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Caribbean Couture - The Tapestry of Identity in the Diaspora: a programme of virtual presentations/ workshops, exploring the use of design and fashion, in the Africanisation of Caribbean culture, in colonial and neo-colonial periods; to the present day. The programme will draw on experiences from both the Caribbean and Africa's diaspora. The delivered on the last Wednesday of the month, and streamed live on Hibiscus Zoom platform, each presentation/ workshop will last for approximately one hour and will consist of an audio visual presentation followed by a workshop led by the presenter. Each presentation/workshop will be recorded and published. Warm thanks to Elli Michaela Young who has been instrumental in enabling this series to be brought to you.
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The Jamaica Fashion Guild Ltd
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SUMMARY: The Jamaican Fashion Guild Limited
In the 1960s the island of Jamaica had ambitions to become the first fashion capital of the Caribbean. The Jamaican Fashion Guild Limited (JFG), played a critical role in the promotion of a specific Jamaican identity through the design, production and marketing of Jamaican fashion post-1966. The Guild gathered a group of fashion and textile designers, companies, and makers whose remit was to create, produce and market ‘intrinsically Jamaican’ fashions. The Guild would go on to sell its clothing across North America with some success. Members of the Guild sold their clothes in high-end department stores such as Bergdorf Goodman, New York, I Magnin, San Francisco and T J Eaton Company, Canada. In addition to selling clothing in large and small stores, the group regularly hosted fashion shows across the United States and on flights and cruise ships filled with North American tourists destined for the Caribbean Island. This paper is a work in progress and forms part of my PhD research. I will introduce the archival material (images and newspaper articles and garments) I have collected thus far, to show how the organisation was marketed, what they were designing and making for the North American Fashion Market. |
ELLI MICHAELA YOUNG
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7.00pm - 8.30pm Wednesday 31 August 2022 "St Kitts and Sea Island Cotton"
Leonie Edmead: A graduate of Manchester School of Art Leonie is a designer whose objective is to create a space to appreciate lesser known cultures by unravelling the threads of identity and history.
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SUMMARY: Being born in the UK of Kittitian heritage, I often search for ways to visualise my cultural lineage through textiles. This presentation explores the interaction between textiles and dress as an expression of identity during the period British colonialism, and considers the impact and importance of textiles as a communicative tool of identity. It examines the manner of textiles production in the colonies, focusing particularly on the production of cotton: West Indian Sea Island Cotton, a luxurious fabric with a brutal history, used prodigiously throughout Europe in shirt making. This yarn the qualities of which are widely acknowledge, is also a critical factor often overlooked in the post-colonial discourse on identity and textiles. As a designer in the textiles sector and a decedent of the community that produced the yarn, this discourse is of particular interest to me. In this presentation I will underscore the importance of textiles to identity by unravelling its threads.
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7.00pm - 8.30pm Wednesday 28 Sept. 2022 "The history and creolisation of Caribbean dress in Art History"
Serena Lee: Serena Lee is a lecturer in Fashion History and Contextual Studies at London College of Creative Arts. She is also a cultural historian interested in the study of dress and art history, with particular interest in Black studies. Serena attended Birmingha A BA Hons. graduate in Fashion Business and Promotion from Birmingham University and an MA in Fashion Critical Studies from Central Saint Martins she is the founder of instagram platform @georgian_diaspora, a curated space of multicultural figures in art history, with a focus mainly on the 18th - 19th centuries. Serena has worked with the Royal Maritime Museum on the Migration and Belonging project, BBC Radio 4 on a Black Beauty and Hair documentary, she has also guest lectured at various Courtauld and other institutions.
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SUMMARY: Due to the dominance of western fashion history, the history of Caribbean dress is hardly ever researched. In light of recent interest in black British culture since the BLM movement in 2020, the Windrush scandal, and recent research into cultural institutions, links to slavery, has furthered interest in Caribbean history. This presentation will look at the history of art, style and Caribbean British culture. The presentation will illuminate the complexities of accommodation and resistance through style and dress, showing that these complex responses are not opposites but woven into each other. Thus, revealing the dynamics of race, class and gender in art history.
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7.00pm - 8.30pm Wednesday 26 October 2022. "In my Grandmother's house".
Omolara Obanishola: Omolara Obanishola is an academic, and creative specialising in the fields of fashion cultures and communication. She teaches across art and design and textiles programmes at University of the Arts London alongside visiting lecturer at other universities.
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SUMMARY: This SUMMARY: 'In my Grandmother's house'. For the first time in more years than I can remember I was allowed into my grandmother's bedroom. When I was a child, the objects in her bedroom were exciting treasures... not meant for big eyes and small hands. As an adult I understand that these objects tell their own stories.
This presentation looks at a number of 'fashionable' objects from my grandmother's house and how their stories shine a light on the experience of African and Caribbean migration to Britain and the complex but hopeful lived experiences of its inhabitants. |
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7.00pm - 8.30pm Wednesday 30 November 2022 "Power Dressing: Headwear as an Act of Resistance"
Sharon Morgan: Born in Birmingham to Jamaican parents, Sharon Morgan is a Design Technology and Engineering Teacher, and a Milliner in private practice.
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Most of the literature written on the experience of colonized people, proceed from the position of the hegemony of the colonizer. The
exceptions to this, are the writings of the anti-imperialist anti-colonial resistance theorists, such as Franz Fanon. Power Dressing: Headwear as an Act of Resistance, draws on the traditions of the anti-imperialist school of writing to analyse and develop a narrative that better explains the objective experiences and actions of a populations living under neo-colonial practices. The presentation is based on observation gained, through living amongst the Windrush generation and their offspring, settled in the United Kingdom and will consist of a series of images accompanied by a narrative. |
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