’s the thing that makes me the happiest. And to be able to try to do as many looks as I can and to show as many faces as I can, it’s exciting to me . . . I’ve had moles painted on my face. I’ve had freckles painted on.
• I become something else.
• We didn’t even think about [race] on the shoot. I’m the one who suggested it, and it didn’t even cross my mind. It’s something that I regularly ask makeup artists, you know, if it will bring something more to the character. Offer a different face.
• As the model, as somebody who thrives on the transformation, I am beyond thrilled to do stories where they change my gender, where they take me and make me something completely different.

What is so striking about Renn’s explanation is its ambiguity. She never says what look she was going for – just that she intended to become “something else.” This intangible “something” that has more “drama”, more “character” , and is so “exciting” is, for Renn, not racially specific. It is instead a generalized exotica, an experience of vague sensuousness. But do racist acts require intentionality? And what are the implications of Renn’s deracialization of a practice that was so clearly racist to so many people?

“Eating the Other”

Renn’s understanding of this “transformation” is reflective of a broader cultural logic in the mainstream fashion industry that has historically viewed and engaged with racial difference as a depoliticized and dehistoricized aesthetic. Racial difference, evacuated of its history and politics, becomes a set of design elements and sartorial flourishes (a kente pattern here, a frog closure there, a Native headdress on the weekend – why not?) that are absent of meaning and context. Fashion’s depoliticization of ethnicity and race rely on and reproduce what Nirmal Puwar calls “the amnesia of celebration.”

The problem is that the violent racist abuse meted out to Asian women who have worn these items has no place in the recent donning of these items. . . “Do you remember when you thought we were ugly and disgusting when we wore these items?”

The amnesia of celebration forgets (willfully or not) the historical and ongoing violence that women of color bear wearing the very same garments on their bodies while looking like they do – rather than like Renn does (or Madonna, Gwen Stefani, and the list goes on). The eye shape Renn creates using tape is one that has given rise to schoolyard taunts, sexual harassment, mockery in real as well as fake Asian languages, nearly a century of immigration exclusion, employment discrimination, fetishization, and much more for Asian women who were born with these eyes. Not what you’d call an “exciting” experience. That Renn is able to feel “transformed” through and by this cosmetic trick – one she equates with other tricks like fake moles and freckles – underscores the capacity of white bodies to play with race without bearing its burdens, without having to even acknowledge the existence of these burdens. Thus, the transformation Renn experiences and achieves is conditioned by her whiteness and the privileges that accrue to her racially unmarked body. At the same time, her transformation is possible only because of her proximation and consumption of otherness. The function of Otherness – even one that is unacknowledged by her – is reduced to the servicing of white women’s transformation.

This desire for transformation through the Other is not unique to fashion; it is connected to a much longer history of what Black feminist scholar bell hooks (always in lower case) calls “imperialist nostalgia”: the longing of whites to inhabit, if only for a time, the world of the Other. Bodily transcendence through sartorial and cosmetic play is enacted by the consumption of otherness – a “courageous consumption,” in hooks’ words – because it is about “conquering the fear [of racial difference] and acknowledging power. It is by eating the Other,” hooks explains, “that one asserts power and privilege.”

But Renn wasn’t “even think[ing] about [race] on the shoot . . . it didn’t even cross [her] mind.”

Here, I want to return to my earlier question: do racist acts require intentionality? The obvious answer is no. A well-intentioned compliment about how well I speak English or a clumsy flirtation that begins with a deep bow like I’m the Dalai Lama (both have happened to me) are meant to be friendly gestures that close the gap of racial difference. (“Don’t worry – I’m culturally sensitive.”) Yet, these examples are clearly born of racist ideologies about what “real” Americans look like and what are “real” Asian cultural practices. Racism is so deeply entrenched and pervasive in many societies (the U.S. context is not exempt but neither is it exceptional) that everyday racism, the kind of racism that is experienced in civic life (through social relationships, media, interpersonal workplace dynamics, etc.) is often unintentional. On the other hand, what is always intentional is anti-racism. The struggle against racism resists the pervasive ideologies and practices that explicitly and invisibly structure our daily lives (albeit in very different ways that are stratified by race, gender, class, and sexuality). Anti-racism requires intentionality because it’s an act of conscience.

But I think Renn’s (mis)understanding about eye-taping and intentionality is suggestive of something more than unconscious racism. I think that Renn’s explanation exemplifies how race is understood in this “post-racial” historical moment. What does racial discourse sound like in the age of post-racism? Well, I think it sounds like Renn’s explanation. This isn’t to indict Renn; instead, my point is to suggest that Renn’s explanation is an example of a post-racial narrative in which race is simultaneously articulated through and disavowed by discourses of class, culture, patriotism, national security, talent, and, in the case of fashion, creative license. Renn’s transformation is conditioned by its proximation to racial otherness and yet the language of creative license (Renn says: “To transform is the greatest part of my work.”) denies race as a driving and organizing factor in this transformation, it denies both her racial privilege as well as the eye-taping technique as a common cultural practice of racism. This kind of post-racial consumption of race in which the historical violence of racial difference makes no difference at all denies the ongoing reality of racism in the age of postracism. It is conditioned by the many privileges of whiteness (first and foremost among these privileges, a racially unmarked body). Recall Puwar’s incisive observation – which I’ve quoted numerous times on Threadbared – “It is precisely because white female bodies occupy the universal empty point which remains racially unmarked that they can play with the assigned particularity of ethnicized female bodies.”

We see the discourse of postracism also in Renn’s assertion that she is “not 100% morally okay with [blackface shoots] — I would feel that I’m taking a job from one of them. I would feel that I’m taking a job from a black girl who deserved it.” Renn’s sensitivity towards the need for more diversity in the modeling industry is not surprising. She has been a vocal proponent of size diversity among models (for a time, she was one of the most successful plus-size models) and has spoken openly about her own struggles with eating disorders and the pressures that come with the constant scrutiny of young women’s bodies in the media.

Her statement that she would never engage in a blackface shoot does two things: First, it elides the issue at hand (yellowfacing) for what seems to be for Renn a more real and authentic act of racism, blackfacing. In so doing, her statement suggests that anti-black racism is the only authentic form of racism worth talking or caring about. Second, it suggests that practices of yellowfacing and blackfacing (like, redfacing and brownfacing) take modeling jobs away from nonwhite models. This logic assumes that these acts of racial drag are meant to represent an actual racial body. Let me be clear: yellowfacing is not a practice of racial passing, of a white model passing as Asian. Photographers, magazines, and designers know Asian models exist and know how to hire them. But they don’t hire them for these jobs because yellowfacing is not about tricking audiences into believing that the body in view is actually Asian.

I’ve become really impatient with responses to racist practices of racial drag that involve comments like: “Why didn’t they just hire a Black/Asian/Latina/Native model?” (Yes, I believe there are anti-racist kinds of racial drag.) This question glosses over the actual operations of yellowfacing, blackfacing, etc. which is not about Asianness or Blackness but about Whiteness. It is about consuming Otherness, it’s about making racial difference commodifiable and palatable through whiteness, it’s about reproducing and securing white privilege. To quote hooks again, “eating the other” – hooks’ term for the consumption of difference – offers:

a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling. Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream while culture.

__________________________________

NB: It’s unclear to me who is actually to blame for Renn’s eye-taping. She’s insisted that it was solely her idea but editor-in-chief of Vogue Japan Anna Dello Russo has also taken credit for the idea. I asked Ashley Mears, a former model and now sociology professor at Boston University whose book about the political economies of the modeling industry called Pricing Beauty is due out this month from the University of California Press if Renn might be falling on her sword for Dello Russo. According to Mears, it’s plausible that Renn had some creative input. As she explained, “models tend to have very little input in the terms of their work or in how their images are crafted or manipulated. However, at the higher levels of the industry where Renn is working, in which stylists and models work with each other repeatedly on high-end productions, there is a greater degree of collaboration with models, especially if she takes initiative to be involved.”

“Slave Earrings” are in Vogue. Literally. According to the Italian fashion outlet, “Jewellery has always flirted with circular shapes, especially for use in making earrings. The most classic models are the slave and creole styles in gold hoops.”

Emphasis mine, ridiculousness… all theirs.

Two weeks ago, Vogue Italia found itself under a deluge of criticism for declaring “Slave Earrings” in fashion. Originally, they thought to qualify the name they gave them. “If the name brings to the mind the decorative traditions of the women of colour who were brought to the southern United States during the slave trade, the latest interpretation is pure freedom. Colored stones, symbolic pendants and multiple spheres. And the evolution goes on.” Does it go on to declare “necklaces with detachable chains,” “hillbilly slingbacks,” and “Holocaust tattoos” in fashion? None of that is me, by the way, this is taken from the 21 pages of comments, nearly all chiding the wording choice in English and in Italian.

Allow me to fill you in on the latest: Vogue Italia gave an apology earlier last week that was more like an “Oops!” than anything. The style bible’s editor, Franca Sozzani released a statement Monday that said, “We apologise for the inconvenience. It is a matter of really bad translation from Italian into English.” Again, emphasis mine, but let’s be honest, the emphasis should have been theirs. They continued, “The Italian word, which defines those kind of earrings, should instead be translated into ‘ethnical style earrings.’ Again, we are sorry about this mistake which we have just amended in the website.”

