JANAE KEYES

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Fashion as an Expression of Self

Fashion as a form of self-expression is nothing new. For Black fashion in particular,cultural resistance and statement pieces date back to at least the 18th century.The concept of Black Dandyism emerged in 18th-century London during the peak of thetransatlantic slave trade. The Common Good magazine, in its “History of Black Fashion,”defined it as a “man of good character, mirrored in his ‘absolute precision in dress,’ or‘flamboyance and fabulousness.’” Both enslaved and free Black people participated indandyism, with the former reinterpreting the clothing forced on them as “luxury slaves,”instead turning it into a tool of cultural defiance. Through this, they re-expressed andre-informed their own agency and subverted expectations of what a slave should looklike.