Fashion and Diversity Reading List

Black Fashion and Appearance

Archer-Straw, Petrine, Negrophilia: Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s, (Thames and Hudson, 2000).

Byrd, Ayana D. and Lori L. Tharps, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2014).

Day, Daniel R., Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem (Random House, 2019). 

Fifield, Rebecca, "Fashion of the Forgotten: Researching the Dress of Indentured and Enslaved Women, 1750–90," Winterthur Unreserved, museum and library blog, posted January 2, 2014, accessed March 8, 2022.

Ford, Tanisha. Liberated Threads (University of North Carolina Press, 2017). 

Gainer, Nichelle, Vintage Black Glamour (Rocket 88, 2015).

Givhan, Robin, The Battle of Versailles (Flatiron Books, 2015). 

Hansen, Karen Tranberg and  D. Soyini Madison (eds.), African Dress (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013).

Jennings, Helen, New African Fashion (Prestel Publishing, 2011).

Keckley, Elizabeth, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House, (Eno Publishers, first published 1868).

Lewis, Shantrelle, Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style (Aperture, 2017).

McClendon, Alphonso, Fashion and Jazz: Dress, Identity and Subcultural Improvisation (Dress, Body, Culture) (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

McKinley, Catherine E., The African Lookbook: A Visual History of 100 Years of African Women (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017).

Miller, Monica, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity (Duke University Press Books, 2009).

Murrell, Denise, Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today (Yale University Press, 2018).

Pritchard, Eric Darnell, Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy (Southern Illinois University Press, 2016).

Rabine, Leslie W., The Global Circulation of African Fashion (Bloomsbury, 2002).

Romero, Elena, Free Stylin': How Hip Hop Changed the Fashion Industry (Hip Hop in America) (Praeger, 2012).

Rose, Tricia, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Wesleyan University Press, 1994).

Rovine, Victoria, African Fashion, Global Style: Histories, Innovations, and Ideas You Can Wear (African Expressive Cultures) (Indiana University Press, 2015).

Sargent, Antwaun, The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion (Aperture, 2019).

Summers, Barbara, Skin Deep: The Story of Black Models in America and Abroad (Amistad Press. HarperCollins, 1998).

Talley, André Leon,  A.L.T.: A Memoir (Villard, 2003).

Talley, André Leon, The Chiffon Trenches (Ballantine Books, 2020).

Tulloch, Carol, “Style Activism: The Everyday Activist Wardrobe of the Black Panther Party and Rock Against Racism Movement,” in Fashion and Politics, Djurdja Bartlett, Ed. (Yale University Press , 2019).

Vernon, Vanessa and Morgan Ashley, Brown Bō’hēmians: Honoring the Light and Magic of Our Creative Community, (powerHouse Books, 2020).

Walker, Tamara, Exquisite Slaves: Race, Clothing, and Status in Colonial Lima, (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Way, Liz, “Dressing to Pass during the Harlem Renaissance: Fashion in the Novels of Jessie Redmon Fauset and Nella Larsen” in Fashion Theory, April 2020 (24:4), pp. 535-566.

Way, Liz, “Strands of the Diaspora: Black Hair in the Americas 1800-1920,” chapter in A Cultural History of Hair in the Age of Empire (1800-1920). Ed. Sarah Heaton. London: Bloomsbury Academic (2018).

Way, Liz, “Elizabeth Keckly and Ann Lowe: Recovering an African American Fashion Legacy That Clothed the American Elite,” Fashion Theory, February 2015 (19:1), pp. 115-142.

Way, Liz, “Elizabeth Keckly and Ann Lowe: Constructing Fashionable Black Identity.” Chapter in Fashion and Its Multi-Cultural Facets. Ed. Patricia Hunt-Hurst and Sabrina Ramsamy-Iranah. Leiden: Brill (2014).

Way, Liz, “Intersections of Movement and Style: African American Dance and Fashion in the Twentieth Century.” Chapter in Dance and Fashion. Ed. Valerie Steele. New Haven: Yale University Press (2013).

White, Constance, Stylenoir: The First How to Guide to Fashion Written with Black Women in Mind (TarcherPerigee, 1998).

White, Graham and Shane White, Stylin': African-American Expressive Culture, from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit (Cornell University Press, 1999).