From the myriad of complaints, tweets, and articles that has inspired this fashion nightmare, it was pointed out the word “ethnic” translates to “etnico” and slave is “schiavo” in Italian. Completely dissimilar words.  So obviously, Sozzani’s statement needs to be taken with a… grain of salt. My thought is, in the surprise this wording… mistake… caused, they had to say something. Like equate ethnicity to slavery. Oops! I think Iman said it best to Style Bistro: “Slave does not make it ethnic. Mind you, it’s not lost in translation–the word slave, we know what it is. They might as well have called them n***** earrings.” Snap. We should know by now that it’s best not to anger Iman. Bill Murray and Scarlett Johannson would be none too pleased, either.

Really, these earrings do originate from the time of slavery, however… let me throw out an example. Right now, I’m wearing a Calvin Klein buckled leather bracelet. I am not wearing a Calvin Klein shackle cuff. See the difference, Franca? I know this all may be confusing, but maybe the word should have been edited out before released to the public, as editors are wont to do. And what if, (and this is completely hypothetical of course) the model on the site was black?

Now do you see why that term shouldn’t have ever, ever, ever have been used? I felt wrong even cutting and pasting another face into this. Imagine how we feel knowing that you wrote, edited, approved, coded, and posted the article without even so much as a “Uh… guys?”

As of last Wednesday evening, the post holds a message saying, nay, shouting:

“WE’VE DECIDED TO REMOVE THE ARTICLE FROM THE SITE TO PROVE OUR GOOD FAITH AND TO SHOW IT WASN’T OUR INTENTION TO INSULT ANYONE”

Now, there’s a real apology. I think.

I so want to give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, this isn’t their first language. Ignore the fact that it appeared in Italian as well. But, this is the same team that came up with mainstream fashion’s first all black issue. And they also started Vogue Black, even though I side-eye the name a little bit. I was talking to Sexual Correspondent Andrea Plaid about this, and she bought up something rather interesting:

“Vogue Italia is doing the post-racial mulitple-oppression sell: under the guise of thinking they’re being all ‘We did the Black Issue, so we’re cool in doing this’ using the myriad of oppressions of women of color to sell some damn gold-tone hoop earrings named after…WoCs’ oppression! And that oppression, in many cases, melded sexual oppression (Antebellum US, the Japanese and Korean “comfort women,” etc.) This, coming from the magazine whose brand is all about the sexy framed as stylishness.”

Though they may not deserve it, as a gesture of good faith, I took a peek around Vogue Italia’s trends section. Maybe this was just a one-off terrible mistake. And I found another post about… Jungle Bracelets. My first inclination was to shout “Why!?!” But, false alarm, as I read, there was nothing really- “…manchettes in python for a night marked by tribal rhythms,” huh? “Turn your evenings into “jungle nights” characterized by tribal music, wild dancing and a bit of aesthetic rebellion,” you say?

Less malevolent, sure. But I’m uncomfortable anyway, and while relatively tame, is this something to be angry about? Maybe. But, to be honest, should I be bracing myself for racism on their website now? Slave Ethnic Earrings should be completely gone from the site as that “gesture of good faith.” As of Wednesday afternoon, the Ethnic Earrings post is still up, complete with the slide show.

It shouldn’t be, so let’s all just face the fuc— I mean facts. Face the facts. I’m sorry, it was a really bad translation. But I caught myself.

Image credit: Vogue Italia and Joseph Lamour

Racism in the fashion industry is still alive and well. Duh. I have to say it somewhere in an article like this, so I thought, why not get it out the way from the start? However, the opinions put forth in Charles Beckwith’s modaCYCLE rebuttal piece “Racism In Fashion” are not themselves racist. But they certainly are ironic.

I think he might have forgotten to italicize part of his title. Racism: In Fashion. Can’t you just hear Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa in the background? Beckwith explains why Naomi Campbell has appeared on 8 covers of Vogue and Kate Moss has appeared on 24, is because consumers (read white consumers) want to see someone in the clothes that they want to be. Kate Moss dated Pete Doherty for a long stretch- I’m pretty sure no one’s clamoring to be in her shoes these days. But would they rather be in Naomi’s or Kate’s? An editor apparently lost their job over making the wrong choice, and Beckwith states:

“I have never met Naomi Campbell, nor can I confirm or dispel the claim of an Australian editor being fired for putting her on a cover. Though, if an editor had been fired for putting Ms. Campbell on a cover, no evidence was cited that would lead anyone to believe that the action was specifically related to racism more than likely profit motives.”

But, in what world are these mutually exclusive? In Ms. Campbell’s defense, if someone got canned partially in relation to your face, wouldn’t you be upset? I might not call a bunch of publicists, but is it so far fetched that it couldn’t be true? Maybe fashion recycles social mores as much as they recycle trends.

…subjectively, [sic] Kate Moss is a much stronger model with more ability to transform her face, and she is generally better liked in the business than the ill-tempered cell phone-throwing and community service sentence-serving Ms. Campbell.

Is Kate Moss is a stronger model? You can’t see it, but I’m side eyeing. Kate is indisputably an excellent model. She’s an inspiration for solid gold sculptures. She can slip through cracks in floors. I would imagine she is generally more likable.

Perhaps not near ledges or piers, however. I know, she probably knew the kid she pushed off a pier into the ocean. Kidding aside, didn’t Kate get caught on camera doing something illegal? Why no mention of that? And why not mention Alex Wek or Lea T or Liu Wen? I would never disparage one group to defend another, but, notice he uses only positive adjectives for Kate and only negative-tinged, multi-faceted, overly-dashed adjectives for Naomi. We all know Naomi isn’t a bed of honeysuckle on a warm summer day, but frankly, I think he just doesn’t like her. I mean, for good reason, she’s intimidating. That doesn’t mean that Naomi doesn’t have a point.

Later in his piece, he becomes much less incendiary and much more amusing. Still, after reading the first half I felt an overwhelming sense that I’ve been here before, reading this article, because Beckwith is conjecturing that it isn’t fashion’s fault. Minorities in fashion put people off buying expensive things. Look at the market research. I conducted my own “lazy survey” and spoke with friend who is a white and fashionable, blond and blue eyed, and works at a gallery. I asked if she would be more or less likely to buy something if say, the model used to be a man. Her reply? “What does that matter?”

The reality is that there about a million things going on in someone’s head at once before they make a purchasing decision, and maybe if I see someone I don’t want to emulate in the clothes I won’t want to buy them. Maybe my friend was being nice because she was talking to her gay black friend. The idea that the race or gender identity of the person wearing the clothes affects the consumer buying it is an excuse to disinclude. Soft racism if you will. In the end, it doesn’t matter if a man is wearing a dress, if you really really like the dress, you’re going to buy it. You’re probably going to want to try it on first.

[On making it illegal to discriminate based on race in the fashion arena:]

“I’m certainly not advocating more “black face” makeup on Caucasians or a drag queen takeover of Ralph Lauren campaigns, but that is what is being talked about.”

Now saying something like that just makes me want to get RuPaul and Ralph in a room together. Wouldn’t that get your attention? Who among us has looked at a Ralph Lauren, Emporio Armani or Davidoff ad for more than three seconds while flipping through a magazine? Do they even make Cool Water anymore? Fashion for the most part has become so set in it’s ways that when a new concept comes along, they either celebrate it (like the tattooed model or the albino model) or admonish it. This all boils down to reluctance to take risks. I personally think a lot of the fashion elite are afraid of change. Beckwith asserts throughout his article that it is an indisputable fact that black models are less profitable than their white counterparts:

Until there is an affluent consumer base behaving less alienated to dark faces, and that demand starts to exist from them for the thousands of new $10,000 evening dresses every 6 months, there is no reason for commercial enterprise to be pushing them to an audience that cannot afford them.

Does the phrase “dark faces” make anyone else need a glass of water? The fact of the matter is no one is buying $10,000 evening dresses in this economy. That’s why you can find Chanel Creative Director Karl Lagerfeld shilling his (admittedly, gorgeous) wares at Macys now. And, of course, all the models are all still white.

(Thanks to reader C for the tip!)

The good women from Disgrasian have pointed out that American Apparel is selling a rice paddy hat for $15. I’m a little surprised it has taken American Apparel so long to get on with this “trend.” I remember first seeing it on whipster (white hipster) fashion student Nora from the first season of Project Runway, and that was like 8 seasons ago. Anyway, AA is really scraping the bottom of the PBR barrel with this one.

The Disgrasian bloggers let the hat speak for itself and instead eviscerate the would-be wearers as fashion victims. Fair enough. Wearing it would make you look like an asshat. But is it racist?

The hat brings me back to the sweet times of my youth when Abercrombie & Fitch was the hip brand (hey, I’m from Florida). A&F stirred controversy for their excessively racist t-shirts, that depicted caricatures of Asian men wearing – yup, you guessed it – rice paddy hats with slogans like “Two Wongs Can Make It White.”

Rice paddy hats have a long history in the American imagination stemming, most directly, from the Vietnam War. Movies like Oliver Stone’s Platoon, and other Vietnam War movies, often depict desperate, fleeing Vietnamese in rice paddy hats. The hats are also a common trope in editorial cartoons.

