Black British Style

The exhibition focused on dress practices amongst black people in Britain from the late 1940s to 2004. It developed out of concerns about the relationships between dress, ethnicity, ’race’ and place outlined in ‘“Out of Many, One People”?: The Relativity of Dress, Race and Ethnicity to Jamaica, 1880-1907’ (Tulloch 1998).In ‘Black British Style’ garments, accessories, photography and film were used to discuss the black identities developed by men, women and children in post-war Britain.

The exhibition challenged stereotypes associated with black aesthetics and identities. It placed the dress choices made by individuals to define their sense of self in a historical context. I wanted visitors to gain a better understanding of how, and why, black people in Britain styled their bodies, whether as part of migration, religious, secular or political activities. Oral testimonies played an important role in portraying ‘the sincere self’ to the choice of garments chosen for display.

The exhibition stressed that there is a historical legacy that underpins the style performance associated with this cultural group. ‘Black British Style’ showed how black people in Britain confronted the tenets of difference to present a sense of ‘authenticity’ to their life experiences.

Black British Style’ was the first major exhibition devoted to these issues to be shown in a national museum. It’s cultural significance extended internationally as it was the inspiration for the exhibition ‘Black Style Now’ (2006), Museum of the City of New York.

The positive national and international media reactions to the exhibition reinforced the importance of recognising the presence and cultural impact of black people in Britain.

An outcome of the exhibition, the associated publication and conference was the successful application for an AHRC Diasporas, Migration and Identities Network grant. This has resulted in the Dress and the African Diaspora Network.

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.

• http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites...
• http://www.transnational.org.uk/projects...
• http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/contemp...
• http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/ma...