Reflection - Garment Magazine
Week 1

This is the first week where we started to create the one-week magazine assignment. After a long brainstorm in class, we decided to go with Headwear. This week I concentrated on my personal connection and experiences with headwear.

My tasks: 
Editor's letter
Support with the photoshoot
Article

Editor’s letter

Welcome reader,

We want to express our great thanks for supporting the first issue of Headwear magazine. We would like to express our admiring appreciation to the people that have been working on exhibiting the unique stories covered in this magazine.

Identity, self-definition and personality, the pillars of our core, already twitches to develop the moment we are aware of being. The newborn generation is, as we speak, unapologetically sensing self-expression, comfortability in their own skin, experimenting on how they see themselves represented in the world. Headwear has been an important element of channelling our inner child. It is wonderful to realise how children create their own interpretation and meaning of headwear they have created for themselves, to help them grow into the person they are becoming.

Everywhere in the world, headwear is worn in a different way and with a different meaning. Headwear and culture have been inextricably linked for thousands of years. Fashion trends and culturally linked garments follow each other in rapid succession, with many changes of significance, value, and privilege.

In this issue, we examine how children are shaping the value of self-expression with headwear.

Cheers!

Headwear magazine team

Reflection - Garment Magazine
Week 2

After our garment has been chosen, we now have the task to do research. I do find it a hard subject because it has many social-political conflicts connected to it and working with a majority of white people, I feel like the subject is less sensitive to the rest of the class.

My tasks: 
- [ ] Research the chosen garments: choose many angles; trends, historical, meaning, society etc.
- [ ] Research fashion media: what’s out there?
- [ ] Make your definition of the garment
- [ ] Based on the research; come up with two possible quick concepts on Tuesday

Focus: 

I mainly want to research durags, one of my favourite headwear items. There is a lot of research to be done about the item's complicated history with slavery and oppression. This is an item I wear on a daily basis and now see appearing on the runway.

Article: Crowns in Disguise

I have written a personal story about my experience and my mother's experience with wearing headwear that has a cultural connection in public spaces. I have had very negative experiences when it comes to wearing pieces like durags, koto's and bonnets.

This says a lot about society's view on different headwear and the acknowledgment of differences.

Analysis
Louis Vuitton Men's Fall-Winter 2021 Fashion Show

After seeing this runway show, I was pretty much shocked about the cultural references, inherited within this show. I've seen a lot of Ghanian + Black cowboy references, combining hats with durags.

Analysis
Louis Vuitton Men's Fall-Winter 2021 Fashion Show

The function: 
"It’s a piece of cloth or a wave cap that black people wear around the head. It’s worn to accelerate the waves' development, dreadlocks, and braids in the hair. To keep 360 waves at the place, it’s necessary for hair to lay down and stay down, and that’s why durag was invented. In simple words, these were invented to keep hairstyles intact."

Late in the 1960s, after the Black Power Movement, the durag became the leading fashion statement, and various athletes, wrappers, and other men started wearing it.

Analysis
Louis Vuitton Men's Fall-Winter 2021 Fashion Show

"The du-du dates back to the 19th century when the less fortunate (slaves and poor labourers) needed something to tie their hair back with."

"Fast forward to the 1930s, the “tie back hair du preserve” became common in households during the Great Depression and the Harlem Renaissance."

Conclusion
Louis Vuitton Men's Fall-Winter 2021 Fashion Show

This felt to me like a new translation of what has been oppressed within mainstream fashion culture. Seeing it appreciated by a high-end brand, being worn correctly makes me feel like this is headwear in transition.

Analysis
Vogue “Tourist vs. Purist”—Virgil Abloh Explores Masculine Archetypes at Louis Vuitton

"There are no accidents of timing in history and culture." - The designer strives to illuminate the presumptions we make about people based on the clothes they wear.

Analysis
Vogue “Tourist vs. Purist”—Virgil Abloh Explores Masculine Archetypes at Louis Vuitton

“As Black people, as trans people, as marginalized people, the world is here for our taking, for it takes so much from us.”

"An exploration of his African heritage and of what it means to be at the pinnacle of a career in Europe as a Black American creative director."

Analysis
Vogue “Tourist vs. Purist”—Virgil Abloh Explores Masculine Archetypes at Louis Vuitton

“There are a lot of stories mixing cultures,” he said. “And from that, a new language will be created.”

Cool, considered, chic, and flowing with floor-length coats, easy slim tailoring, African draped wraps, kilts, and Western hats—styled by the deft hand of Ibrahim Kamara"

Conclusion

After researching Virgil Abloh's vision on using durags in his new shows, I was thinking about the stylist that made it all happen: Ib Kamara.

She plays a lot with innovative black-orientated headwear, I want to continue my research in her vision.

Conclusion
Something curated - Ib Kamara: The Cross-Cultural Stylist Reassessing Masculinity

Kamara’s narratives always uphold a strong sense of cultural and sexual empowerment. - explores and subverts stereotypes.