The hat itself isn’t racist, but it has a deep, Orientalist history that subsumes multiple nations, histories, and billions of people, under one big coolie hat. What is truly offensive is the ability of the West to take something like a rice paddy hat, something that has actual meaning and substance and shape and turn it into a cheap symbol of the Orient. If I drew a head with that conical hat on it, a viewer would immediately know to reference: Asian person.

I’m trying to think of a time and place where I would welcome the coolie hat, that is not mid-summer on Bedford on a whipster or traveling in rural Asia. It would be Halloween. The wearer would be an Asian American female, dressed like a Vietcong guerrilla fighter with a sniper rifle slung around her in a reference to Full Metal Jacket. The hat would look pretty badass.

Fashion is having a Lara Stone moment – again. She is the face for Tom Ford’s new beauty line, meaning her exclusive for Calvin Klein has come to an end . No matter – she is still the face of Calvin Klein’s Fall/Winter campaign and its new underwear line, Naked Glamour. Stone is a unique face in fashion. While she can look pretty and soft, she has granite cheekbones, a protruding brow and a gap between her front teeth that give her a harder, more masculine edge. She also has breasts (a no-no in high fashion) and a clumsy walk. Still, her uniqueness has catapulted her to the top of fashion. In 2009, W called her the “most-wanted face” in fashion. In Interview magazine, Marc Jacobs writes that she brims with “feral attitude and personality and sexuality.” Stone, on the cover of August’s French Vogue, is an editorial favorite. That marked her seventh cover; former French Vogue editor, Carine Roitfeld put Stone on six covers, and even dedicated an entire issue to her. It’s easy to see why. Stone epitomizes the Roitfeld woman: tough, sexy, and a little freaky.

Lara Stone is part of an increasingly visible portion of high fashion – odd, gawky, and sometimes, downright busted. In a post entitled, “What is Beauty?” Photographer Garance Doré was taken by Nina Porter, then the face of Burberry. Porter’s grey eyes, short hair, and scrunched features look more appropriate in Middle Earth than on a catwalk. Doré believes that Porter, and other models like her, are an indication of evolving fashion standards. Others include Daphne Groeneveld, Lindsey Wixson, and Saskia de Brauw. They have awesomely odd features that makes them look distinctive, interesting, and alluring.

Saskia for Versace F/W 11 (left) and Saskia on the cover of French Vogue (right)

Nevertheless, the “blank canvases” – like Anja Rubik and Angela Lindvall – still exist. It is also true that any skilled Photoshopper can turn any of these eccentric beauties into a blank canvas. Compare the two images above: de Brauw’s Versace ad with her March cover of French Vogue. Still, the band of weird, tattooed, sometimes androgynous, sometimes masculine models are pushing the boundaries of fashion. They are moving fashion more towards the idea of individual beauty, and often, designers and editors use them to give their images personality and edge.

While fashion’s expanding idea of beauty is something to celebrate, it’s important to ask: why all of these “pretty-ugly” models white?

From left to right: Joan Smalls, Jourdan Dunn, and Liu Wen

The current top models of color are, by contrast, very beautiful. Flawless, really. Jourdan Dunn, Joan Smalls, Liu Wen, et. al. all have the features of a classically beautiful model: small face, high nose bridge, symmetrical proportions. They don’t have jutting facial bones or bug eyes. And while it may sound contrarian to lament their fresh and clean looks, it is to point out that standards of beauty for models of color have remained almost static since the days of Beverly Johnson.

How can beauty standards for models of color evolve when it is a struggle to simply put one on the cover of a magazine? Fashion has a schizophrenic relationship with race. Either there are few to no models on the runway (as is often the case at Calvin Klein, Versace, and Jil Sander) or fashion wants to make a dramatic point about using models of color, as when Lanvin sent black models down the runway en masse to close its Spring 2011 show, or Vogue Italia’s now infamous “black issue” or V magazine’s recent “Asian” issue. They want you to know that they are celebrating diversity. Simply put, being of color is enough to set a model apart. So while funky features can be a boon to a white model, they become a hindrance for a model of color. Their ethnicity is enough personality. Why add gapped teeth?

Similar standards seem to apply to “plus size” models. Representative “plus-size” model, Crystal Renn has a conventionally beautiful face. She is also the only one who has really broken into the higher echelons of fashion – a rise that coincided with a noticeable weight loss. As for the other “plus size” models, they, too, are never allowed to forget that fashion deems them big. Fashion editorials enjoy undressing them to remind people of just how big they are while slapping a bad pun like “A Life in Full” (Kate Dillon in American Vogue) or “Curves Ahead” (V Magazine) over their photos. It’s important to note that most of these women, too, are generally white. For a model of color, having a busty figure, would be yet another hurdle to overcome.

The one exception to this standard was probably Alek Wek – the Sudanese-born model – who rose in the nineties with a shaved head and full cheeks. Wek has since moved on to charity work, but her look has created the “exotic, dark-skinned African with a shaved head” type. Two rising African models – Ajak Deng and Grace Bol – fit the look (so much so that the latter says people sometimes confuse her with Wek); they also just so happen to also be Sudanese in origin. Perhaps it is only through these problematic “categories” that models of color will begin to achieve the diversity that their white counterparts so enjoy.

I had a great Twitter conversation yesterday with @AndreaPlaid, @AnnaHolmes and @Amaditalks. We were talking about Julie Klausner’s recent post on Jezebel, “Don’t fear the dowager: a valentine to maturity.” Klausner’s post, lamenting the trend of grown women adopting childish personas, is sort of a companion to all the similar pieces about modern men living in a state of perpetual boyhood. She writes:

There’s so much ukulele playing now, it’s deafening. So much cotton candy, so many bunny rabbits and whoopie pies and craft fairs and kitten emphera, and grown women wearing converse sneakers with mini skirts. So many fucking birds.

Girls get tattoos that they will never be able to grow into. Women with master’s degrees who are searching for life partners, list “rainbows, Girl Scout cookies, and laughing a lot” under “interests, on their Match.com profiles. Read more…

The Klausner article generated a ton of push back on Jezebel. I suspect because the manic pixie dream girl persona is “in” right now and everyone wants to feel like they choose their own choices. In this case, that means that some women want to believe that their predilection for rompers and kittens and baby voices reflects their individual personalities and not some trend toward retro, non-threatening femaleness. But no one chooses their choices in a vacuum and certainly it means something that so many women seem to be finding this super-girlish, childish part of their personalities at the same time, while Katy Perry’s sex and candy persona is tearing up the charts and actual little girls are being bombarded with pink, purple, princesses, tulle and sparkles.

Zooey Deschanel is the poster girl for this sort of womanhood. Frankly, I find a 30-something woman with a website called Hello Giggles and a penchant for tweets about kittens a little off-putting, as I would a grown man with a website called Girls Have Cooties and a Twitter feed about Matchbox cars. But then we find creepy in a man the kind of childishness we fetishize in women.

I also find it worth noting that the persona that Klausner writes about is bound by class and race. The cult of domesticity defined idealized womanhood centuries ago–and that definition included both perpetual childhood and whiteness. The wide-eyed, girlish, take-care-of-me characters that Deschanel inhabits on film are not open to many women of color, particularly black women. We can be strong women, aggressive women, promiscuous women…we can do Bonet bohemian and Earth Mother (as Andrea pointed out), but never carefree and childish. Even black girls are too often viewed as worldly women and not innocents.

Also, the affectations of the manic pixie are read differently on black women. A streak of pink in the hair goes from quirky and youthful to “ghetto” on a black body. Thrift store clothing leads to a host of class assumptions.

Am I wrong about this? Is there a black Zooey? A manic pixie Latina? Is this a persona that women of color can inhabit?

Photo and image credits: What Tami Said

By Guest Contributor Mimi Thi Nguyen, cross-posted from Threadbared

Last Thursday, Reuters released photographs from the United States’ extra-territorial raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan, which show “three dead men lying in pools of blood, but no weapons.” (Reuters purchased these photographs from a Pakistani security official, who entered the compound about an hour after the US assault.) Reuters described the three deceased men as “dressed in traditional Pakistani garb and one in a t-shirt, with blood streaming from their ears, noses and mouths.”

On Twitter, Pakistan-based journalist Shaheryar Mirza (@mirza9) pointedly asks, “Why are Muslims always in ‘garb’ and never in ‘clothes’?” In a related inquiry, South/South (@southsouth) has been critical of The Daily Show’s graphics following Osama bin Laden’s extra-judicial killing, featuring photographs of bin Laden’s head imposed upon a mosque, and another of bin Laden caption, “Bye Bye Beardie.”

Our theoretical and historical provocation (for this blog, at least) is thus to engage the question of clothing the “terrifying Muslim.” For example, we could easily observe that terms such as “garb” emphasize a civilizational distancing or confusion (one involving both temporal and spatial dimensions). Where naming these clothes as “garb” seems to act as “merely” an empirical description, the assessment of subjects and their clothing practices may coincide with, or become complicit with, colonial schema. (Shaheryar Mirza (@mirza9) and South/South (@southsouth) had an amazing, satirical exchange about putting on their “garb” that underlined so well the usage of the term as loaded with civilizational thinking. Highlights include Mirza’s “American business-casual garb for me today!” and South/South’s “Clothes might make the man, but garb makes the Muslim man.”) Related to this set of concerns, I’ve written here about the epidermalization of clothing and sartorial classification as a weapon of war.

