Abstract
I have written this article in order to establish Patrick Kelly as a black forbearer of fashion. Kelly complicates our sense of fashion through his use of black memorabilia and camp to not only create something consumable but to comment on the black body as a consumable. Therefore, the role I play in acknowledging this black supernova, as Eric Darnell Pritchard calls him, is by critiquing Lewis and Fraley’s critique of Patrick Kelly and questioning why overtly expressing one’s queerness through camp has not been seen as a viable form of black expression in the mainstream narrative of black creativity. Lewis and Fraley’s complete dismissal of Kelly’s use of camp does not happen in a vacuum. Yet, I must remember that there is also the task of establishing a legacy of technique for Patrick Kelly. Who are his forbearers?
References
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “The Politics of Identity.” Dædalus. Fall 2006, pp. 15-22.10.1162/daed.2006.135.4.15Search in Google Scholar
---. The Ethics of Identity. Princeton University Press, 2005.Search in Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Harvard University Press, 1999.Search in Google Scholar
Blum, Dilys. “Patrick Kelly: Runway of Love.” Friday Arts. PBS, aired 24.07.2014.Search in Google Scholar
Core, Philip. Camp: The Lie That Tells the Truth. Forward by George Melly. Delilah Books, 1984.Search in Google Scholar
Evans, Caroline. “Yesterday’s Emblems and Tomorrow’s Commodities: The Return of the Repressed in Fashion Imagery Today.”Search in Google Scholar
Fashion Cultures Theories, Explorations and Analysis, edited by Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson. Routledge, 2000.Search in Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, Sharon. “Robert Colescott Rocks the Boat.” American Visions. 12: 3, 1997, pp. 14-19.Search in Google Scholar
Givhan, Robin. “Patrick Kelly’s Radical Cheek.” The Washington Post, 31.05.2004.Search in Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart. ‘‘The Spectacle of the Other.” Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, edited by Stuart Hall. SAGE Publications, 1997, pp. 225-290Search in Google Scholar
Hartman, Saidiya V. Scenes of Subjection Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America. Oxford University Press, 1997.Search in Google Scholar
Heller, Steven. “Michael Ray Charles: When Racist Art was Commercial Art.” Print Magazine, 16.01.2012.Search in Google Scholar
Hornblower, Margot. “An Original American in Paris: Patrick Kelly.” Time Magazine, 03.04.1989.Search in Google Scholar
Hyde, Nina. “From Pauper to the Prints of Paris.” The Washington Post, 09.11.1986.Search in Google Scholar
Johnson, E. Patrick. “Manifest Faggotry Queering Masculinity in African-American Culture.” Appropriating Blackness: Performance, and the Politics of Authenticity. Duke University Press, 2003, pp. 48-75.10.1215/9780822385103-003Search in Google Scholar
---. “Quare Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know about Queer Studies I Learned from My Grandmother.” 2001. Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology, edited by E. Patrick Johnson & Mae G. Henderson. Duke University Press, 2005.Search in Google Scholar
---. “The Specter of the Black Fag.” Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 45, issue 2-4, 2003, pp. 217-234.10.1300/J082v45n02_10Search in Google Scholar
Kayode, Rotimi-Fani. “Rotimi-Fani Kayode: Traces of Ecstasy.” Ten. 8 Magazine, No. 28: Rage and Desire, 1988. Courtesy of Autograph ABP. Search in Google Scholar
“Kitsch.” Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kitsch.Search in Google Scholar
Kuznets, Lois R. When Toys Come Alive: Narratives of Animation, Metamorphosis, and Development. Yale University Press, 1994.Search in Google Scholar
Lewis, Tim. “Carol Tulloch: ‘Dressing well is almost part of the DNA of the black community.”” The Guardian, 06.03.2016.Search in Google Scholar
Lewis, Van Dyk and Fraley, Keith A. “Fashion’s Great Black Hope.” Fashion, Style, and Popular Culture. 2:3, 2015, pp. 333-350.10.1386/fspc.2.3.333_1Search in Google Scholar
Mercer, Kobena. “Busy in the Ruins of Wretched Phantasia.” Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire, edited by Ragnar Farr. Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1995, pp. 13-34.Search in Google Scholar
Meyer, Moe. “Reclaiming the Discourse of Camp.” The Politics and Poetics of Camp, edited by Moe Meyer. Routledge, 1994.Search in Google Scholar
Miller, Monica L. Slaves to Fashion Black Dandyism and Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. Duke University Press, 2009.10.2307/j.ctv11vc89rSearch in Google Scholar
Murray, Derek Conrad. Queering Post-Black Art: Artists Transforming African-American Identity After Civil Rights. I. B. Taurus, 2015.10.5040/9780755604371Search in Google Scholar
Powell, Richard. Black Art: A Cultural History. Thames and Hudson, 2003.Search in Google Scholar
Pritchard, Eric D. “Black Supernovas: Black Gay Designers as a Critical Resource for Contemporary Black Fashion Studies.” International Journal of Fashion Studies 4:1, 2017, pp. 107-110.Search in Google Scholar
---. “Like Signposts on the Road: The Function of Literacy in Constructing Black Queer Ancestors.” Literacy in Composition Studies 2:1, 2014, pp. 29-56.10.21623/1.2.1.3Search in Google Scholar
Riggs, Marlon. (1991). “Black Macho Revisited: Reflections of a Snap! Queen.” Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men. Ed. Essex Hemphill. Alyson, 1991, pp. 253-257.Search in Google Scholar
---. “Unleash the Queen.” Black Popular Culture, edited by Michele Wallace and Gina Dent. Bay Press, 1992, pp. 99-105.Search in Google Scholar
Robertson, Pamela. “Mae West’s Maids: Race, Authenticity and the Discourse of Camp.” Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject-A Reader. Ed. Fabio Cleto. Edinburgh University Press, 1999, pp. 266-282.Search in Google Scholar
Ross, Andrew. “Uses of Camp.” 1988. Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality, edited by David Bergman. University of Massachusetts Press, 1993, pp. 54-77.Search in Google Scholar
Saunders, Raymond. Black Is a Color. San Francisco, 1968.Search in Google Scholar
Silva, Horacio. “Delta Force.” The New York Times Magazine, 22/02/2004.Search in Google Scholar
Sontag, Susan. “Notes on Camp.” Against Interpretation and Other Essays. 1964. Penguin, 2009.Search in Google Scholar
Todd, Ellen Wiley. “Two Georges and Us: Multiple Perspectives on the Image.” American Art 17: 2, 2003, pp. 13-17.Search in Google Scholar
© 2018
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.