◍◈ I Adorn Tings — Who Gets to Build Black Fashion? (Continuation)
- Kiing Curry
- 5 hours ago
- 13 min read
Why are we still treating those assumptions as universal?
Why are we still designing from those measurements outward?
I Adorn Tings studies what happens where the body meets what we place upon it. Clothing, hair, jewelry, beads, objects, texture, fit, fabrication and style become ways of reading care, culture, labor, access, memory and imagination.
Here, adornment is not decoration added after the body. It is relationship: between the body and the object, the maker and the wearer, what we inherit and what we choose, what fits and what was never built with us in mind.
◍◈ I Adorn Tings — Who Gets to Build Black Fashion? (Continuation)
This Is Still Part II
Apparently, this essay became too long for my website platform to continue editing on a single page.
So let me be clear:
This is not Part III.
I did not decide this essay needed another part. The technology decided it could no longer hold the amount of thinking I had put inside this one.
Who Gets to Build Black Fashion? continues here exactly where it left off.
Same essay.
Same argument.
Same garment.
The container just wasn’t big enough to hold it.
The European Ghost
This is where the conversation gets uncomfortable.
Because so much of what we call innovation is simply European standards wearing different clothes.
The silhouettes.
The grading.
The sizing.
The measurements.
The assumptions.
The lasts used to create shoes.
The ideas about proportion.
The ideas about fit.
The ideas about what a body is.
We treat these systems as neutral.
They are not neutral.
They are inherited.
And the more I look at Black fashion, the more I find myself asking:
Why are we still beginning with European assumptions?
Why are we still treating those assumptions as universal?
Why are we still designing from those measurements outward?
What would happen if we began somewhere else?
What would happen if Black bodies were not an afterthought?
What would happen if Black bodies were the starting point?
Not the campaign.
Not the model.
Not the marketing.
The actual design process.
Because my frustration with Kẹ́kẹ́rẹ́lé is not simply that the shoes broke.
My frustration is that I find myself wondering whether the shoes were designed from assumptions that were never questioned.
And that question travels far beyond one brand.
Representation Is Not Infrastructure
For years I believed representation would solve this.
More Black brands.
More Black designers.
More Black ownership.
More Black Models.
And all of those things matter.
But representation is not infrastructure.
Representation is not apprenticeship.
Representation is not manufacturing knowledge.
Representation is not quality control.
Representation is not stewardship.
Representation is not craft.
A Black-owned business can still produce a poorly made garment.
A fat-owned business can still misunderstand embodiment.
An African-inspired business can still reproduce colonial assumptions.
Identity alone does not solve execution.
Identity alone does not solve construction.
Identity alone does not solve infrastructure.
And that realization was difficult for me.
Because I wanted representation to be enough.
I wanted shared identity to automatically produce better outcomes.
But the garments kept telling a different story.
The Apprenticeship Problem
One of the things social media has done is allow people to become brands before becoming craftspeople.
A logo before a lineage.
A campaign before an apprenticeship.
A launch before mastery.
And I think we are seeing the consequences everywhere.
People learn branding.
People learn aesthetics.
People learn visibility.
But who is learning construction?
Who is learning grading?
Who is learning materials?
Who is learning durability?
Who is learning testing?
Who is learning repair?
Who is learning how to build something that survives a body?
Because bodies are ruthless.
Bodies tell the truth.
The garment tells the truth.
The shoe tells the truth.
The seam tells the truth.
And eventually all of the branding disappears.
Who Gets Access?
This is where my questions become larger than clothing.
Because I keep noticing a pattern.
Who gets access to training?
Who gets access to mentorship?
Who gets access to manufacturing knowledge?
Who gets access to capital?
Who gets access to legitimacy?
Who gets to fail publicly and still receive another chance?
Who gets to be called promising?
Who gets to be called visionary?
Who gets to be called professional?
Who gets to become the institution?
And I am not convinced those opportunities are distributed evenly.
I look around and I see people who have access to infrastructure that others never receive.
Access to learning.
Access to networks.
Access to resources.
Access to forgiveness.
Access to experimentation.
And eventually I begin wondering whether what we call talent is sometimes simply proximity.
Proximity to knowledge.
Proximity to capital.
Proximity to training.
Proximity to power.
These questions matter.
Because excellence does not emerge from nowhere.
Infrastructure does not emerge from nowhere.
Craft does not emerge from nowhere.
People are taught.
People are mentored.
People are funded.
People are given opportunities to learn.
And I am increasingly interested in following those pathways.
Because I think they explain much more than any marketing campaign ever could.
Black Consumers as Quality Control
One of the things that frustrates me most is how often Black consumers become unpaid quality control departments.
We buy the garment.
We test the garment.
We discover the flaws.
We absorb the disappointment.
Then we are asked not to say anything because criticism might harm the brand.
No.
If I spend hundreds of dollars on a garment or a pair of shoes, I have already invested in the brand.
The expectation of quality is not hostility.
The expectation of accountability is not hostility.
The expectation of stewardship is not hostility.
Those are the conditions required for trust.
And trust is increasingly difficult to find.
