Darnell-Jamal Lisby
New York
Darnell Jamal Lisby is a fashion historian, curator, and broadcaster based in New York. In his curatorial work for the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, he contributed to the organization of the museum’s 2020 exhibition, Willi Smith: Street Couture. He has contributed to a range of mainstream publication, as well as curatorial efforts at esteemed institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, Cooper Hewitt, and the Museum at FIT.
Philip Harris
New York
Philip Harris is a fashion photographer, multimedia journalist and content strategist.
Es-pranza Humphrey
New York
Es-pranza Humphrey is a historian of Black studies and museum educator. Her latest research endeavors focus on the history of fashion as activism for Black women.
Samarth Puthanmadhom
Lakeville, CT
Samarth Puthanmadhom is a junior at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, CT, where he is dedicated to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and has a great passion for fashion.
Joyce Gayo
Washington, D.C.
Joyce is an MFA Fashion Design student at Howard University in Washington, D.C, USA. Her work includes historical references of the French Colonial period of the 17th & 18th century in the West Indies.
Joey S. Kim
Toledo, OH
Joey S. Kim is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Toledo. She researches global Anglophone culture and aesthetics with a focus on how Orientalist subjects and environments take shape in literary and artistic objects.
Aaron Francis
Toronto
Aaron T. Francis is a doctoral student at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, a multidisciplinary artist, and a curator. The former chair of the City of Kitchener’s Arts and culture advisory committee, Aaron has exhibited works from his Vintage Black Canada™ initiative at the University of Waterloo Art Gallery, Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener + Area (CAFKA), BAND Gallery Toronto, the Gladstone Hotel and the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).
Alex Perry
Evanston, IL
Alex Perry is a bilingual journalist. She advises for the Wall Street Journal’s magazine, Noted, and is a guest editor for The Guardian US 2020 Climate Change issue. She studies at Northwestern University, where she is pursuing a double major in Journalism and International Studies with a minor in Economics.
Jareh Das
Lagos / London
Jareh Das is a Lagos and London based curator, writer, and researcher. She holds a Ph.D. in Curating Art and Science from Royal Holloway, University of London for her thesis ‘Bearing Witness: On Pain in Performance’ (2018).
Kanika Talwar
New York
Kanika Talwar is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Fashion Media at LIM College in New York City. She focuses on print and digital editorial articles and specializing in fashion, culture, lifestyle, and travel. Her studies have helped further her passion for the historical heritage of luxury Maisons, reviewing and dissecting runway collections, and culturally diverse fashion. After concluding her studies, Kanika plans to pursue postgraduate education in fashion journalism and work in editorial.
Tayana Fincher
Providence, RI
Tayana Fincher is the Volunteer & Interpretation Coordinator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and former Nancy Prophet Fellow in Costume & Textiles at the RISD Museum. She received her B.A. in Art History and History from Williams College, and curated “It Comes in Many Forms: Islamic Art from the Collection” at RISD in 2020. Her research analyzes continuity and pluralism in the diaspora arts of African and Islamic regions.
Dr. Lisette Ordorica Lasater
San Marcos, CA
Dr. Lisette Ordorica Lasater is an Assistant Professor of English at Palomar College in San Marcos, California. Her areas of research include Chicana/Latina literature and cultural studies, Chicana feminism, and theatre and performance studies.
Faith Cooper
New York
Camay Abraham
London
Camay is a journalist, researcher and fashion psychologist from London College of Fashion with a master’s degree in fashion psychology. She has written for publications including Dazed, Screen Shot, and her style platform, Reflekt Magazine.
Caroline Karungari Muthiga-Oyekunle
New York
Carol Muthiga-Oyekunle is a Kenyan-American artist and accessories designer. An eternal New Yorker, she began her career in advertising and graphic design before launching her first jewelry and accessories line in 2001. In 2009, she followed her heart and moved to Paris, and took a hiatus to raise her daughters Chiara Lola and Siena Lorenza.
Balbir K. Singh
Los Angeles
Balbir K. Singh is scholar of cultural theory, critical race and gender studies, and anti-colonial thought. Currently, she is at work on her first book, Militant Bodies: Racial/Religious Opacity and Minoritarian Self-Defense, which looks at the visual culture and body politics of Muslims, Sikhs, and other minoritarian subjects under the rise of global Islamophobia and contemporary surveillance culture.
Samantha Haran
Brisbane, AU
Samantha Haran is a fashion and culture writer, academic tutor, creative and Honours Law student at the University of Queensland in Australia.
Fashioning The Self
Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom predominately explores the intersections between slavery and fashion. This digital humanities project is also an entry point for exploring larger questions of race, identity, and equity. Fashioning the Self presents original content, articles, archival images, and videos with explanatory captions on social media platforms.
Anu Lingala
New York
Anu is a trend forecaster, brand strategist, and founder of Revisionary: a space dedicated to reframing our aesthetic vision and decolonizing our aspirations by centering BIPOC-owned brands. She also helped launch Public Service: a platform and creative studio working to advance equity in imagemaking. Anu has always been passionate about applying sociocultural and historical analysis to contemporary industry contexts. She holds a BS in Apparel Design from Cornell University and an MA in History of Design from the Royal College of Art, where her dissertation examined cultural appropriation in fashion.