This time, I thought I would turn to my brilliant colleague Junaid Rana. Rana is an associate professor in Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, whose scholarship addresses the confluence of racism with concepts of “illegality,” especially through transnational movements of labor and war. He is also the author of the new (and sure to be important) book Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in the South Asian Diaspora, out on Duke University Press in the next few weeks. You can find out more about the book (and become a fan) here!

MIMI: In your new book Terrifying Muslims, you argue that racism and the criminalization of the Muslim body enacts the global war on terror in everyday life. You also incorporate a sartorial dimension into your analyses about the use of surveillance and racial boundary-making in relation to the Muslim body (drawing upon feminist theorists such as Sara Ahmed, one of my intellectual crushes). Can you tell us about your arguments about how clothing does matter?

JUNAID: It’s a fairly straightforward argument, although I’m sure it will be received with some controversy. The basic argument is about connecting Islamophobia to racism. Islamophobia is often seen as religious discrimination. And racism is usually thought of in terms of the body and particular kinds of genetic traits and phenotypic difference – that is, skin color, hair, eyes, etc. But as the scholarship on racism has shown, such biological determinism is almost always tied to culture. In the second chapter of the book I have an extensive argument about how racism and the genealogy of the race-concept is intimately tied to Islam and Muslims.

As for the sartorial elements, it’s an extension of the general approach in the book that combines material and cultural analysis. I look for my theoretical inspiration from a wide variety of intellectual approaches. I am without a doubt deeply indebted to the work of feminist theorists, who have in my mind always been at the cutting edge of critical race analysis. For example, many of my arguments in the book draw from a number of feminist theorists, including Sara Ahmed and Linda Alcoff, who for some time have talked about how clothes are a material register for the intersection of race and gender. The surface of the body is read by its accoutrements. It’s a certain kind of object analysis that is always already happening. How the body is fashioned with coverings provides for a particular cultural reading based on meanings attributed and related back to the body. Without a doubt, we size up people all the time by how they dress. We make judgments by what we infer from clothing – and this has much to do with a process of racializing and gendering, meaning we take cultural artifacts such as customs and costumes to have a particular naturalized and essentialized meaning that is centered on the body as a material and cultural archive. But this is also a choice and a political stance.

Not all clothing will have as much meaning as others. For some this choice is a mistake, and others a risk. (Remember when it was dangerous for Rachael Ray to wear a kefiyyah?) Culture and clothing, then, is a way to racialize and establish social boundaries of who belongs here and who doesn’t. Race in the context of Islam and the Muslim body is understood as a religious belief in which its adherents are thought of as inherently different. So I’m not saying this always happens, it’s a very specific process of racialization that imagines a group of people as essentialized in particular ways. You can find this in what people say and do all of the time. And that’s what I try to unravel in depth in the book.

In this particular moment Islamic clothing and bodily fashioning along with comportment imputes all kinds of meaning to Muslim bodies. Research has shown that veiled women [and girls] in the US are disproportionately endangered as threats to what I would call the white supremacist social order. Men are also targeted because of Islamic dress and facial hair as appearing Muslim-like. Louise Cainker’s study in post-9/11 Chicago with Arab Americans called Homeland Insecurity showed that veiled Muslim women were often targeted for harassment and racial violence. What she calls cultural sniping is a response to a gendered nationalism in which women are considered the bearers and reproducers of culture. So an attack on Islam in the publics of the US, is more easily a violent attack on Muslim women. Others have shown similar things in New York and San Francisco. In my book, I talk about how Islamic dress becomes a material register to discipline bodies into an imperial racial order. In the last chapter of the book I talk about how this comes together particularly in two vignettes of women who face forms of racial boundary making used to oppress them, and as a source of refusal of such dominance through the defiance of racialized and gendered stereotypes.

As for the pictures just released by Reuters, first it should be acknowledged what the three men are actually wearing. The website states the pictures “show two men dressed in traditional Pakistani garb and one in a t-shirt, with blood streaming from their ears, noses and mouths.” Two sentences later the report says: “none of the men looked like bin Laden.” What on earth does this mean? They didn’t look Arab? They weren’t Muslim enough? Terrorist? Evil? It’s not clear. The man apparently in a t-shirt is wearing an undershirt commonly worn under the “traditional Pakistani garb” referred to more commonly known as shalwar kameez. A unisex dress, the shalwar refers to the loose pants, and the kameez is a long shirt some of your readers might recognize as related to the chemise. Given that the photos crop the bodies of the dead mean from the waist up I’m not entirely sure how Reuters knows what they are wearing. You can more or less tell, though, from the details of the clothing.

What is more striking is the second comment of the men not appearing like Osama. Banal as it may seem, the comparison is astounding. What makes it necessary? If anything, I would point to the variety in facial hair. One has a short beard and the other two have moustaches, commonly worn in Pakistan. Beards in Islam, are considered a sunnah or Prophetic example of religious practice. Wearing them is an example of piety but not required. Many considered to be religious leaders are often judged by their pious dress.  Yet, the Reuters treatment of their bodies and their relationship to Osama reveals the kind of racialization I’m talking about. Either as adherents of al-Qaeda that are fictive kin, or as relatives that might look like Osama, the report is making judgments based on kinship and a distinct biopolitical logic of racism. That their deaths are commented on as blood streaming from their bodies only adds to the agenda of racism that ends in annihilation. In the third chapter of my book I talk about how photographs and terror alerts are used to incite racial panics and control them through the policing apparatus of the security state. In specific, I looked at the images circulated about al-Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and his capture, also in Pakistan. Some of the readers of this blog will recall the heavily manufactured image circulating about KSM with him looking disheveled and in an undershirt (If not, it’s in the book!). These images matter because they import so much meaning and are able to convey a message without needing to say it explicitly. More often that not, that’s how racism can hide without being explicit, and justify death without needing to say so.

MIMI: Hijab describes a set of clothing practices that “adheres” a sense of alien being to the feminine Muslim body in North American and European visual cultures. Its criminalization is spreading, as you know, throughout West Europe in particular, even though hijab is of course much more complicated than such racial and civilizational discourses allow. What does this sense of criminalization tell you about the politics of Islamic clothing?

JUNAID: It’s ironic that many well-meaning folks with liberal, left, or progressive views can absolutely not understand how veiling in any of its forms from hijab to full niqab can be a choice and a radical critique of the contradictions of humanist values. They will say: “those women are so oppressed,” and chalk it up to patriarchy, a sort of passivity that requires a rescue narrative. As many postcolonial scholars and feminists have argued Muslim women veil for many reasons, despite the imperial hubris many have in thinking they need saving. The reality is we live in a patriarchal world in which the veil is a source of adhering to religious beliefs of piety and humility while also finding avenues of participation, and in the context of the US it is a source of protection in a general society that is Islamophobic. In the US, the increasing movement to veil comes in the context of the rise of anti-Muslim racism since the early 1970s. The hijab, in fact, has empowered many women in the US public sphere to deal with racism and the double standards of sexism that are structural and place them within the history in the US of dominating women and communities of color.  Although Europe and France in particular, have their own histories of colonialism and context of anti-immigrant racism that has led to growing discontent of the vast social disparities many of these communities face, Islam is seen as having too much culture in contrast to the demands of a liberated monocultural nationalism. The situation in European national publics is far worse for Muslims but there are similar logics that connect all of these places in terms of Islamophobia and racism – and the failure to adequately address these issues.

MIMI: What are your thoughts on the blog, “Muslims Wearing Things,” (subtitled “Muslims and Their Garb”) which is one activist’s response to the ways in which the Muslim body is always already rendered “alien” through certain sartorial signs?

JUNAID: I think what the website is about out is pretty self-evident, so I don’t have much to say. Instead I would point your readers to the work of Wafaa Bilal who has engaged in some amazing art practices regarding the body, geopolitical mapping, and death. In his performance art piece entitled “…And Counting,” he makes his body a site of the memory of war, killing, and art as activism. It’s some really heavy stuff that is surprisingly straightforward as an aesthetic practice. Ronak Kapadia, a graduate student at NYU, has been writing some brilliant things about this. He should be the next tie to this thread.

Many thanks to Junaid Rana for answering these questions! Again, Check out information about his book Terrifying Muslims here.

Perhaps the most celebrated Fall collections to debut at this year’s Fashion Week were those that creatively incorporated technology. Several designers showcased computer-generated prints, retooling traditional craft textiles into computerized patterns comprising ultra modern garments. But even as fashion critics overwhelmingly celebrated this preponderance of technological innovation, most seemed similarly enamored of Ralph Lauren’s far less pioneering embrace of one of fashion’s oldest tropes: Shanghai Chic. Critics eagerly dedicated valuable column inches to the collection, which featured all the mainstays of Asian-inspired fashion: jade jewelry, golden dragons, cheongsams. While some candidly wondered whether the designer’s invocation of China was a statement about the nation’s growing economic competitiveness, others were simply happy to break out as many tired euphemisms for “Eastern” as possible. (Not only did the “Orient Express” make several stops but East, inevitably, met West.)

The familiar scenario aptly reinforces a key observation made by culture critic Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu in her newly published book, The Beautiful Generation: “Even when freed to dream and invent,” she writes, “[designers] seem only to return to long-held ideas about an exotic and erotic orient.”

