As part of its Fashion Week coverage, New York magazine published a fascinating account of Kevahn Thorpe, a teenaged shoplifter who is serving one to three years at Sing Sing. It seems that the allure of golden Prada sneakers, skinny Dior jeans and Fendi eyeglasses was too strong for the 17-year-old honors student from the Queensbridge Housing Projects to resist. And even though the calculus-loving thief is doing time alongside murderers, rapists and other violent offenders, he’s said he’ll probably resume his shoplifting ways when he is released in March.
It’s easy to dismiss Thorpe as a hopeless recidivist whose problems run deeper than the law enforcement community seems to realize. But in the midst of Fashion Week, it’s also worth considering the impact of all the hype on poor kids inundated with upscale imagery. Consider the very American maxim, “dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” What, exactly, is dressing like a rapper, an athlete, a model or video vixen, even if you live in the projects, if not dressing for the job you want?
For many African Americans, this is nothing new. As historian Stephanie M.H. Camp has shown, slaves in the U.S. South went to great lengths—often risking their personal safety—to attend dances and other events that offered them opportunities to wear stylish clothing. For women, wearing full skirts with hoops fashioned out of grapevines or tree branches and dresses with colorful and vibrant patterns helped not only to show off their feminine curves but also to showcase their ingenuity and creativity in procuring and designing festive attire. In dressing up, those men and women claimed their bodies as sites “not only of suffering but also (and therefore) of enjoyment and resistance.” The very epitome of aspirational dressing.
It’s easy to dismiss Thorpe as a hopeless recidivist whose problems run deeper than the law enforcement community seems to realize. But in the midst of Fashion Week, it’s also worth considering the impact of all the hype on poor kids inundated with upscale imagery. Consider the very American maxim, “dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” What, exactly, is dressing like a rapper, an athlete, a model or video vixen, even if you live in the projects, if not dressing for the job you want?
For many African Americans, this is nothing new. As historian Stephanie M.H. Camp has shown, slaves in the U.S. South went to great lengths—often risking their personal safety—to attend dances and other events that offered them opportunities to wear stylish clothing. For women, wearing full skirts with hoops fashioned out of grapevines or tree branches and dresses with colorful and vibrant patterns helped not only to show off their feminine curves but also to showcase their ingenuity and creativity in procuring and designing festive attire. In dressing up, those men and women claimed their bodies as sites “not only of suffering but also (and therefore) of enjoyment and resistance.” The very epitome of aspirational dressing.
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