Kamara is carving out his own futuristic signature whilst paying homage to stylists of the past.

Analysis
Ib Kamara Styling Concepts

His styling has a diverse black-orientated use of references, playing with champions equality and freedom of expression through his work.

The headwear has a playful

Analysis

A fragile relationship between menswear and masculinity and how fashion relates to the sexuality of black Africans.

An effeminate aesthetic adorn the bodies of black men.

Juxtaposition ±

The rawness of heavy gold jewellery, is evocative of a more accepted fashion deriving from American Rap culture.

Analysis

“I hope in the future there is no policing of men’s fashion. A world where a man can be who-ever he chooses to be and not restricted by the norms of his environment.” – Polyester Magazine, 2016

Reflection - Garment Magazine
Week 2

After doing research into durags, I wanted to find a fresh translation of something that has big cultural value.

I feel like Virgil Abloh and Ib Kamara have an interesting take on 'the culture' - functions and experimental headwear pieces.

These artists made space for black people to create a new interpretation of the culture and settled a safe space to play with intersectionality on gender.

What I want to take into the magazine and research:

- explores and subverts stereotypes
- reclamation of cultural identity through fashion and style
- interrogating the boundaries of fashion, gender, and race.
- transformation through movement - activism headwear

My next steps:

- Further research into Ib Kamara's, Kristin-Lee Moolman and Nadine Ijewere vision to contextualise the vision of the magazine

Conclusion

Chosen keywords that interest me and to work with:

Political view on Headwear
Socio-political issues
Debate out the magazine
Personal stories on headwear perspective
Meaning towards a perspective
Mutual respect
Headwear is a tool to non-verbally express
Enhancing on their personal stories - not represented
Invisibilities

Analysis
IB KAMARA ON UNAPOLOGETIC BLACKNESS AND ‘BREAKING THE LADDER’

“If I know I have something to say, why do I need to climb the goddamn ladder?” - Ib Kamara

“For people of colour, it’s even harder to find the ladder.” - Ib Kamara

NEW TERM:
“pioneering,”— it “crushes stereotypes”, ”redefines Black masculinity”, “challenges the status quo”

Conclusion

Kamara has a sense of pride in his roots and background and wanted to create new things that he has never seen before - community, opportunity and unapologetic Blackness.

Article Quotation

The ideas of family, community and solidarity are always important, but arguably the pandemic and the mobilisation of the Black Lives Matter movement worldwide have reinforced that fact. What outpourings of solidarity have touched you most (both personally and internationally?)

What has touched me the most is people’s shared experiences. Standing up and saying, ‘this is what has been happening’ and the feeling of people just listening and not being shy to ask questions. I think it’s very progressive and it’s creating the space towards healing.

Analysis

"Kristin-Lee Moolman’s photography is capturing the idea of a ‘new Africa’. Having grown up in a “backwards Afrikaans town” before the end of apartheid, her work explores issues like sexuality and segregation without being overtly political. Her world is a stark departure from traditionality and conservative attitudes in the region. “I’m not making work that’s gonna change our political system or contest anything,” she explained in a Dazed interview. “It’s more a celebration of people and a utopian approach to the future.”

Putting her friends and local creatives in front of the lens, Moolman deconstructs restrictive definitions of masculinity and femininity. What’s more, she places her gender-nonconforming subjects in mundane suburban landscapes, using a sun-bleached pastel aesthetic to tweak the everyday into the realms of the surreal. In short, Moolman is pushing to make the alternative the norm – and that in itself contests uniformity." - Dazed 100

Brainstorm on vision

Vision

"explores and subverts stereotypes.
pioneering to crush stereotypes."

Mission

"Reclamation of cultural identity through fashion and style. Interrogating the boundaries of fashion, gender, and race."



Hard to do due to minority of POC LGBTQ+

Brainstorm on second layer (concept)

The ideas of family, community and solidarity are always important, but arguably the pandemic and the mobilisation of the Black Lives Matter movement worldwide have reinforced that fact. What has touched us the most is people’s shared experiences. Standing up and saying, ‘this is what has been happening’. We think it’s very progressive and it’s creating the space towards healing. By shedding light on their stories and experiences. Bringing in a sense of new imagery which I think is so important to give the industry a balance and share light on people with different points of view.

Needs to be rewritten

Keywords to work with

Political view on Headwear
Socio-political issues
Debate out the magazine
Personal stories on headwear perspective
Meaning towards a perspective
Mutual respect
Headwear is a tool to non-verbally express
Enhancing on their personal stories - not represented
Invisibilities

CLICK HERE FOR IN-DEPTH PROCESS BOOKS

CLICK HERE FOR IN-DEPTH PROCESS BOOKS

Conclusion

Putting her friends and local creatives in front of the lens is a way of empowerment and activism towards the struggle she has in her community. She crushes the existing narrative and creates her own with her community - telling their stories and celebrating her surroundings.