The phenomenon Nguyen Tu describes, of Euro-American designers’ quixotic and cyclical infatuation with an often undifferentiated “East,” has for — literally — hundreds of years dictated Asia’s participation in one of the largest and oldest industries to date. Asia, in the deft hands of fashion industry titans, is at once a sumptuous fantasy and a convention in need of constant reinterpretation; both an inexpensive manufacturing site and — as one New York Times critic made a point of mentioning with regard to the Ralph Lauren collection — an expansive consumer market.

The Beautiful Generation, as much a fashion history as a cultural study, gracefully takes us through the many phases of that evolving dynamic: From Gaultier’s introduction of luxe Chinese coats in seventeenth century Paris, to American Vogue’s strategic establishment of “fashion designer as cultural anthropologist” in the mid-‘90s, and finally to the curiously successfully rise of Asian American designers in the present decade. While it’s all a good read, the last is arguably the highlight of the book; Nguyen Tu’s compelling examination of Asian American designers, whose precarious positions in the industry are plainly defined by their historic exclusion from it, is clearly a point of personal connection for her.

In one way or another, she’s been studying those designers since the 1990s when, as a grad student at New York University, she began noticing that a number of emergent downtown boutiques were helmed by Asian American women. Initially driven by her recognition of a unique cultural phenomenon (up to that point, Asian Americans in the fashion industry had been relegated to low-wage manufacturing jobs), she was eventually propelled by the realization that she shared a lot more with the designers than just a fine fashion sense.

Like many of the designers she interviewed, Nguyen Tu had emigrated from Vietnam as a child, and her family had settled in what she describes as “all-white working class towns in Connecticut … urban spaces where it was hoped we would assimilate faster.” Her working class parents, whose vision of acceptable work centered on the potential for financial security, expected her to become a pharmacist or, if she was really ambitious, a doctor. But her ostensibly poor command of the sciences eventually pushed her towards liberal arts and, to her parent’s dismay, a PhD in American Studies.

“It was like telling them I was going to join the circus,” she said. “And throughout my interviews with the designers I heard the same thing … the same story of how parental expectations enabled us to do the work that we did even as it constrained us.”

As she learned, familial ties and expectations figured prominently in the rise of Asian American designers, informing their careers paths and perspectives on the industry while lending them valuable human and material resources during their lean beginning years. Most of the designers she interviewed (including notables like Philip Lim, Derek Lam and Doo-Ri Chung) were the children of garment producers — the low wage sewers, cutters and pattern makers upon which the fashion industry relies. From an early age, the designers had assisted their parents with piecework, learning to cut, sew and assemble. Yet few set out to become designers, influenced instead by their parents’ narrow views of acceptable work as much as by cultural stereotypes that depict Asians as industrious but inherently uncreative.

“The majority of people that I interviewed didn’t even go to fashion school,” Nguyen Tu said. “Instead … they went to dental school.”

While many told Nguyen Tu that sewing was in their blood, having been trained in the skill since childhood, most nevertheless pursued radically different careers — in finance, biology, anthropology, etc. — before circling back to the fashion industry as designers.

But unlike the prototypical American designer (who, according to Nguyen Tu, strives to distance himself from “unskilled” producers in an effort to elevate his own role in the creative process), Asian American designers have tended toward the reverse. Guided by their intimate connections to garment workers and familial expectations about the nature of acceptable work, they are more inclined to view fashion design as chiefly a business rather than an art, and tend to emphasize their close relationships with producers rather than eschew them. For many, this pays off. While fashion design is an unstable, financially risky, and resource-intense occupation for most, Asian American designers have benefited from their intimacies with producers, who can provide them with both labor and material resources at little or no cost. It’s a crucial advantage that has enabled many Asian Americans to stay competitive in an especially gendered and racialized industry.

And just as the American children of garment workers are increasingly crossing the assembly line — graduating from the industrial to the creative — so are Asian sites of outsourcing leveraging their manufacturing industries into more lucrative creative centers. Once the original locales of inexpensive labor, China and Korea have started dedicating considerable resources to cultivating home-grown design talent, sending scores of Chinese and Korean fashion students to New York every year to acquire skills and exposure. Though their fashion industries are fledgling yet, the transformative effort has plainly provoked anxiety within the Euro-American fashion industry; Nguyen Tu notes that the latter has subsequently striven to define itself as a global innovator by reinforcing the industry’s creative vs “unskilled” dichotomy. Euro-American designers are embracing technology, ever-reinventing familiar motifs and further distancing themselves from the mass-producing masses in an effort to maintain their global dominence.

Indeed, the defensive posturing and industry angst to which she alludes were in full swing at this year’s Fashion Week — in the self-aggrandizing speech of designers, on the ultra-modernized backs of models, and even in laudatory mainstream reviews. Commenting on Ralph Lauren’s collection, for instance, the New York Times’ Suzy Menkes repeatedly juxtaposed descriptions of the designer’s Shanghai-inspired aesthetic with disparaging references to the “fast fashion factories of today’s China” and Asia’s “Made in China”-quality mass productions.

Asian American designers don’t get off too easily either, falling as they do somewhere between artist and producer, American and foreigner. While critics extolled Ralph Lauren’s and Oscar De La Renta’s modernization of “tourist trap” Asian motifs, for example, they also repeatedly and simplistically categorized the commercial success of Asian American designers as the product of Asian consumption. Reviewing Anna Sui’s collection, Menkes patronizingly notes that “Ms. Sui may have had a big success in the Asia of her family origins, but her heart is forever in the England of swinging London, with its layers of history.” At Vogue, Hamish Bowles curiously remarks that Jason Wu’s “conservative” collection would never be as radically deconstructionist as those of the Japanese designer Kawakubo — notwithstanding the fact that their aesthetics are so radically different that they defy comparison; their only tangible similarity is their (albeit divergent) Asian heritage. Mark Holgale, also writing for Vogue, similarly makes much of Philip Lim’s connections to Asia, attributing the designer’s current and future successes to the voraciously consumptive Chinese — even as he notes that Chinese consumers are just as “familiar with everyone from Altuzarra to Rodarte.”

The stark differences between critical reception of Asian American work and that of mainstream, establishment designers seems to suggest that, while Asian cultures desperately require Western designers to modernize and retool their elements into something worth purchasing, Asian American designers nevertheless owe everything to their Far Eastern touchstones. In either case, the Euro-American fashion establishment wins … but perhaps not for long.

“I think the dominance of Euro-American fashion will eventually wane,” Nguyen Tu speculated. “They’ve held the monopoly for over 200 years, but I think there will be a radical shift away from the US and Europe as the only centers of fashion, and that China and India and all of these places will rise in a sort of global realignment of where we get our style … and in the production of fashion itself.”

Fashion illustrations courtesy of Noemi Manalang

By Arturo R. García

It’s nothing new, unfortunately, to see “celebrities” doing Nazi cosplay or making anti-Semitic remarks. But Wednesday saw an instance of each making the news, on different sides of the world

The day started with the firing of Christian Dior creative director John Galliano after video surfaced (NSFW) of his drunkenly telling a fellow restaurant patron,  “I love Hitler” and “People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be f****** gassed.” This came less than a week after being suspended for verbally harassing a couple in the same anti-Semitic fashion at the same restaurant, La Perle.

It didn’t take long for the fallout to hit. Not only is Galliano facing criminal charges for his actions, but his dismissal was probably a fait accompli when actress Natalie Portman, who had begun endorsing a perfume line for the company, distanced herself from the designer, telling People Magazine:

“I am deeply shocked and disgusted by the video” Portman, 29, said in a statement from Los Angeles. “In light of this video, and as an individual who is proud to be Jewish, I will not be associated with Mr. Galliano in any way.”

She adds, “I hope at the very least, these terrible comments remind us to reflect and act upon combating these still-existing prejudices that are the opposite of all that is beautiful.”

From a business standpoint, Galliano’s actions couldn’t have come at a worse time, as the company is set to run its’ annual presentation at Paris Fashion Week. But give credit to the company for enforcing what it calls a zero tolerance policy toward this kind of behavior, with CEO Sidney Toledano saying, I very firmly condemn what was said by John Galliano, which totally contradicts the values which have always been defended by Christian Dior.”

While Dior took action on its’ own accord, Sony Music Artists, a Japanese subsidiary of Sony’s entertainment division, found itself on the defensive because of boy band Kishidan’s choice of apparel. The band, pictured at right, appeared on MTV Japan late last month in dark uniforms that heavily resembled those of the SS units employed by the Nazis, leading to a complaint from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.

The center’s associate director, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, said there was “no excuse” for the new look chosen for Kishidan, which had previously gone for more of a traditional schoolboy look:

“As someone who has visited Japan over 30 times, I am fully aware that many young Japanese are woefully uneducated about the crimes against humanity committed during World War II by Imperial Japan in occupied Asia, let alone about Nazi Germany’s genocidal ‘Final Solution’ against the Jews in Europe. But global entities like MTV and Sony Music should know better.”

