Quarantining in your childhood home due to Covid is quite a unique experience. Beginning back in April, my parents and I have been cleaning out closets, cabinets, and drawers all over the house, which has turned into a kind of history lesson on our family. We’ve found old polaroid photos, costume jewelry, silver dollars, and, most exciting for me, clothing that belonged to my grandparents and uncles. I have been lucky enough to uncover some personalized, embroidered bowling shirts my grandfather designed in the 1960s. At first glance, the shirts are certainly retro, almost to the point of gaudy, but from these shirts I’ve learned more about my family history than through old photographs. I sadly never met my grandfather, so to actually hold, and even put on, a shirt my he wore, stains and all, it something quite intimate and special.

My father’s family moved to Minnesota City, Minnesota in 1962, and as can be imagined, there’s not a lot to do in a town with a population of 190. Bowling, I learned, was very important to my uncles and grandfather, as that was about the only thing to do, apart from ice skating. My uncles were all on bowling leagues that competed every week against other local leagues. They wore shirts like the one shown above, so clearly, they bowled in style. Every league was sponsored by a local business who paid for their gear and shirts, and this is where my grandfather comes in. He and my grandmother owned a local tavern called the L-Cove Bar which starting in 1963, sponsored many local leagues.

My grandfather bought the shirts, like the one above, from a large company that sold bowling-gear, called King Louie. The embroidered logo was designed my grandfather and done by one of his regular customers. The logo on the back of the shirt featured classic L-Cove Bar imagery: the signature martini glass, signifying a kind of 1960s elegance, and music notes, connoting their weekly live music performances (mostly by country bands). My grandfather wore this particular shirt often, judging from the light stains on the front and a cigarette burn above the front pocket. A bright yellow shirt that belongs to my uncle shows how bowling shirts evolved later into the late sixties. The L-Cove logo isn’t embroidered into the shirt, but printed. The font is simplified, and the bright yellow reflects the boldness of late sixties, and the quickly approaching 1970s.

I can imagine my grandfather wore this white shirt not only for bowling, but also with a sense of pride. According to my father, he wore personalized bowling shirts while tending bar and around town. The shirts were certainly a kind of advertising for my family’s business, but also so much more than that. My grandfather was the child of Lithuanian immigrants who spoke little English and worked grueling, low-paying jobs in the stockyards of Chicago. For him and his wife, to be able to run their own business was attaining their vision of the American dream. He was deeply involved in his community, as he was the chief of the local volunteer fire department. Judging from the pristine state of the shirt and my father’s memory, he didn’t actually fight too many fires, but wore this shirt to the local bingo night every week.

My grandfather was coincidentally about my size, so I’m able to wear these shirt today. I get a lot of comments on them, mostly from people who are looking to buy high-quality vintage shirts. For me, those shirts are priceless, as they are a connection to my family’s past. My father’s side of the family constantly reminisce about “the bar,” making it seem like a mythical place where the family worked and celebrated together. It has become my family’s pride and joy and the legacy of my grandparents, but unfortunately, my family sold the bar before I was born. When I wear these shirts, I am reminded the hard work that generations of my family put into the country. Although I never went to the L-Cove Bar or met my grandfather, I can feel the generations of stories against my skin. It is certainly a privilege to know your family history, especially in America. Having access to the clothing that loved ones wore is even more of a special privilege. These shirts tell the story of my family, and I’ll treasure them forever.

Wattstax was a day-long festival that happened in Los Angeles in 1973. It was known as the “Black Woodstock,” but it could not be more dissimilar to the rural New York music festival of 1969. Wattstax was organized as a celebration of the seven-year anniversary of the 1965 Watts Uprisings. It was a celebration of Black music, fashion, and success. Organized by Stax Records, the festival was organized by Black folks for Black folks, making it one of the least remembered, yet most successful events of the Black Power movement. Soul and blues artists like The Staple Singers, Isaac Hayes, Albert King, and Rufus Thomas graced the stage and moved the audience to cheer, laugh, and dance. All of the day’s celebrations were captured on film by director Mel Stuart in the 1973 documentary Wattstax.

The fashions of Wattstax range from elegant and sleek to spectacular and outrageous. Director Stuart was sure to capture not only the performer’s costumes, but also the soul style of the audience and local community. Performers like Isaac Hayes and Rufus Thomas incorporated clothing into their performances by wearing capes and then dramatically throwing them off to reveal their humorous and politically-charged ensembles. Audience members arrived to Wattstax in their best soul style like over-sized newsboy hats, zebra print ensembles, and African prints. The documentary’s biggest achievement perhaps is its ability to show the diversity and creative abilities of Black Americans’ creative styling abilities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_P6ZWUJIa0&t=554s

During the Black Power Movement of the early sixties and late seventies, Black people across the globe sought to achieve liberation by rejecting White beauty standards and creating a unique black aesthetic. Dr. Tanisha C. Ford explains that “soul” was a “cultural language through which people of African descent could speak about the horrors of slavery and colonialism while also serving as a source of cultural pride and political solidarity” (Liberated Threads, 6). Clothing was an essential part of Black Power, and soul style served as a way to express to the world one’s personal dedication to Black liberation. Wattstax provides a window into how each Black person constructed a liberated identity at the largest gathering of Black people at that point in Los Angeles history.

