Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style & the Global Politics of Soul

The emergence of soul fashion in the 1970s was tied to the re-emergence of Blacks embracing their heritage. We view clothing and style as an extension of our own personal identity, or “brand.” Dr. Tanisha C. Ford began her lecture by asking the class “What went through your mind when you decided what you were going to wear today?” This question opened up the class to discover what fashion means to them personally and how it shapes who they are as people. This personalized focus on fashion shifted to how Blacks felt in the 1970s and how it drove their desire to focus on their own personal brand and what it meant to be Black in the 1970s.