‘Specimens of Coiffures’: Hair, Fashion, Race and Ethnicity
- Submitting institution
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Royal College of Art(The)
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Cheang2
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- Studies in Textiel 5: Haar (Studies in textile 5: Hair)
- Publisher
- Textielcommissie
- ISBN
- 9789082128840
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This peer-reviewed article examines representations of hair at the boundaries of ethnography and fashion, to complicate the ways in which hair has functioned as the biological evidence of insurmountable ethnic difference and to explore the potential of fashion cultures to challenge such separations of cultures and peoples.
The article traces the social dynamics of European fashion across both early twentieth-century anthropological writing and popular journalism, arguing for the presence and impact of fashion as a disruptive factor, even in scientific enquiry. Primary source analysis of ethnographic photography, anthropological collections and diagrams, fashionable hairstyles such as the bob and the ‘Chinese’ hairstyle, and the global hair trade, is used to show how late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European notions of ‘race’ were challenged by the superficiality and ephemerality of fashion. This work brings together disparate fields of cultural production and knowledge in new ways that produce a new dialogue around hair and racial identities.
The article was developed through an invitation to speak at the Textielcommissie.nl spring symposium on hair and fashion (Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 2016). As a result of presenting this work in progress, I was invited to contribute to the monograph on artist Silvia B. that accompanied her retrospective solo show ‘Of Beauty and Doubt’ (Rijksmusuem, Twenthe, 2017). Other invitations to speak that followed included the panel discussions at the Good Hair Festival (Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, 2016), and the Hair Human Stories exhibition (Library Space, London, 2018), as well as a keynote for ‘The Spaces of Hair’ conference (Somerset House, London, 2016).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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