Azure

new article on Hommegirls and the gender spectrum in fashion up on azureyale.com! (article by Beasie Goddu & Malini Wimmer, photo credit to Hommegirls)

check out our website via the link in our bio!! there you’ll find the editors note for our first issue, New Neutrals. tomorrow: “Igniting Femininity Across the Gender Spectrum” (btw we recommend viewing the site on ur desktop for the best experience)

our first issue is almost here. the theme is NEW NEUTRALS — breaking barriers, showing up boldly, and reimagining the traditional in a new age. we’ll be releasing new articles every day this week, ranging in topic from an exploration of masculinity, femininity, and the gender binary in fashion to the designers bringing traditional Eastern and Western textiles into the 21st century. check back tomorrow for more !!

Intersections of Fashion and Activism: Denim and the Civil Rights Movement

5-pocket jeans were popularized by James Dean in the 1950s as a symbol of teenage rebellion, and were soon considered acceptable among the general public; but it wasn’t until the 1970s that denim came to be the ubiquitous material it is today. For this, we owe large credit to SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)—a crucial player in the Civil Rights Movement.

Denim is a simple, durable, and unassuming material, but it wasn’t always that way; in fact, the fabric has a dark history in slavery. Enslaved peoples were often dressed in denim, not only for its durability and low price, but also for use as a visual marker to distinguish slaves from the white plantation owners dressed in linens and lace. Furthermore, the creation of indigo dye--the pigment used to give denim its blue color—released toxic fumes during the chemical process, and most slaves making the color would die from only a few years of exposure. Post-Civil War, laborers continued to dress in denim—especially Black sharecroppers in the South.

It was this history that SNCC chose to reference by making denim their unofficial uniform. In the words of denim designer and historian Miko Underwood, wearing denim “served to connect with and advocate for the Southern Black sharecroppers. In adopting the clothing of Black laborers, instead of the attire worn by the Black middle class, SNCC was consciously reevaluating the politics of respectability.”

In this way, SNCC was not only honoring the lives of Black slaves and sharecroppers, but using their dress in juxtaposition with that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, whose use of middle class dress portrayed an attitude of assimilation and resignation to respectability politics that many activists didn’t agree with.

MLK, SNCC, and The Black Panthers—the third’s uniform of black clothing, leather jackets, dark sunglasses, and black berets firmly projecting their message of strength and Black power—all illustrated their respective ideologies through their clothing.

If you’re reading this, we hope you’ve voted. Fashion is powerful, but your vote is more so.

Helen Frankenthaler in her studio by Gordon Parks, 1956

🚀COMING SOON🚀 At Azure, we believe fashion and identity reflect each other. Join us as we explore both, online and in print. 📷