Kate Fletcher and Mathilda Tham’s Earth Logic (2019), available at this link, is a compelling free-to-read, free-to-share, intervention on sustainable fashion and the industry’s shortcomings. In fact, it is a critique of widespread approaches to the crisis that fashion, as one of the world’s largest industrial sectors, has not only contributed to precipitate, but is also accelerating. Fletcher and Tham …

Cornelia Lund*’s interview with Beatrace Angut Oola has just appeared in the journal Fashion Theory. Oola, who is based in Hamburg, has created and curated important Afrocentric fashion and beauty projects launched in Germany in recent years. In 2012, Oola founded the media brand Fashion Africa Now (formerly Africa Fashion Day Berlin), a digital platform and networking site that showcases and connects talents …

The first issue of SUNU Journal came out yesterday. This is a new publication on African affairs, critical thought and aesthetics founded by Amy Sall, a US-based scholar and entrepreneur, whose work focuses on black visual cultures and counter-narratives from the continent and the diaspora. SUNU, meaning “our” in Wolof, gathers perspectives on black culture and identity by young and emerging …

From the editorial: The ZMJ 9.2 issue—edited by Wessie Ling, Mariella Lorusso, and Simona Segre Reinach, is devoted to the analysis of different aspects of fashion globalization in our time. Globalization presents ambiguities and contradictions, especially evident when it comes to fashion, an area in which the interplay between global and local is particularly intense. The issue includes nine contributions …

I’ve been hard at work promoting African Catwalk across Italy and to a couple of universities abroad, in hopes of showing it to as many people as possible. I have been able to more or less schedule two or three screenings that will take place in the fall. So far, so good. Paolo Pisacane (the director) and Gianmarco Altieri (screenwriter) …

Last month “Selly Raby Kane: surrealist designer and social innovator” was published in Fashion Studies, as a downloadable and freely accessible paper. Citation: Picarelli, Enrica. “Selly Raby Kane: Surrealist Designer and Social Innovator.” Fashion Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2019, pp. , www.fashionstudies.ca/selly-raby-kane/ This is a milestone for my research, that I have had to put aside for other, more …

Stylin’ cannot be separated from [its] cultural roots or, indeed, routes – Checinska The journal Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies dedicated an issue to male self-fashioning in Africa and the diaspora. Edited by Leora Farber, the issue features articles that span South Africa, the Caribbean, the US, and Britain, shedding light on the under-investigated topic of black male …

So I got back to doing my thing after a year of maternity leave. It’s been intense and I missed blogging, but at the same time I couldn’t bring myself to devoting the little free time I had to writing. But since I have more time on my hands now (things aren’t properly ‘busy’ at work, read: I lost my …

Brent Luvaas, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Drexel University, is an expert of streetstyling and streetwear culture. His volume Street Style: An Ethnography of Fashion Blogging is forthcoming for Bloomsbury. As I wait to read this book, I go back to Luvaas’ other insightful writings on street culture, looking for cues to help me better flesh out my own research on African streetstylers – the Afrosartorialists. …

Here is the second part of my summary of NKA’s special issue on black fashion. I put a little commentary at the bottom. *** Bill Gaskins’ interview with Anthony Barboza traces the history of one of the most representative photographers of the African American fashion scene. Barboza, who worked for Essence, GQ and an array of major publications all through …