For all of its celebration of Black liberation, Wattstax not perfect. A clear hierarchy appears throughout the documentary that favors young, urban people over older rural people and most obviously, favors men over women. Few women performed at Wattstax, mainly because Stax Records simply did not represent as many female musicians. The Black women that do appear onstage are all similarly dressed in maxi dresses and afros while the male performers wear outrageous ensembles comprising of chains, neon colors, and white fringe. Indeed, Black feminists and conversation about gender equality was often excluded from Black Power events, as gender was believed to complicate the goal of racial equality. In interviews of the local community, men share their opinions on racism, politics, unemployment and policing, while women are only filmed giving their opinions on hairstyles and love. So while Wattstax was a groundbreaking event, it still represented relatively regressive gender politics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_P6ZWUJIa0&t=554s

Among the worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, I’ve watched Wattstax in a different light. The film is not only an intimate glimpse into Black life during the Black Power Movement, but it is clearly relevant to the current protests of police brutality. When the festival was being planned, the venue owners and local White community feared that a gathering of 100,000 Black people would become violent. Wattstax was successful and peaceful because it was handled by an all-Black, unarmed security team. This stipulation was extremely important to the festival organizers because police forces, particularly the LAPD, had a history of racial discrimination and violence. Sadly, American policing has not improved, but has since become more militarized and continues to over-police and brutalize Black communities. Wattstax can be a lesson to us contemporary viewers of how communities can flourish when they are protected, and not violently policed. American policy-makers have tried body cameras and police reform, and Black Americans are still being arrested, imprisoned, and killed at a disproportionate rate. The police as we know it in America needs to be abolished and replaced with something more like what we see in Wattstax: an unarmed, community-based team dedicated to protecting citizens.

Watching Wattstax is a truly uplifting and joyous experience. Its detailed depiction of the audience and local community creates an intimate collective portrait of the Black Los Angeles community during the Black Power Era. In focusing on Black music, the documentary gets to the crux of Black life. Through music, Wattstax shows the beauty of Black church life, Black family, and Black creativity. Although Wattstax was not perfect in its politics, it is an important record of how Black Americans expressed their individual freedom through music and clothing. Wattstax was a small, yet significant step in the journey to towards Black liberation and should be an integral part of American history.

Sources:

Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Racial Realities by Darnell Hunt and Ana-Christina Ramon

Fire this Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s By Gerald Horne

Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul by Tanisha C. Ford

The Many Meanings of Watts: Black Power, Wattstax, and the Carceral State by Donna Murch

The new designs that came out of Paris Fashion Week were all fabulous and exciting, but one collection in particular made me think deeply about clothing, the body, and how we present ourselves to the world. Viktor and Rolf’s spring 2020 collection featured a collection of slender, doll-faced models who marched down the runway in patchwork gowns pieced together with contrasting fabrics. Their ensembles were avant-garde, prairie-style dresses; childish and playful, some were even reminiscent of my Grandma’s housedresses.

What took me by surprise was the highly visible tattoos that covered the models faces, necks, legs, and arms. Every model was covered in traditional, American-style tattoos with slogans like “keep calm and get tattooed” and “success is not final; failure is not fatal.” At first, somewhat naively, I assumed that Viktor and Rolf hired only models with gothic-typeface facial tattoos for this show until I realized that almost every model had “DREAM,” “LOVE,” or “SKY” tattooed across their foreheads. These matching tattoos were clearly crucial accessories for this show and essential to Viktor and Rolf’s ‘tough but innocent’ vision for the collection. The mixture of pastel floral fabrics, ruffle dresses and jelly sandals (an icon of early 2000s childhood) were combined with bold, almost macho tattoos.

Tattoo design made its first major appearance into haute couture in 1971 when Issey Miyake presented his seminal “Tattoo” collection. His now-famous ‘tattoo dresses’ and body suits were flesh-toned garments covered in a tattoo illustrative style that featured portraits of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. This dresses and bodysuits blurred the line between skin and clothes, suggesting that this full-body tattoo could be slipped on and off with ease. As tattooing was usually used to identify prostitutes and criminals in Japan, this ‘taboo’ technique shocked his audience but has come to inspire many younger generations of designers.

In 1994, Jean Paul Gaultier incorporated a similar method and used mesh clothing covered with tattoo designs to evoke real tattoos in his show entitled “Les Tatouges.” Using models both with and without actual tattoos, Gaultier extended the work of Miyake to create tattoo-inspired sleeves and tops. Again, the clothing suggested that tattoo designs could be put on and taken off, but it seemed that all kinds of body modification were integral to this collection. Models sported realtattoos, face jewelry and long nails, proving that any form of self-presentation could be fashion. Gaultier’s models were not simply blank canvases in which he could showcase his designs, but real people with the agency to alter their bodies who lived outside of the world of Gaultier.

