Day of Record, Nails, Weaves and Naturals: Black British Hairstyle and Nail Art

'The Day of Record', 7th May 2001, invited black people to the V&A to have their hairstyles and nail art photographed. White visitors with black inspired styles were also encouraged to participate.

1,200 people attended 'The Day of Record', 98% were black. Images of many of the attendees were added to the V&A's photographic collection and a dedicated website was created as a permanent and rare record of contemporary black British hairstyle and nail-art. In order to place the contemporary styles being documented on the day in a broader context, the historical, political and aesthetic complexities of black hair and nail art were discussed in a series of talks held throughout the day.

Additionally a display of 36 photographs of hairstyles across the African diaspora ran prior to and beyond 7th May. This was a radical museological format to address, in an accessible way, the contentious issue of black beauty, which dates back to the period of the British slave trade. This was the first event on this subject held at a British national museum.

This research led me to curate the oral history and material culture based exhibition 'Tools of the Trade: Black British Hairdressing' (2001), which focused on black hairdressers and barbers from 1947-2001.

The positive impact of the event on the attendees, the collaboration between the Archives and Museum of Black Heritage project and the V&A, and their respective black and white curators informed my paper 'SW7 to SW9: A Case Study of Exhibitions on Black Culture' presented at the V&A conference 'Connections and Disconnections: Museums, Cultural Heritage and Diverse Communities' (2002). This was developed into the chapter 'Picture This: The Black Curator' published in 'The Politics of Heritage, the Legacies of Race' (Routledge 2005)

Carol Tulloch

Profile
Carol Tulloch is TrAIN Senior Research Fellow in Black Visual Culture, based at Chelsea College of Art and Design and the Victoria and Albert Museum. A dress historian and graduate from the joint V&A and Royal College of Art Masters in Design History programme (1995-97), at which she won The Basil Taylor Travel Bursary, Carol Tulloch has written about and curated numerous exhibitions on dress and the African diaspora, and was Curator of the Archives and Museum of Black Heritage Project (AMBH). She has previously been awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Board Small Research Grant and has been a member of the Fashion and Modernity Research Forum at Central Saint Martins College of Art (1999-2000).
In 2004/05, she co-curated the highly acclaimed 'Black British Style' touring exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum and edited the accompanying book 'Black Style' - the first exhibition in the UK to explore the style and fashion of black people in Britain and their impact on British culture over the past 50 years. She is currently researching her forthcoming book, 'The Birth of Cool - Dress Culture of the African Diaspora' - an investigation of the profound influence Black style has had on the history of dress in the twentieth century (due May 2008, Palgrave Macmillan).
Current Research - Statement
"My current research is the book 'The Birth of Cool: The Culture of Dress in the African Diaspora'. This is a self-authored work which is the culmination of a number of years study around the relevance of dress to the development of black identities in different parts of the African diaspora. The research for the book formed much of the ideas for the recent V&A national touring exhibition 'Black British Style', which was curated by Shaun Cole and myself, and the accompanying book 'Black Style' edited by me. Birth of Cool presents a series of case studies of individuals and groups from either Britain, Jamaica or North America to illustrate how their dressed selves express their sense of selves within the society they inhabit."

My current research continues with the telling of selves through the dressed black body, which has progressed through the inclusion of narrative studies. This line of inquiry has shifted to understand how individuals negotiate this within diverse contexts-locally, nationally or internationally. Therefore my work has begun to include other groups with similar experience, and/or cultural collaboration, with people of the African diaspora in order to develop a dialogue in the telling and place of individuals and groups. This has partly developed out of the AHRC funded 'Dress and the African Diaspora Network' I co-ordinated over the past two years. Material and visual culture remain central to this investigation, but I now make use of a wider range of media beyond my usual focus of garments, accessories and photography. Exploration of this is being conducted through writing and curating.
Key Projects
Principle Investigator for the 'Dress and the African Diaspora Network' which is part of the AHRC initiative Diasporas, Migrations and Identity: Research Networks and Workshops Scheme. It provides a series of forums where established and new researchers discuss the consumption, production, collection and display of dress, textiles and beauty regimes. The primary aim is to provide a forum for debate in order to identify new directions of study, and to create information resources for scholars in the field.