Michelle Guo
Melbourne, AU
Michelle is an emerging fashion/art curator, writer and historian. She holds a B.A (Hons) majoring in Art History and Sociology from University of Melbourne. Her Honour’s thesis critiqued the rise of fashion exhibitions in museum spaces. She is interested in interactions and intersections of art and fashion with culture more broadly.
Nancy Micklewright
Nancy Micklewright writes about the history of photography and fashion history in the Ottoman Empire with a focus on gender, and is currently working on her new book, Dressing for the Camera, Fashion and Photography in the late Ottoman Empire (wt). Through 2019 she was Head of Public and Scholarly Engagement at the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries. She has a Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania in the History of Islamic Art and Architecture.
Kathryn C
Treonna Turner
Paris
Treonna Turner is currently entering her second year of the MA fashion studies program at Parson School of Design in Paris, France. She is currently using her time to focus on her dissertation research, while using her fashion history expertise, archival skills and fashion design experience to be a freelance writer. Her mission is to democratize, re-present, and re-package fashion for people of color.
Dan Hastings
London
Dan Hastings is an award-winning journalist based in London. His work focuses on the intersections between pop culture, politics, gender, power and fame. He is a contributor to Attitude Magazine, British Vogue, Business of Fashion, French Marie Claire, Teen Vogue and French Vanity Fair, among others.
Ameera Steward
Ameera Steward is a freelance journalist and photojournalist who considers herself a voice for Black stories. She has written about the likes of Stevona Elem-Rogers, Keisha Knight Pulliam, April Ryan, Aurora James, and more. But throughout her career she found she neglected a very integral part of herself – the fashion historian. Her current goal is to continue telling Black stories, but from the fashion lens.
Zari Alyssa Taylor
New York
Zari Taylor is a current graduate student in the Communications department at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Her research interests include black digital culture, fashion and performative allyship. She is originally from New York City.
Angela Tate
Evanston, IL
Angela Tate is a PhD Candidate in History at Northwestern University, where her research looks at Black women’s internationalism and performance through material culture, radio, and texts. Her work has been highlighted at numerous conferences and publications, and she also has an extensive background in public history.
Rikki Byrd
Chicago
Rikki Byrd is a writer, educator and curator, with research interests in Black studies, performance studies, fashion studies and art history. Her research has been published in several academic journals and books, and exhibition catalogs. She has also written for Teen Vogue, Artsy, and Hyperallergic, among several other media outlets. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in African American Studies at Northwestern University.
Elizabeth Way
New York
Elizabeth Way is Assistant Curator of Costume at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Her exhibitions include, Global Fashion Capitals (2015), Black Fashion Designers (2016), Fabric In Fashion (2018), and Head to Toe (2021). Way’s personal research focuses on the intersection of African American culture and fashion. She edited the book Black Designers in American Fashion (2021). Way holds an M.A. in Costume Studies from New York University.
Kai Toussaint Marcel
Los Angeles
Kai (they/them) is an aspiring cultural and fashion historian. Their work centers the body politics of beauty, clothing, identity, glamour and style and their interactions with the meaning-making functions of the fashion system. Their work also attempts to decolonize exclusionary historical discourses by centering the histories of queer and Black peoples who have been systematically obscured from collective memory. Kai is a recent graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, where they received a BA in Art History and the Cultural History of Dress and Fashion.
Nicole K. Rivas
New York
Nicole K. Rivas is a fashion historian, archivist, and researcher. She examines the entanglements between archives, objects, and women’s history across contexts to preserve the stories of worn clothes. Her mission is to materialize accessibility not only in the 21st century but for research needs a hundred years from now.
Become a Contributor
The Fashion and Race Database seeking contributors to publish original content, particularly essays or opinion pieces, and short profiles of Objects that Matter, or profiles of significant fashion figures. We also invite you to submit events and announcements. We are currently accepting submissions for publication in 2022-23.
Objects That Matter [500-800 words]
A short profile overview of an object in fashion: both its cultural origins and enumerated examples of its global reach/influence or even appropriation. Please see this example for an idea of length and the full description for this section of the website. Pitch an...
Profiles [500-800 words]
A profile of select racialized people who have shaped the history and business of fashion in the face of structural racism and adversity. Please see the full description for this section of the website. Pitch a profile using the form found on the Contact Us page (link...
Essays & Op-Eds [1200-1500 words]
We are looking for essays or opinion pieces that amplify voices and writing of racialized scholars, students, artists, archivists, curators, business professionals and more. We are particularly seeking pieces that are timely and address issues or nuances related to...
‘Our Fashion History’ [500-800 words, 3-5 photos]
Based upon an activity that Founder Kim Jenkins would facilitate during fashion history class or during her ‘Fashion and Justice’ workshops, ‘Our Fashion History’ invites contributors to present an essay that describes 3-5 family/personal photos, ultimately bringing a...