Freshly pressed clothing, beautifully styled hair, and newly polished shoes are components of “fashion.” The use of various fabrics and materials to create detailed garments reflecting societal trends has been a talent for centuries. Fashion continuously evolves, bringing new fads with each generation.
When given the opportunity, Black women used attire as a form of rebellion against their enslavers, expressing power, identity, and ancestry. Black women also channeled their fashion sense through labor. Skilled in spinning, weaving, dyeing, and sewing, these skills were vital for survival and often meant that their work would be worn by their enslavers. After emancipation, Black women pursued careers in the fashion industry and wore clothing mirroring popular trends.
Civil Rights March on Washington D.C.
From the mid to late 20th century, fashion trends aligned with societal changes. Between the 1950s and 1960s, the Black church was not only central to the civil rights movement but also a focal point for fashion. The concept of “Sunday’s Best” encouraged activists to wear attire suitable for both worship services and marches. In contrast, the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s encouraged the Black community to reject respectability politics.
Key Fashion Trends
During the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement became a strong factor in helping people of color to learn to express themselves and their heritage. One way women embraced this ideology was through their hair.
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The Afro
The afro hairstyle took advantage of the natural curl of many African-Americans. It was popular with both men and women starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and has been popular ever since. In 1976, cutting it shorter and closer to the head resulted in corn-row braids.
Afro hairstyle
The Dashiki
The Dashiki is a traditional African garment mainly worn in West-Africa. In the mid to late 1960’s it became popular in America as a symbol for the Civil Rights movement. It is a brightly colored shirt with a wide V-neck and kimono like sleeves. In Africa it has many varieties including formal and informal. Traditionally the color of the Dashiki also has significance. For instance Black and read would be worn to funerals while grey was traditional for the groom to wear at his wedding. Many movies/shows in the ‘60’s show characters wearing the Dashiki as a part of the rising African-Amarican counterculture.
Kente Cloth
Kente, is an indigenous Ghanaian textile, made of interwoven cloth strips of silk and cotton. Kente comes from the word kenten, which means basket in the Asante dialectof Akan. Akans refer to kente as nwentoma, meaning woven cloth. It is an Akan royal and sacred cloth worn only in times of extreme importance and was the cloth of kings. Over time, the use of kente became more widespread. In Agotime, kente weaving was not related to royalty, and weavers created kente for themselves or clients. Its importance has remained and it is held in high esteem by southern Ghanaians.
Caftan
Caftan or Kaftan. This word has become a catchall term in fashion for any kind of loose-fitting robe or tunic. It is often used to describe a number of different garments of North Africa and Middle Eastern origination. A true kaftan is a long robe with full sleeves, narrowly cut, either with an open neck or fully open to the floor, and sometimes buttoned. The very voluminous garment without defined sleeves that is often called a kaftan is actually closer to the abaya. Kaftan is a Persian word. This style of garment was believed to have originated in Ancient Mesopotamia. The Ottoman sultans wore lavishly decorated kaftans from the 14th to the 18th century. They were given as rewards to important dignitaries and generals during this time.
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Kaftans can be made from almost any fabric but most often made of silk, cotton, or wool and are often bound with a sash around the natural waist. Kaftans are worn by both men and women in variations across the Iranian plateau, through North Africa, and into West Africa. The Kaftan’s loose silhouette helps with lowering body temperature through allowing ventilation. Not until the 1950s and early 60’s that this style of dress began appearing in high fashion when it was adapted by French couturiers. These couturiers included Chistain Dior and Balenciaga. These designers introduced kaftan as a new form of loose-fitting evening gown or robe over matching trousers. By 1966, Vogue described the kaftan as an essential garment for every member of the jet-set and photographed “the beautiful people” in an array of imported traditional styles and western adaptations. The kaftan lent itself well to the fashions of the 70’s, providing a simple silhouette that could be beaded, heavily patterned, or sleekly minimal. A designer that really embraced this style in their 1970s designs was Halston.
Halston kaftan dress
The Black is Beautiful Movement
The ‘Black is Beautiful’ movement was an amalgamation of these global sentiments. The promotion and embracing of local black art, black music and black fashion soared. The Grandassa Models - a Harlem-based collective of young black people in African print, dark skin and unprocessed afros - aimed to make the standard of beauty black, bold and proud. The Black Panther’s all-black leather ensembles and afros inspired many fashion followers and young activists, terrifying white America all the way into the 1970s. Legendary photographer Kwame Brathwaite beautifully captured this new wave of Fashion and art with his brother Elombe Brath, and his images have been the muse for many black artists today, including Rihanna.
Just as we saw the exponential rise to hashtags #blackgirlmagic and #melaninpoppin circa 2016, phrases like ‘Black is Beautiful’ took on a whole new meaning during the 60s, and it was felt across the globe.
Grandassa Models
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Black Fashion: A Journey of Style and Resistance from the 1800s to the 1960s
Key Figures in Black Fashion
Black models like Donyale Luna and Naomi Sims rose to fame at this time. The former was something of an enigma and her racial ambiguity and striking features made her a muse for many designers, photographers and artists alike, including Salvador Dali. Whilst Luna acknowledged the Black is Beautiful movement for her success to an extent, she refused to publicly advocate for the Civil Rights Movement and moved to Europe where she faced less discrimination but also less pressure from activists to join their ranks. She even landed the cover of British Vogue in 1966.
On the other hand, Naomi Sims was undeniably and unashamedly black. She made history when she made the cover of Ladies Home Journal in 1968 after being rejected from multiple modelling agencies due to being deemed ‘too dark’ for high-paying jobs. She went on to model for The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Essence and Life magazine and refused to take part in the Blaxploitation movies of the 70s. Instead she headed a multi million-dollar wig business with textures that replicated black hair and wrote books such as All About Success for the Black Woman and All About Health and Beauty for the Black Woman.
Naomi Sims
Legacy
When I see Kyemah McIntyre’s Angelina-print prom dress go viral, it reminds me not only of the Grandassa Models, but also my mother’s beautiful handmade garments that she’d wear to African parties. It reminds me of how far we’ve come since the 60s, and how we owe a lot to the young activists at the time. Their creativity, their resilience, and their undeterred desire to show the world that Black is Beautiful is root of today’s accomplishments.
