These Fashions Fight Stereotype With Style
Forget the traditional business suits of the professional world and the streetwear looks made popular by hip-hop artists. Images of black men dressed in plaid, tweed, African prints, and stylish neckties and hats are the focus of Made You Look: Dandyism and Black Masculinity, a photo exhibit in London.
The collection of pictures, on display until Sept. 25 at The Photographers’ Gallery in the British capital, presents the idea and identity of the “black dandy” as a counter to stereotypes associated with black men. The exhibit examines the past 100 years of black dandyism around the world—from the Harlem Renaissance to postapartheid South Africa. It encourages viewers to consider a broader scope of black masculinity, allowing for a greater understanding and tolerance in a world where black men are discriminated against and seen as threats.
“Dandyism—and with it issues of style and deportment—may seem like trivial concerns in the era of Black Lives Matter,” curator Ekow Eshun wrote in an essay describing the exhibit. “But as the killing of Trayvon Martin, shot by George Zimmerman for looking ‘suspicious’ in a hoodie suggests, how you dress can sometimes be the difference between life and death.”
“Dandyism” is a word that’s been associated with flamboyant male dress since early 19th-century Britain. The adoption of the dandy aesthetic in the black community has its roots in the slave trade, where well-dressed slaves were known as “prestige slaves.” Today, artists such as Nigerian singer and rapper Jidenna carefully curate this style of the “classic man” as a form of resistance and individuality.
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Images displayed in the exhibit from the early 20th century include examples of stylishly dressed men striking dominant poses in what is thought to be Senegal. More recent examples of black dandyism can be found in images by Moroccan photographer Hassan Hajjaj, who took pictures of men wearing vivid African wax prints against backdrops of bright color.
New York artist Jeffrey Henson Scales and South African artist Kristin-Lee Moolman offer examples of modern dandyism. Their photos show black men going about their daily lives while also making an audacious statement, rejecting stereotypes about gender, sexuality, and expression through their clothing choices.
“[The] images point to the subversive power of dandyism to reveal maleness itself as a performance, as something provisional and open to reinterpretation, rather than a set of inherited characteristics fixed in the skin,” Eshun wrote.
Unattributed, circa 1904.
(Photo: Courtesy Larry Dunstan Archive)