Beyond Visibility
I am no longer looking for perfect brands.
I am looking for evidence.
Evidence that somebody has spent time thinking about the bodies they claim to serve.
Evidence that the front of house and the back of house are speaking to one another.
Evidence that the aesthetics and the infrastructure are aligned.
Evidence that somebody understands fashion is more than appearance.
Because fashion is architecture.
Fashion is movement.
Fashion is regulation.
Fashion is embodiment.
Fashion is infrastructure.
And at this point that is what I am searching for.
Not simply Black fashion.
Not simply African fashion.
Not simply sustainable fashion.
Not simply slow fashion.
Fashion that understands the body.
Fashion that respects the body.
Fashion that supports the body.
Fashion that survives the body.
Because eventually every garment tells the truth.
The question is whether we are willing to listen.
The Story Has to Include Me
I love clothes.
Not because I am chasing trends. Not because I want luxury. Not because I want to consume endlessly.
I love clothes because I love stories.
I love garments that let me become a different version of myself. Garments that create atmosphere. Garments that change the way I move through a room. Garments that feel like portals, costumes, architectures, weather systems, or worlds.
The This Is Us dress has become part of my bead & cowrie uniform. It has become part of the visual language of the Bespokecurry Cosmos. It appears in photographs. Workshops. Pop-ups. Essays. Field notes. It has become one of the garments that helps tell the story.
And yet I cannot separate the garment from the experience of acquiring it.
The way I was engaged when I purchased the piece. The way customer service responded. The feeling that I was being tolerated rather than welcomed.
The garment entered my world. I did not feel invited into theirs.
The Flower Iris dress occupies a different place. In many ways it is replacing an obsession I once had with Selkie. I no longer wish to support that company. That decision is mine. But I can also tell the truth: their garments made me feel something.
That feeling matters.
A garment can be beautiful and a company can still fail people.
Both things can be true.
The same is true of Spunge.
The shoes are becoming part of the Bespokecurry Cosmos. Part of the visual language. Part of the world-building. Part of what it looks like to shop Black, support Black brands, and participate in an ecosystem that many of us say we want to see thrive.
And yet support is not the same thing as silence.
I am not interested in supporting a brand simply because a Black person made it.
I have watched too many industries recreate the same hierarchies they claim to resist.
I have seen it in arts organizations.
I have seen it in education.
I have seen it in fashion.
I have seen it in beauty.
I have seen it in Afro hair.
Again and again, branding becomes more important than relationships. Marketing becomes more important than care. Visibility becomes more important than infrastructure.
The story becomes more important than the people living inside it.
As a creative director, as an educator, as someone who builds worlds for a living, I notice these things.
I notice when a brand tells a beautiful story but has no systems to support the people participating in that story.
I notice when accessibility disappears the moment money changes hands.
I notice when customers are treated as transactions rather than collaborators.
And perhaps most importantly, I notice how difficult it is to have honest conversations about any of this.
People are afraid to tell the truth about their experiences.
People are afraid of being excluded.
People are afraid of losing access.
People are afraid of not belonging.
But I do not belong to these brands.
None of us do.
Brands are not communities simply because they use the language of community.
Brands are not families.
Brands are businesses.
If people stop paying them, they cease to exist.
That does not make them evil. It simply makes them accountable.
So when I talk about garments, I am never only talking about garments.
I am talking about relationships.
I am talking about trust.
I am talking about the stories we tell each other about value.
And I am talking about whether the people inside those stories are being treated with the same care that the products demand.
Because the story has to include me too.
My body.
My access needs.
My labor.
My creativity.
My money.
My humanity.
Otherwise it is not a community story.
It is just marketing.
Telfar might be the clearest example of what I am trying to describe.
The conversation around Telfar is often treated as if it is only a conversation about bags.
It isn’t.
It is a conversation about culture.
It is a conversation about aspiration.
It is a conversation about belonging.
It is a conversation about being seen.
The culture carried Telfar.
The culture sustained Telfar.
The culture made those bags iconic.
And yet, as someone who has purchased multiple Telfar products over the years, I have found myself increasingly questioning what exactly people are being asked to celebrate.
Some of the clothing pieces I own are genuinely fantastic.
The garments tell stories.
The garments feel intentional.
The garments feel designed.
The bags, however, left me with a very different experience.
For me, the material quality never matched the mythology.
The object itself never matched the story being told around it.
What fascinated me was realizing how much cultural value can accumulate around an object regardless of whether the object itself delivers the experience being promised.
People were not only buying a bag.
They were buying participation.
They were buying symbolism.
They were buying access to a cultural moment.
And there is nothing inherently wrong with that.
But if we are going to have honest conversations about supporting Black brands, then we also need honest conversations about quality, materials, durability, customer experience, accessibility, and care.
Those conversations cannot disappear simply because a company is Black-owned.
In fact, I would argue the opposite.
If we claim to care about Black futures, then our standards should become more rigorous, not less.
I do not need every brand to be luxury.
I do not care about luxury.
I do not care about status.
I do not care about designer labels.
What I care about is whether the object and the story are in relationship with one another.
If a company is charging premium prices, I want premium thinking.
