Methodologies for the Creolization of Fashion Studies

Since its inception fashion studies has occupied niche fields of enquiry that have focussed largely on Eurocentric paradigms of discussion around the engagement with fashion objects and the development and display of status and identity. Pockets of enquiry have focussed on areas outside of the Eurocentric western cannon but largely remain apart from what is considered established fashion studies. With this in mind it is clear that the structures and parameters of what can be determined as legitimate fashion study are based firmly within the considerations of Eurocentric epistemologies. This then shapes all other studies of clothing and determines whether they are allowed a place within the exclusive world of fashion studies.

This poses a challenge which the Costume Institute of the African Diaspora (CIAD) has sought, in some way, to rectify. CIAD has been developed and established to collate research and broaden academic discourse around the development of fashion studies from the perspective of people within the African Diaspora. With that aim in mind, CIAD held its first dress conference on the 4th of May, 2018 in order to bring together researchers in the field with this focus. The conference was entitled Si Wi Yah: Sartorial Representations of the African Diaspora. “Si Wi Yah” a Jamaican patois phrase which translates to “we are here” was a call for the wider fashion studies community to recognise and acknowledge the engagement with the sociology and psychology of dress taking place which doesn’t centre white western hegemonic ideology.

• Organisation