A 2009 story in Japan Probe would seem to back up Cooper’s statement: even then, a manga version of Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf, was “selling well,” and the Nazi cosplay trend was starting to pick up:

Nazis and their imagery (Nazi chic) seem to show up with surprising frequency in Japan. I’ve seen swastikas (of a definitely non-Buddhist variety) on middle-schoolers’ pencil cases. I’ve seen Nazi flags hanging casually in special sections of book stores. And I’ve seen cosplay nazi girls, as well as odd guys in German uniforms* in the park. While I think it’s safe to say that interest in Nazis is by no means the norm, it does not seem to be met with the shock that it would be in the Western world. In short, I hope that the majority of people buying this manga are reading it for the right reasons: to learn and to not repeat the past, which should not be treated lightly in this case.

In a statement, Sony Music Artists said both it and the band apologized for the incident, and that Kishidan would never wear the outfits again.

The Wiesenthal Center had also lodged a complaint this past December against the Don Quijote retail chain for selling Nazi costumes with pictures of Hitler on the packaging, as well as the phrase “Heil Hitler” in Japanese characters.

Kishidan image courtesy of Japan Probe

I was cruising on one of my favorite fashion editorial sites, Fashion Gone Rogue, when I happened upon this February/March 2011 cover of Russh Magazine featuring Delfine Bafort:

The Belgian model is surrounded by a group of adoring black men, who all seem to be looking at her lustfully. Her white dress, blonde tresses, and aloof stare contrasts markedly with their dark naked skin and enraptured looks.

Interesting.

The shoot seemed very reminiscent of other editorials I’ve seen in the past few years:

Gisele Bundchen by Sølve Sundsbø.

Black men being used as props is nothing new. Remember slavery?

In 2011, I think it’s past time to let these tropes go, don’t you think?

Related: Gisele Bündchen’s Photo Shoot is a Study in Interpreting Racially Charged Images, LeBron James as King Kong on cover of Vogue?

(Image Source: Fashion Gone Rogue)

By Guest Contributor Adrienne K., cross-posted from Native Appropriations

Last night I was cold. So cold, in fact, that I had to pull out not one, but two, of my Pendleton blankets to add some extra warmth to my bed. As I shook them out and laid them on my bed, I thought about how special these blankets are to me–one was a graduation gift, the other a thank you gift for serving on a panel about the “Future of Indian Education.” In many Native communities, Pendleton blankets are associated with important events, and have been for hundreds of years. They are given as gifts at graduations, at powwow give-aways, as thank you gifts, in commemoration of births and deaths, you name it. In addition, I’ve always associated the patterns with Native pride–a way for Natives to showcase their heritage in their home decor, coats, purses, etc. There’s something just distinctly Native about Pendleton to me.

But recently, Pendleton prints and fabrics have started popping up everywhere. It started with Opening Ceremony’s Pendleton line in 2010, and now Urban Outfitters has started carrying a Pendelton line, celebrities are wearing Pendleton coats, and Native-themed home decor is apparently all the rage. Now Pendleton has announced their newest collaboration, The Portland Collection, which fashion blogs are proclaiming will be the big thing for 2011.

Some examples from the line are under the cut.

So what’s the problem? I openly admit that a lot of these designs are adorable, and I would fully sport them (that bag! I love!), if I had a spare $1000 or so. I can’t cry straight up cultural appropriation, because … well, it’s complicated.

A study of the color and design preferences of local and Southwest Native Americans resulted in vivid colors and intricate patterns. Trade expanded from the Nez Perce nation near Pendleton to the Navajo, Hopi and Zuni nations. These Pendleton blankets were used as basic wearing apparel and as a standard of value for trading and credit among Native Americans. The blankets also became prized for ceremonial use.

It’s almost a symbiotic relationship–they saw a market in Native communities, and Native communities stepped up and bought, traded, and sold the blankets, incorporating them into “traditional” cultural activities. Pendleton has also maintained close ties with Native communities and causes, making commemorative blankets for organizations like the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Indian Education Association. They work with Native artists to design the special edition blankets, and even donate some of the proceeds to the causes.

By Guest Contributor Monique Poirier, cross-posted from Beyond Victoriana

I’m not one for preambles, so let’s get down to brass tacks here. I’m Monique Poirier. I’m a member of the Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe. I’m a Steampunk.

When I got into Steampunk several years ago, it didn’t really occur to me to even try to incorporate my cultural identity into my Steampunk presentation; my first Steampunk outfit (worn to Templecon 2009) was cobbled together from my existent goth attire, stuff from the renfaire costume trunk, and a duct-tape corset.

Then I read Jha’s articles at Tor.com. Then I started reading Beyond Victoriana. It was powwow season… and everything just -clicked-. When I attended The Steampunk World’s Fair in May 2010, I made an active effort to incorporate my ethnic identity more visibly in my Steampunk attire.

That’s where things get complicated.

Overcoming The Noble Savage and the Sexy Squaw

Making a deliberate choice to construct my Steampunk attire around Native attire often involves deciding between which pieces are appropriate and which will be recognized by a wide audience as being Native. It means working with and against existent images of What Indians Look Like–and it becomes extra difficult when I have to work against the fact that Native Americans are already assumed in the popular consciousness to be anachronistic. Am I subverting Victoriana-centric Steampunk with my Native attire, or am I just reinforcing the stereotype that Native folks all dress like it’s 1899 all the time because that’s when they stopped existing? Is being a Steampunk Native American just rehashing Indians In Aspic? When I put on a pair of buckskin leggings, or wear bead work that I have spent hours making by hand with skills taught to me by my mother–clothing and jewelry that I’ve also worn to powwows–am I marking myself as Other-Than-European or am I just reinforcing Braids, Beads, and Buckskins?

It comes down to mythology, to narrative, and to what stories we’re telling with the personas we portray and how we present them. Some of the attire I own will never be worn outside of a powwow or tribal gathering. For example, I don’t wear prominent feathers–or any feather at all that look like This as part of my Steampunk attire; I treasure the feathers I’ve actually gained through ceremony and ritual too much to wear them to anything less solemn than a powwow or tribe meeting, and I am not comfortable in making mockup feathers that my character /persona would have similarly earned.

It’s pretty grating, then, to be at a convention and having someone comment, “If you’re trying to look like a Native American, you should incorporate more feathers,”‘ because I do understand where that comment comes from. How do you know that an Indian is and Indian if they’re not in the Hollywood Dress Code attire for Indians? A hard and fast rule I’m going by: “If I ran into another member of my tribe while wearing this here, would I feel the need to explain or apologize for it?” If so, I am not wearing that. Even if it means that I’m losing recognition.

There is a vast and predominantly grossly incorrect mythology surrounding Native Americans. Children in American Public Schools, unless they happen to be from an area that has a very prominent and active Native community (and sometimes even then) are generally spoon-fed the tidy and feel-good Story Of Thanksgiving as their first lesson in Native American Culture–depending on whether or not they’ve already seen Pocahontas and Peter Pan. They generally graduate to Westerns* and various other Hollywood mythologies so that by the time they’re attending cons all on their own they’ve built a distinct expectation of what ‘Native American’ should look like–and if an outfit doesn’t do that, it will not parse as Native American.

Which makes my costuming choices complicated.

Part of the fun of Steampunk is the aspect of alternate history; of deliberate anachronism and the application of alternate timelines and technological developments and the ration of ‘Steam’ to ‘Punk’. It means having the chance to create alternate histories in which Native Americans maintain sociological primacy and control over the North and South American landmass, if we so choose–my own Steampunk persona is an Air Marshall in a timeline in which Tecumseh’s Rebellion was successful and resulted in the creation of a Native American confederacy of nations that holds most of North America, as well as parts of Mexico and several island nations in the Pacific (most notably the Kingdom of Hawaii). She carries a ray gun–and as far as I’m concerned, this is still entirely Native Tech.

Recognizing Native Technologies

Among the issues in creating a Native Steampunk Persona is overcoming the assumption that technological advancement is not something endemic to Native cultures. That any and all advanced technologies utilized by Native Americans must necessarily be adopted and adapted from European ones. Beyond Victoriana #9 does a good job talking about this and has an excellent link list already, so I won’t go into much detail here.

But the gist is this: Native Tech is a real thing, and was a real thing in the 19th century. Contact Effect is a real thing, and any population that’s exposed to a piece of technology is just as likely as any other to reproduce it, to make innovations and modifications on it, and to take it and make it work in the most efficient and useful way for them. If one knows how to make/use rays, and someone introduces the concept of guns, well suddenly one gets the bright idea to develop ray guns, and then does so! If one is already utilizing solar energy in a number of ways, and the concept of electricity and steam power are introduced, one is very likely to pioneer development of photovoltaic cells and solar steam engines–if one doesn’t happen to be kept distracted by being at war or having genocide conducted upon one’s people. Indigenous cultures are just as ripe for internally-controlled industrialization and technological innovation, by themselves and for themselves, as any other population in the 19th-century landscape.

There is no reason other than our own limited and stifled imaginations to assume that Native Americans would not have technologically advanced under their own innovative impetus had the historical cultural interplay been altered. Just look at the technological innovations they’d already given to Europe via contact effect, particularly in the area of biological engineering and materials: Latex rubber and the Vulcanization thereof, for example, is Native technology adapted by Europeans that’s pretty essential to a lot of Steampunk applications. To me that’s the most exciting part of Native Steampunk–thinking about what might have been radically different, and then doing it. Extrapolating and sussing out the historical paths of Native technology and culture as it might have developed through its own industrial and technological revolutions in the 19th century.

Toward a more inclusive Steampunk landscape

So Native Steampunk isn’t easy. It requires forethought and creativity and overcoming a lot of sociocultural baggage.

