Slaves to fashion : black dandyism and the styling of black diasporic identity Cover Image

Book

Slaves to fashion : black dandyism and the styling of black diasporic identity / Monica L. Miller.

Miller, Monica L., 1970- (Author).

Summary:

"Slaves to Fashion is a pioneering cultural history of the black dandy, from his emergence in Enlightenment England to his contemporary incarnations in the cosmopolitan art worlds of London and New York. It is populated by sartorial impresarios such as Julius Soubise, a freed slave who sometimes wore diamond-buckled, red-heeled shoes as he circulated through the social scene of eighteenth-century London, and Yinka Shonibare, a prominent Afro-British artist who not only styles himself as a fop but also creates ironic commentaries on black dandyism in his work. Interpreting performances and representations of black dandyism in particular cultural settings and literary and visual texts, Monica L. Miller emphasizes the importance of sartorial style to black identity formation in the Atlantic diaspora."--BOOK JACKET.

Record details

ISBN: 9780822345855 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN: 9780822346036 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN: 0822345854 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN: 0822346036 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Physical Description: xiii, 390 p. : ill ; 25 cm.
Publisher: Durham : Duke University Press, 2009.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (p. [347]-370) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Stylin' out -- Mungo Macaroni : the slavish swell -- Crimes of fashion : dressing the part from slavery to freedom -- W.E.B. du Bois's "different" diasporic race man -- "Passing fancies" : dandyism, Harlem modernism, and the politics of visuality -- "You look beautiful like that" : black dandyism and the visual histories of black cosmopolitanism.