khimararchives

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Advertisement for Faiz Fashions by Karimah Faiz in the Bilailan News from 1978.  Faiz’s designs combines Western styles with the “eloquence of Eastern-Arabian” aesthetics.

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Interview with new model, Kadija Diawara

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This is a great piece written in response to a letter published by Spelman College professors who were opposed to Spelman faculty, staff, and students participating in World Hijab Day.

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This cartoon, which was published in the May 23, 1969 edition of Muhammad Speaks, is clearly a play on the title of Mike Wallace and Louis Lomax’s 1959 documentary that introduced that American public to the Nation of Islam, The Hate that Hate Produced. In the cartoon, Black women are criticized for imitating the styles of white women, ignoring their Original Self and sartorial practices.

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Check out this short piece I wrote for Sapelo Square about Ayana Ife and the history of Black American Muslim women’s fashion.

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Ayana Ife debuted her collection, “Evolution”, at the Fall 2017 NYFW as a part of Project Runway Season 16, where she was the runner-up.  Ayana was the first Muslim woman to be featured on Project Runway.  

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Mattel just released it’s first Barbie wearing a hijab, which is modeled after Olympic fencing champion and modest fashion designer, Ibtihaj Muhammad.

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Ella Little-Collins at Northeastern University’s Black History Week in February 1973.  She established the Sarah A. Little School of Preparatory Arts in Boston.  Following the assassination of her brother, Malcolm X, she took over the Organization of Afro-American Unity.  

Her headwrap and the matching fabric that drapes over her left shoulder may have come from Ghana, where she sent several students to study as the leader of the OAAU.

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I’m reading Judith Weisenfeld’s new book, New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity During the Great Migration (NYU, 2017).  Part II provides an extensive overview of dress practices by members of the Nation of Islam and the Moorish Science Temple of America.  In September, the Black Perspectives and the Journal of Africana Studies hosted an online roundtable on the book.

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The first image comes from Kendrick Lamar’s video, Element.  It is clearly a reference to Gordon Parks’ iconic image of Ethel Muhammad Sharrieff, the oldest daughter of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Clara Muhammad, and other members of the NOI.  The image is part of a larger series called Black Muslims.  Sharrieff served as the national captain of the Muslim Girls Training (MGT), where women and girls learned the NOI’s gender ideology and skills such as sewing and cooking.   According to the Chicago Tribune, during the 1960s and 1970s, she managed the NOI’s clothing factory and a store.  She encouraged her father to relax the women’s official dress code, which consisted of a headscarf that left the neck and lower ear lobes exposed and long dresses or skirts. For more on the women in the NOI, check out Dawn-Marie Gibson and Jamillah Karim’s book, Women of the Nation, or Ula Taylor’s book, The Promise of Patriarchy.

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Fashion show at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival featuring designs by Lubna Muhammad, the founder of Lubna Originals.  The fashion show was apart of The Will to Adorn: African American Dress and the Aesthetics of Identity research project curated by Dr. Diana Baird N’Diaye.

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#KhimarArchives #BeingBlackAndMuslim

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Great article from Dr. Su’ad Abdul Khabeer.

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Halima Aden by Sebastian Faena for Harper’s Bazaar, May 2017

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A history of headwraps across the African continent and a brief clip of the NOI in the 1960s.