Thinking again about Viktor and Rolf’s 2020 spring show, the tattoos brought a dark and intense atmosphere when used to accessorize jelly sandals and quilted dresses. In comparison to the colorful designs, the tattoos seemed dire, serious, and intense and presumably permanent. This integration of tattoos brings a sense of endurance and devotion to the fast-changing world of fashion. Even though the models could easily wash off the temporary tattoos after the show, tattoos make you think about what is important, consistent, and lifelong. The use of Vocabulary like “dream” and “love” put a hopeful and sentimental spin on the often masculinized art of tatouage. The messages are sweet, if not cheesy, perhaps pointing out the revealing, intimate nature of body art. After all, getting a meaningful, visible tattoo permanently embellished onto your body is like wearing your heart on your sleeves (or on your skin). It’s like constructing a second skin of your own that is unchanging and everlasting.

Tattoos are essentially a permanent form of fashion. They alter the appearance of our body as clothing does, but tattoos even more profoundly construct our style and identity because they are permanent. They are certainly not going anywhere without a large amount of pain and money anyway. Constructing one’s identity through fashion is a small endeavor compared to doing so through tattoos. Clothing can be changed, taken off and bought new. But what makes something so important that one should get it embedded into one’s skin? These designers’ attempt to incorporate tattoo design into their fashions is admirable and fresh, but ultimately, clothing will never match the power and devotion of a tattoo. Unlike the constant barrage of change and flux that comes with each fashion season, tattoos last a lifetime.

References:

https://www.grailed.com/drycleanonly/tattoo-fashion-history

Business in the front and party in the back. Yes, the mullet has returned. While critics have hoped the style will remain part of a regrettable past, the mullet is experiencing a comeback in fluorescent colors and dramatic lengths. What was once considered a dark spot in the history of popular culture, the hairstyle now graces the pages of Vogue and catwalks of major designers. Whether we like it or not, the mullet is here to stay for those brave enough to wear it.

The mullet seems to have emerged within the music world of the 1970s. As a precursor to giant 1980’s volumized hair, the 70’s rendition of the mullet perhaps expressed a forward-looking sensibility, a way to achieve volume on top of the head without masses of hairspray. David Bowie adopted the hairstyle in the early 1970s to capture his futuristic, androgynous character, Ziggy Stardust. The redheaded spaceman was a bizarre and shocking subversion of gender for its time. This sense of androgyny can be seen in a photograph of Paul and Linda McCartney donning matching mullets in 1973, proving that the hairstyle could easily cross gender lines. The 1970s iteration of the mullet perhaps reflected an idealistic, progressive style that could be worn by people of all genders which provided volume and long waves at the same time. It was a step towards the endless volume and curl of the 1980s, but still reflected the shaggy locks of the counterculture of the 1960s. In the 1980’s however, the hairstyle was cemented as a symbol of bad fashion. From country singer Billy Ray Cyrus’s adoption of the hairdo to the Joe Dirt films from the early 2000’s, the hairstyle has long been synonymous with white trash, the antithesis of fashion.

Despite the sordid past of the mullet, this hairstyle has recently been seen on high fashion catwalks, magazine pages, and it-girls across the world. Marc Jacobs has particularly been interested in bringing the mullet back. In his autumn 2013 fashion show, he outfitted all of his models in in textured, uniform mullets. Anna Sui did something similar in her autumn 2019 show, in which all of her models wore spiky, technicolor mullet wigs. Gucci has also been rigorous in rounding up personalities and musicians who have mullets for their advertising campaigns, like Dani Miller and Amy Taylor who both wear mullets as frontwomen of punk bands, Surfbort and Amyl and the Sniffers, respectively.

Early in the semester, our class considered the definitions of fashion, and discussed the work of Joanne Eicher and Mary Ellen Roach Higgens who wrote that dress can be considered “an assemblage of body modifications and/or supplements displayed by a person in communicating with other human beings” (15). In this sense, clothing, tattoos, piercings, and even mullets are considered fashion, and those who adopt the these elements communicate something to the world in doing so. But what exactly does the mullet communicate?

As silky, shiny beach waves and blunt bobs have become fashionable in recent years, the mullet is a rebellion against orthodox styles. The mullet does not make much sense as a practical hairdo, as the flowing layers in the back of the head need to grow long while the shortness atop of the hairdo needs constant trimming. The backs of mullets often become infamously thin “rat tails” while the front stands up strait. It doesn’t make a lot of sense as a hairstyle, but this certainly appeals to people who want to push against the beauty standards and trends of the fashion world. Suitable for any gender, the mullet is a subversion of gendered beauty standards that separates men and women by their hair. It is both male and female. When we see a mullet we conjure up memories of David Bowie and Billy Ray Cyrus, but above all, I think the mullet is a rebellion against fashion and a celebration of “bad taste.”

References:

Arden Fanning Andrews, “Mullets and Shags, Oh My! The Anti-Blowout Movement Taking Over NYFW’s Runways” in Vogue, February 13, 2019. https://www.vogue.com/article/mullets-shags-hair-fall-2019-new-york-fashion-week

Joanne Eicher and Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins, “Definition and classification of Dress: Implications for Analysis of Gender Roles” in Dress and Gender: Making and Meaning, (London: Berg, 1992). 8-28.