I want thoughtful materials.
I want thoughtful construction.
I want thoughtful customer experiences.
I want products that respect the labor and resources required for someone to purchase them.
Because culture alone cannot carry a product forever.
At some point the object itself has to participate in the story.
And sometimes I find myself looking at makers using Nigerian leather, traditional textile techniques, hand-built production methods, and extraordinary craftsmanship and wondering why those conversations receive so much less attention than products that have become culturally fashionable.
That tension interests me.
Not because I want less for Telfar.
But because I want more for all of us.
And perhaps that is what I am learning.
Discernment is not disloyalty.
Critique is not betrayal.
Expecting care is not asking for too much.
I want Black brands to thrive.
I want African designers to thrive.
I want independent makers to thrive.
I want artists, craftspeople, garment makers, and dreamers to have the resources they need to build worlds larger than the ones we inherited.
But I also want us to tell the truth.
About quality.
About access.
About customer care.
About labor.
About infrastructure.
About what happens after the marketing campaign ends and a real person sends an email asking for help.
The story matters.
The object matters.
The relationship matters.
All three.
Because I am not interested in buying belonging.
I am interested in building relationships.
And if a garment becomes part of my life, part of my body, part of my rituals, part of my photographs, part of my workshops, part of my stories, then I believe I have earned the right to speak honestly about that experience.
Not because I hate the work.
But because I care about it.
The Bespokecurry Cosmos is full of garments.
Shoes.
Jewelry.
Objects.
Artifacts.
Things I adore.
But what I am actually collecting are relationships.
Some hold.
Some don’t.
And learning the difference might be one of the most valuable forms of adornment I own.
◍◈ I Adorn Tings — Who Gets to Build Black Fashion? (Continuation)
Cosmos Watershed
This essay asks what happens after representation succeeds at making Black fashion visible but fails to transform the infrastructure underneath it. Moving through garments, shoes, sizing, customer service, construction, repair, scarcity, fat embodiment, and the colonial inheritances embedded in fashion systems, it treats the body as both archive and stress test. Black ownership matters, but ownership alone cannot produce relationship, craftsmanship, accessibility, or accountability. The garment tells the truth because eventually every beautiful story has to survive contact with an actual body.
Cosmos Watershed
Watershed | Tributaries |
Watershed | Adornment as Infrastructure |
Relationship | Black fashion, embodiment, craftsmanship, customer relationship, accountability, accessibility, repair |
Hom(e)ie | |
Origin | Living with Black-designed garments and objects long enough for the distance between their branding, construction, bodily experience, and customer infrastructure to become visible. |
Expansion | Moves beyond representation and Black ownership to ask who receives the training, capital, manufacturing knowledge, apprenticeship, experimentation, repair systems, and institutional support required to actually build Black fashion differently. |
Application | Invites consumers, designers, makers, and cultural workers to evaluate fashion through the entire ecology surrounding an object: material, construction, fit, body, customer care, repair, infrastructure, and long-term relationship. |
Lineage | Black adornment, African fashion, fat embodiment, trans and nonbinary styling, craft knowledge, garment construction, shoe engineering, repair practices, Black consumer culture, apprenticeship, material literacy. |
Counter Currents | Representation without infrastructure, branding without craft, scarcity as value, colonial sizing systems, European bodily standards, hyperfemininity as default, consumer silence, visibility without accountability, customers as unpaid quality control. |
Cosmos Coordinates
Field | Entry |
Planetary Body | The Wata(ring) W(hole) |
Planet of Origin | I Adorn Tings |
Primary Water | Deep Water |
Secondary Water | Flowing Water |
Movement | Following an object beyond acquisition and allowing repeated wear, movement, weather, failure, repair, and time to reveal what its construction actually holds. |
Portal | The garment as evidence. |
Primary Technology | Embodied observation, material literacy, wear testing, repair, comparison, critique, long-term relationship. |
Cosmological Function | Repositions fashion as an ecosystem in which design, infrastructure, body, material, labor, customer care, access, and accountability cannot be separated from one another. |
Core Inquiry | Who gets to build Black fashion—and what are we actually building when we get access to do so? |
Threshold | Recognizing that representation and Black ownership can interrupt exclusion without necessarily interrupting the colonial infrastructures underneath fashion. |
Black Ecological Orientation | Black fashion becomes an ecology rather than an identity category: bodies, materials, makers, customers, knowledge, labor, resources, repair, and cultural memory exist in relationship and must be tended accordingly. |
Calabash Relationship | Every garment carries more than material: the knowledge that constructed it, the body that tests it, the money exchanged for it, the labor required to maintain it, the failures repaired within it, and the memories accumulated through wear. |
Wata(ring) W(hole) Relationship | Fashion enters the Wata(ring) W(hole) as an embodied environment. Garments regulate heat, movement, pressure, exposure, identity, sensory experience, and belonging; the body continually returns information to the system through use. |
Return Practice | When encountering an object you want to bring into your life, ask: What relationship is this object asking my body, labor, money, and attention to maintain? |
◍◈ I Adorn Tings-Who Gets to Build Black Fashion?
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