But isn’t that part of the fun of Steampunk?

I would ADORE seeing other people do it too! It would be incredibly awesome to see someone else rocking some Steampunk wampum jewelry, or steaming up a trade shirt. But the caveat here is that anyone who wants to undertake this really needs to take the time to not do it in an insulting, hurtful way. That means becoming apprised of what stereotypes exist and are hurtful and not using them. Things like NOT wearing warbonnets or face paint, and recognizing cultural appropriation. It means doing your research. If you’re still interested: Go for it! I know only a small handful of Steampunks who also identify as Native. I’d LOVE to hear more voices and see more Native Steampunk costuming. For those seeking research sources, I highly recommend NativeTech and NativeLanguages.org, as well as any of the books listed in Beyond Victoriana #9, most especially Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World.

There’s a lot of directions to move in in Steampunk. It’s still a relatively new genre and one that’s still being defined. We can definite it in inclusive ways if we want to. If we try to. We can do it right if we work hard. Let’s do this.

*So about Westerns. It is a personal thorn in my side that everyone who does recognize that my attire is Native automatically files me under ‘Weird West’ – as if there are/were no Native Americans present east of the Mississippi. Native Americans =/= West. Really. Some tribal nations are from there, yes. The Native Removals of the 1830′s moved a lot of tribal nations from the east into the west, yes. But alternate histories might not even include Native Removals, and tribal nations from the east were in the 19th century and still are today living cultures. I just wanted to get that out there for everyone. Native Steampunks need not be from the Weird West.

In exploring the range of music that has been classified under the steampunk umbrella, Psyche Corporation would be on the more Gothic side of the spectrum.  The one-woman musical singer behind the band, Genevieve Yang, possesses a versatile voice, and her music ranges as far as the imaginative topics she sings about. At turns Psyche Corporation moves from evocative and theatrical, as with“Part of Her Design” or “Beast”; to the darkwave dance beats of “Institute” or “The Crime”; to whimsical but edgy storytelling like in “The Ceiling” and “Wonderland.” (You can listen to her music on her MySpace, Reverbnation, or last.fm).

Psyche Corporation’s music, however, has struck a chord with the steampunk community, and she has performed at steampunk events around the country, including The Steampunk World’s Fair in New Jersey, Dorian’s Parlor in Philadelphia, the Steampunk Salon run by the Brooklyn Indie Mart, and in conjunction with Steampunk Canada & the Toronto Steampunk Society for Canada’s Fan Expo. Psyche Corporation’s next steampunk performance will be at The Anachronism at Webster Hall in New York City on November 21st.

Just in time for Halloween, however, Gen stopped by the blog to talk about her darkly-tinged music and her career as a musician in the steampunk community.

Hello Gen!

Let’s start with a classic question: Describe to me the moment you decided to become a musician.

I started composing my own songs sometime in middle school.  They were all piano-only instrumentals because I started out learning piano when I was 4 or 5 (but stopped formal training around age 6) and that’s what I knew.  I don’t know that I thought I was going to perform them at the time; they were just for me.  I started writing songs involving voice around the beginning of high school when I was singing more in high school and local musicals and talent shows (got 6 months of opera training at age 13, which helps).

I don’t remember any particular time I Decided to become a musician.  I was always more focused on what I wanted to Do rather than what I wanted to Be, if that makes sense.  I wanted to make music, and sing, and keep getting better.  I didn’t think about starting a band or anything, though I thought about joining a band.  I just had trouble finding any bands that were looking for singers whose music I liked.

When I started college, one of my friends tried to work with a producer who said he would shop her music to major record labels.  He turned out to be kind of a shady character, but hearing about it also made me think about working with a producer to do a solo project.  I answered a Craigslist ad, and by total coincidence it ended up being from the same jerk producer (who will go nameless).  We worked on 3 songs together (“Minor Demon,” “Universe,” and “Raise the Dead”).  Even though I was intensely involved in the music composition process and started making increasingly detailed draft versions of the instrumentals for each successive song, I was frustrated by not being able to make the music sound …More.  He didn’t treat it like the composition of his soul, since it was just a job to him, so his compositions were very limited even though the production values were good.  I started making my own music at the computer music studio at school in Columbia and pushed myself to get better.  Around the same time, I made a MySpace page, got a booking request from 169 Bar, and performed “Minor Demon” there with a classmate who learned the guitar part so we could perform together.  Somewhere in that series of events I became a more committed musician.  I think for me, “deciding to become” something is something I avoid.  I just do things until I either AM whatever it is that I might have wanted to become, or not.

I feel like I am still in the process of becoming a musician.  There’s so much I still need to learn, like how to play guitar.

So, in an Amanda Palmer-esque fashion, I heard that you sort of picked up musical training in bit and pieces as opposed to having a lot of formal training.

I started taking piano lessons when I was 4 or 5 but had stopped by age 6.  Supposedly I showed a lot of promise and I remember playing a concert at some point at (I think?) some chinese community thingy in New York, but I don’t remember much about it except it might have been the first time my mom made me wear lipstick.  I stopped lessons after age 6 though.  I liked playing with the piano, but I was very independent and stubborn (not always in a good way) and liked to do things on my own.  I started taking opera singing lessons for a few months when I was 13 and I really enjoyed them.  I think my voice teacher moved though, and my mother tried to find another voice teacher for me but nothing much came of it.  We went to a few different people and stopped seeing them after one or two lessons.  Then during senior year of high school I took opera again for about 6 months.  That’s all of my formal training. I never took music theory or ear training.

I took 2 or 3 music classes in college but they were both very self-directed.  One was the intro computer music course which I took because it grants you 24 hour swipe access to the school music studio (the actual courseload was incredibly laid back and we had to do 2 musical pieces but I ended up doing my first two albums in that studio in the nights and during vacation times when others weren’t using the studio). The other was an independent study where I just turned in all the music I made during the semester at the end as my final.  I think I was only accepted into this course because the director of the computer music department remembered me as the one who was always working in the studio even though I wasn’t a music major.  I did some variant of the independent study a second time too.

How long have you been writing music? How did you start?

I started writing music around age 12, composing piano pieces that were supposed to be the soundtracks to various stories in my head about elves on alien planets being born out of trees.  I’ve always played around with the piano but it would be random banging for a while after I’d practiced what pieces I remembered from lessons long ago.  I didn’t try to make something I’d remember and play the next day until around age 12.  I also didn’t write sheet music and still am not terribly good at it.  I just memorized which piano keys to hit next.

How did you get into using electronic equipment to create your music? What kind of equipment do you use?

Freshman year of college, one of my best friends (a sophomore at the time) introduced me to FL Studio (Fruity Loops).  It’s a sequencer type program.  I made all the background music for an old song of mine called Get Down on that program and recorded vocals over it, singing through a stocking I had stretched around a wire coat hanger to minimize plosive consonants.

Sophomore year I started taking the computer music intro class at Columbia and using Digital Performer (another program, kind of like Pro Tools except on a Mac).

My home studio (which I used to make my 3rd album, “Pretend”) also uses Digital Performer.  The rest of my studio consists of: midi keyboard, Audio Technica AT4040 microphone, Roland XV-5050 synthesizer, and a MOTU Traveler preamp.

Do you play any other instruments?

Besides piano? Not really..  I played recorder in 4th grade and violin in middle school.  I also played a combination lock to create the sound effects for my song “Antoinette.”

Sepiachord had described your music as “baroque pop.” What do you think of that term?

Baroque pop sounds pretty cool.  I like the baroque term, in part because when I first started out, knowing almost nothing about making background music, my stuff was very minimalist.  I would have LOVED to be able to create more elaborate music, but I didn’t have the experience. I think they used baroque in that context– to hint at multi-layeredness, not to say the music is overly ornate.  Pop, I have mixed feelings about.  I’ve always associated pop with having really good production values.  Maybe the content isn’t always great, or the lyrics might be cookie cutter, but the sounds will be good.  And production values are something I’ve tried to work on as much as possible given that I’m very into clarity of sounds and sonic textures and have always admired artists who can work well with noise.  One of my favorite songs to listen to for texture is “Zerospace” by Kidneythieves.  So when someone says my music is pop, I have to think about the context.  I Don’t think Sepiachord was trying to say my music is cookie cutter, so maybe they mean it has mass appeal, which would be great, or maybe they are saying it has good production values–also good to hear (no pun intended).

Do you use labels to define your music?

I have had to come up with labels to help people parse my music (most common phrase lately: “Dark Victorian fairytale science fiction”) but when I’m working on my music, I definitely don’t think in terms of verbal labels.  I’m usually thinking about dynamic rhythm (not that I think my rhythm is dynamic so much as dynamic rhythm’s always been one of the hardest things for me so I think  about it more), and what sound frequencies my instrumentals and vocals are spreading across.  I like to mix different timbres and have a nice distribution of pitch frequencies to use.  I also like to do something musically that brings out strong emotions, or evokes dreams, or strange thought patterns.  I think to myself “Does this feel Psyche Corp.?”  And if not, it ends up either being deferred, revised, or used for a secret music side project that will likely never see the light of day.

Do you think steampunk plays a big part in your music?

