Fashion

Black British Style -

Arts plaything or resource for Black community uplift?

Carol Tulloch (inset) a senior research fellow at the V&A museum, and editor of Black Style

Great documentary exhibitions often attack social norms or shatter our misconceptions in the process of making a deep point about humanity "Okwui Enwezor's 'The Short Century' exhibit of the liberatory power of cultural life in Africa comes easily to mind " and, on balance, the Black British Style show at the Victoria and Albert Museum has opened the eyes of many Londoners to the hidden talents of one of the city's significant minorities.

Curator Carol Tulloch, a senior research fellow at the prestigious V&A museum, has put Black British Style on the cultural exhibition map through a series of images, clothes, prose and music from the entry of Caribbean workers in the 1950s, joined later by African immigrants, to recent times.

Scope of the exhibition
With London as its focal point, the show which closed in mid-January claimed "The importance of dress has had a huge impact on the development of black identities and British culture as a whole".

An opening video of early settlers arriving on the SS Empire Windrush ship in 1948 sets the scene for this first exhibition in the UK to explore the style and fashion of Black people. The ship's image is used to conjure up the experience of an exodus and journey of workers from Jamaica to a better life in Britain.

Photographs and dress of the period illustrate the immigrant's determination to succeed, says Ms Tulloch. Young men and women wear the defining images of English fashion. The men in trilby hats and smart suits; women, some in printed circular skirts with bags and shoes to match, and others in cocktail dresses, party frocks and twin set pearls.

Visitors walked through aisles filled with artifacts and photographs. Some mannequins were dressed in clothes worn to work. A series of stands show the best hats and frocks reserved for religious observances. Other items pictured youth and Rastafari militants declaiming Black Power on the streets, partying in the clubs, and weaving Caribbean rhythms into the British musical scene.

Finally, the fashionable outfits made for celebrities Jazzy B and Mis-Teeq are featured along with the clothes and accessories of influential designers Wale Adeyama and Jo Casely-Hayford.

Over five decades a rich and complex Black style experience emerged, says Ms Tulloch, based on a multicultural encounter between West Indians, immigrant Africans, and the white host society.

But like the best of shows, the Style exhibition did not pass without criticism - surprisingly from Black journalists and cultural leaders. Critics say the exhibition's emphasis was misplaced. Black style is more marginal than mainstream, and the curators failed to consult the Black cultural archives and professionals who might have explained why.

Limitations of the exhibition
Critics say Black British Style in dress, clothes and music, and in the scowling faces of the boys and sassy attitude of the dancehall queens, mask their underclass status and alienation from civil society. Few are linked to youth movements, trade union or political parties. Youth's cultural creativity, enterprise and labour is owned by others. Even the annual August Notting Hill carnival - the biggest attraction of its kind in Britain and Europe - has degenerated into a gigantic billboard for consumer goods and a magnet for a £100m tourist market contribution to London's economy.

This at the same time when statistics show a pattern of low education and disproportionately high crime rate among young Afro-British people.

There is no argument that Black Style is a subculture within the mainstream that has been easily assimilated by white as well as Black youth, say critics . No doubt, either that "Black youth have turned marginality into a very creative art form; or that they have styled their way into British culture", says Tony Sewell, university educator and veteran columnist for the Black newspaper, The Voice.

But almost 60 years after the first Black settlers came ashore, the prospects for their offspring, locked in the inner cities of Britain are poor and elusive, Sewell suggests.

Sewell sums up the counter-argument to the V&A's position by saying: "the claim that black culture has had a major impact on British style is fanciful·At best we have only been a channel for America and the Caribbean and one would be hard pressed to point to a significant black British style or movement created on these shores".

Further, "What is even sadder is the way in which our current generation of bling heads have lost any sense of style. They are literally slaves to the high street, with no sense of irony or subversion. What we did have in bucket loads was attitude " a way of wearing suits and dresses that meant we were noticed and copied."

Sewell concludes that "our best claim to fame is that we enriched the blandness of the English landscape by bringing together the best of Caribbean, black America and Africa".

Flawed interpretation
Black professionals have also commented on the illusory nature of the V&A exhibition, in exclusive interviews with the Chronicleworld. Archivist and cultural historian Sam Walker, curator of the 25 year-old Black Cultural Archives, says: "prestigious institutions such as the V&A have a long way to go to be sole arbiters of Black British Style".

"Interpretation is everything in defining style," says Walker "one's point of view gives a subject its credibility, value and respect, or not, depending on who is doing the interpreting". And there is some doubt that remote elitist institutions can arrive at a proper valuation of Black people's cultures.

This view is endorsed by writer Margaret Busby's assessment of the museum scene in the New Statesman magazine that: " despite almost 40 per cent of the capital's population being classified as black and minority ethnic, that group makes up less than 5 per cent of the audience for most national museums and accounts for only eight out of 500 curators " hardly a sign of commitment to diversity".

Furthermore the ideology of such institutions seem more and more to be about using Black people and their artifacts to demonstrate Britain's cultural diversity," says Walker.

No wonder, then, that "directors of Black-led organisations believe it is more valid to analyse and present our heritage from our point of view," says Walker.

Walker is aware that Ms Tulloch, who is Black of Caribbean background, has a substantial academic career (indeed she edited a Volume on Fashion Theory for the journal of dress, body and culture), but believes her critical error is failing to see that the participation of Black people is crucial in the evaluation process.