Sometimes.  I think some of my music themes overlap well with steampunk, such as “Antoinette” (a song about a girl made of clockwork and flowers), “Whirring World” (about the Fibonacci sequence, among other things), “Institute,” and other steampunk-friendly songs.  By the way, I love that Sepiachord description, “steampunk-friendly.”  I think it fits very well.

Steampunk plays another big part in my music because it influences the presentation of my performances since I enjoy the steampunk style very much, and often perform in steampunk segments of events.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there are a lot of steampunk elements in the backstory of Psyche Corporation itself.  The band is named after a dream manufacture group from the future, but it’s a future where technology is advanced enough that people can afford to do things that would seem ridiculously extravagant or impractical today.  A lot of people in this future world have a steampunk-like aesthetic, because advancements in fabric-ingrained heating and cooling systems mean you can wear whatever you want in whatever weather.  A lot of people choose to go for Victorian-style clothing since they no longer confer the same heating or movement-restriction problems they did back in the day.   Replacement body parts are also a common thing in the future, and there’s no need to go for the strictly functional “21st century modern” designs.  You can have excessive things on it, steam whistles, whatever you want.  The extra weight of these prosthetics won’t be a problem because the technology of the future takes care of the weight issue with a sort of anti-gravity add-on.

My world is steampunk in a different direction than what I normally hear about steampunk.  Normally I’ve heard steampunk is the future as envisioned by the past.  In the Psyche Corp. world, steampunk is the future’s vision of the past, just improved and stylized for fun.

Why do you think the steampunk community enjoys your style so much?

Psyche Corporation has an undercurrent of the cerebral and macabre, with a touch of theatrics. I think these are all qualities that would appeal to the steampunk community.  Also, I try to keep it to myself but a lot of people I meet in steampunk remind me of what life was like living in Psyche Corporation’s world.  The people with mechanical wings especially remind me of city-dwellers in the time of the Angelic Commonwealth.  The steampunks seem like the types to partake of and be involved in dream manufacture. Maybe Psyche Corporation’s music reminds them of the different times and realms they have traveled in.

You have a  great gothic storytelling element in your work. What comes first for you: the story that needs to be set to music, or music that is just begging to tell a story?

It varies.  Sometimes I have a story idea and make music around it.  Other times I start with instrumentals I’m messing with and see what stories come to mind when I’m listening to it.  And thank you!

In the back story for your band, the Psyche Corporation is a corporation that works creating dreams. Care to elaborate about them?

So … Psyche Corporation’s entire story is a bit mysterious and I hope to delve more into it with side stories and/or songs as time goes on but here’s the official story from the website:

“After the fall of the Angelic Commonwealth, extensive non-medical neural implants for humans become legalized, and people begin connecting to the Psi-Net remotely, by thought. Dream manufacture companies arise, selling dream downloads for nominal prices. Psyche Corporation is especially successful, going on to capture the dream market. “

All the rest about Psyche Corporation, including those stories about it taking subliminal mind control of the human population, are urban legends, so it’s probably best for me not to perpetuate wild rumors by discussing them too much.

Should they be someone I should look out for before going to bed tonight?

Neurotechnology has made a lot of progress these past few decades, and people are starting to be able to use computers to look at the blood flow patterns in your brain and figure out what your eyes are seeing just from that.  It seems like dream manufacture of some kind may be possible one day, but as far as I can tell, that day is far far away.  I am rather hoping to be involved once I have done more biomedical engineering research myself though.

Are there any other parts of this world that you include in your songs besides the Psyche Corporation?

Oh absolutely! The Angelic Commonwealth and its fall during the Angelic War were big themes in a lot of songs.  “Fantasy Moon,” “Part of Her Design,” and to some degree “Medicine Man” were all influenced by sociopolitical situations going on during the Angelic Commonwealth. Fantasy Moon alludes to the taboo on romance between humans and Angels, or romance involving Angels, period.  There was an extremely controversial film released during the late Angelic Commonwealth era touching upon the same theme, but the details of it are in a short story that will likely never see daylight.  “Part of Her Design” is about the Angelic War from the point of view of one of the sides.  “Medicine Man” alludes to an old wives’ tale about the village of Meinaii, which was cut off from critical supplies such as food and medicines during the NeoLuddite wars and also during the aftermath.  This is technically pre-Angelic Commonweath, but the Angelic Commonwealth was built almost immediately after the NeoLuddite wars, so there’s a little overlap.  I sort of planned to write another song dealing more specifically with the story of Meinaii though, so I won’t go into what happened exactly in Meinaii here.

As you may have guessed, the backstory of Psyche Corporation spans many hundreds of years (the Angelic Commonwealth itself lasted about 500 to 600 years).  And the future story of Psyche Corporation goes on either almost as long or longer, depending on which rumors you believe.

You’ve also been inspired by a lot of random moments in life. You said that many people have had theories about the story behind your song “Institute” (one of my favorites, by the way). What have people guessed this song is about? What inspired you to write it?

People have guessed the song is about training methods in the US Military, or sadistic pedophilia, and I think those are the main conjectures.  I wrote it because I misheard the lyrics of a completely different band during a concert of theirs I was attending.  I thought the singer was saying “break little girls” (though she probably wasn’t) and it sounded like an interesting phrase, so I wrote a song around it.  By the way, I don’t always have creepy mishearings.  Most recently, I was at a goth dance party of my friend’s and was convinced that the vocals of an industrial dance song were just “POTATOES” growled over and over.  I also listened to Worm Quartet’s song “What Your Parents Think All Your Music Sounds Like” and misheard the chorus as “Shitf-ckthatbear! Shit. F-ck. That. Bear!!”  If my connections ever get me a copy of their background track, I will probably do a parody version of that song as a tribute.

Myths also inspirations for your songs. “Lee Lee the Wonder Girl” is a dark creation story for instance. Care you share more about your fascination with myths?

Glad you asked!  “Lee Lee” was inspired by a theme I was seeing in a lot of myths, where the world is shaped out of other people’s body parts.  In Norse mythology, there is a story of an ice giant Ymir who dies one day; the younger Norse gods come along and decide to throw his brains into the sky to make clouds.   In some Japanese myths, the world begins as a dark, landless sea, with an egg floating on top.  A man hatches out of the egg and decides he would like some land to break up the monotony of the sea, so he rips out his own liver and throws it into the sea to become the first land.  In Greek mythology, Gaia’s whole body is the earth.  That’s just a few examples among many.  So with Lee Lee, I decided to make my own creation myth, and use the traditional “have someone die and be used for parts” theme. Lee Lee for instance, has a little pre-big bang-like universe inside of her, which eventually Bangs and expands outward, obliterating her body.  The story was originally a poem (it may be archived somewhere on the Psyche Corp. website under “World of Psyche Corp.), and describes a bit more about Lee Lee’s last days, leaking nebulas out of her eyes and things like that.  The song riffs off of the poem.

“Lee Lee” is one of the most outright myth songs I have, but there are certainly many others that touch on folklore and myth.  For instance, “Architect of Dreams,” where a human woman gives her firstborn to the elf king because for whatever reason she can’t raise the child, that’s a nod to a lot of fairytales where human children are promised to magical creatures, or stolen by them (as happens in a beautiful italian operatic song called “Figlio Perduto”).  “Faery’s Deal” and “One Thousand Years” are two-parts of a story where a man makes a supernatural bargain in exchange for immortality/1000 years of life.  This is another recurring theme I see in myths or folklore, where immortality for one person comes at the cost of someone else’s life, or is purchased with unspeakable acts.

And some mythical style songs I have no idea where I got from.  “Morpheus” happened because I heard the song in my head one day and kept searching for it on the Internet only to discover it did not exist.  I had to make the whole thing from scratch and the words were just, There.  I don’t know where that came from.

You often take childhood ideas and inspiration and make them frightening. “Wonderland” is a battle between Oz and Wonderland. “The Ceiling” includes a scene where a little boy pressing all the buttons in the elevator makes the whole building turn crazy. What makes exploring these dark themes through children and children’s literature so appealing to you?

I love the way children are open to random, complicated scenarios and are able to experience them as if the strange world really has logic to it and is not just a mishmash.  I feel like a lot of times an adult will look at some crazy magical world and just say “oh it’s crazy, nothing more to think about here” while the child doesn’t check out so quickly and can spend some time developing a logical justification for why someone would keep guitars in their heads to be pulled out when they need to play baseball with giant robot monsters.  I love taking that ride into a world and following strange ideas through as far as they will go, just for the fun of it.  I see young children doing things like this, not being afraid or worried that they’re wasting time on something frivolous when they should be elsewhere, being normal.   I see some adults do this too, but the stresses of having to support yourself in the physical world make it harder sometimes to engage in the imagination as frequently.

What are other current music projects you’re working on?

I’m working on a song called “Ineffable Pants” at the moment, but I’m still not sure how I feel about it.  I have notes for a song about a Fairytale lab also, but I suspect it’s going to have a more complicated rhythm, and rhythms are challenging for me so I may start with Ineffable Pants (a more straightforward song) to get myself up to speed.  I moved to Connecticut for school in August and have been settling into that while still performing every month or more, so it took a little while to get organized enough to start doing new music again.  I also did a song collaboration for a secret side project during this time, but it’s very much not Psyche Corporation, so I’ll keep mum on it for now except to say I’ve always been curious about the genre, and it was good to try something totally different.

All images courtesy of Psyche Corporation