New initiatives needed
"We are doing our best to rectify this problem at the local level near our premises. Our intention is to refurbish Raleigh Hall located near Windrush Square, the symbolic home of the earliest Jamaican settlers, with the support of Lambeth council," says Walker.

The need for new initiatives was also echoed by Eric Huntley, another principal Black cultural personality interviewed by The Chronicleworld. "Investing in communities and their cultural artifacts is a laudable goal and is best achieved by supporting the archival initiatives of our Black-led and Black-oriented public archives," says Huntley who, with his wife Jessica, are proprietors of the well-known Bogle L'Ouverture publishers.

The Huntley's have recently been honoured by the Corporation of London Joint Archive Service who plan to catalogue and appraise their collection.

Style curator's reply
Interviewed later by The Chronicleworld, Ms Tulloch claimed her critics had not focused on the bigger picture: That is getting more people, Black and white, into the foyers of mainstream institutions they do not frequently enter, and exposing them to aspects of Black culture of which they are unaware.

Tulloch accepts that the comments of Black professionals are important because they underscore the need to overcome the barriers between elite and grassroots institutions, particularly those serving Black communities.

But she is enthusiastic that her exhibition notched up a record-breaking 40,000 visitors over two months, including children from inner London schools eager to learn about Black cultural origins and heritage.

Furthermore, said Ms Tulloch, who also lectures at the University of the Arts, Chelsea School of Art and Design, "we were able to mobilise the expertise of many Black arts personalities, filmmakers and designers, among them David Adjaye, the architect. We have also won praise from Kobena Mercer of the Visual Culture and Media centre at Middlesex University, Gail Cameron, curator of the Women's Library, and Dame Jocelyn Barrow, a prominent supporter of Black cultural activities".

"As required, we can also call upon the skills of two other Black V&A staff, Zoe Whitley in the African American section and Ann Marie Eze in the photography department".

"There is always going to be criticism, of the V&A, and perhaps other mainstream institutions, too, when they strike out in new directions. But we were the first there and the coverage has been excellent," she says.

Nevertheless, Ms Tulloch looks forward to the day when there will be "a greater degree of cooperation between mainstream institutions and those that are less well-endowed".

Without doubt, the V&A show of Black British Styles opened a new chapter in the appreciation of Black heritage, not without controversy, however. The august institution has opened its portals to a wider and more diverse public, and the show has generated a welcome debate. But more engagement with the Black community and its cultural leaders is necessary.

Looking towards the future, Ms Tulloch's undoubted dress and fashion expertise should be augmented with a contemporary sociological and political perspective for a next V&A exhibition. The changing demographics of Black London should be acknowledged - that is recognising the styles and development quests of Afro-Latin communities and the new Black majority of Africans from the continent.

Planning new Black-led projects and partnerships to attract greater resources from Government, business and funding agencies is essential. High on the priority list should be the training of Black professional archivists, and improved local exhibition spaces, outreach programmes to schools and neighbourhoods, and better public exhibition spaces and library facilities.

The result will add great value to arts and museum establishments as a whole. The new initiatives will also be an important first step toward proving that the arts and culture of Afro-British people are not mere playthings in someone else's game but a cherished resource for Black community uplift and education of the public.

Notes:

1. The Black Cultural Archives (BCA) was established in 1981 by a group of educationalists, writers and other interested individuals who were concerned about the paucity of historical documentation and social data on black experiences in Britain. The BCA was thus set up to collect, document, preserve and disseminate materials concerning the history and culture of black people in Britain, and to make these resources available and accessible nationally and internationally.

Through a major programme of outreach and education, cataloguing, research and exhibitions relating to the long-established black diaspora presence the BCA ultimately hopes to establish the first national museum of black history in Britain.

2. Eric and Jessica are key figures in the Caribbean community in the UK. Since their arrival in London from Guyana in the 1950s, they have witnessed the fight-back against racism and hysteria provoked by Enoch Powell, the right-wing conservative, and the urban crises affecting Black people.

They have established and supported a wide variety of literary, political and cultural activities within the community. Their most significant work has been to nurture the talents of Caribbean and Black authors at grassroots.

3. Other archival initiatives, though modest, include John La Rose's George Padmore Institute, the Bernie Grant Foundation, the Stephen Lawrence Foundation, the Runnymede Trust collection, and the Black Heritage archive at Middlesex University.

4. New cultural diversity initiatives are recognised as needed in museum governance, collections' policies, outreach work, education, marketing and staff development; see Holding Up the Mirror: Addressing Cultural Diversity in London's Museums, by Helen Denniston Associates for the London Museums Agency October 2003.

Online public archives carrying heritage related material include: Moving Here www.movinghere.org.uk; 1901 census (in which ancestors can be searched by name www.census.pro.goc.uk; and Links to lottery-backed sites with archive content www.enrich.uk. Resources on CD-ROM include HomeBeats: Struggles for Racial Justice, A multimedia CD-ROM for Windows and Macintosh computers. HomeBeats is a multimedia journey through time, from Africa, the Caribbean and Asia, to the making of modern Britain. Available from the Institute of Race Relations Email info@irr.org.uk

In an interesting statement that seems to support the views of UK Black cultural archivists, the head of conservation at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, suggests that knowledge and truth reside in identity. Native peoples should be the curators, says Marian Kaminitz "because they know the material best as it is the material of their culture. We respect their concerns and interpret the material through what they see as appropriate rather than as a dominating voice from outside the culture". But this view has its critics; and so the debate continues. See The Museum of Political Correctness by Tiffany Jenkins in The Independent Review Tuesday 25 January 2005.