Clothing and Fashion in Southern History ed. by Ted Ownby and Becca Walton (review)
- Clothing and Fashion in Southern History ed. by Ted Ownby and Becca Walton
The hand-drawn image reproduced on the cover of Clothing and Fashion in Southern History depicts four mid-twentieth-century women in form-fitting shirts and horizontally striped skirts; it is not immediately apparent that the women represent prisoners at Mississippi's notorious Parchman prison. Drawn in 1954 by Albert Lee, an inmate at Parchman, the image also graced the cover of Inside World, the publication produced by Parchman inmates. A small group of women inmates made uniforms for the entire prison population. Inside World proves to be a compelling source examined by Becca Walton, who is both a coeditor of and a contributor to this slim collection of six essays documenting the making, mending, wearing, and selling of clothing in the South from the mid-nineteenth century through the 1980s.
Walton's essay is one of the standouts in a wide-ranging collection that seeks to grapple with a rather ambitious and unwieldy subject, southern fashion. Of course, countless historians have examined the food, music, and folkways of the [End Page 350] South, and several southern museums boast impressive costume and textile collections. However, Clothing and Fashion in Southern History is the first to treat the subject of southern clothing in one discrete volume. As the introductory essay notes, "If one adds the word 'southern' to the word clothing, it's not clear where to begin" (p. vii).
Chronologically, the collection begins with Katie Knowles's essay, which examines the evolution, making, and marketing of what was known as "negro cloth" in the antebellum period (p. 7). Knowles builds on the earlier arguments of scholars such as Shane White and Graham White and Linda K. Baumgarten, who have demonstrated that enslaved people used patchwork and bright dyes to forge individual identities and an African American aesthetic. Knowles provides fresh insights on the unrecognized labor of enslaved women who creatively improvised clothing, often by reusing old textiles. Arguing that "race operated as a part of the fashion system in America," Knowles offers insight that echoes through many of the essays in this collection (p. 21).
Other essays include Susannah Walker's examination of how racism pervaded the Works Progress Administration sewing programs through which Black women sought to make ends meet in the New Deal South, carving out autonomous lives for their families. William Sturkey's fine essay on the Mississippi Poor People's Corporation also reveals the ways working-class Black women "used clothing manufacture as a mode of activism and resistance" (p. 111). In doing so, Sturkey convincingly argues that their labor and activism must be situated in the context of the Black Power movement.
As Jonathan Prude notes in the conclusion, the collection presents "no sustained claim of an identifiable southern style of clothing," yet these essays prompt readers to interrogate the relationship between clothing and power across "southern settings" (p. 142). The most salient theme across the essays is women's adaptive creation, use, and reuse of clothing. This volume is written in accessible language and makes notable contributions to our understanding of how clothing intersects with race, gender, and identity more broadly. It should engage a wide range of readers, especially those who are interested in gaining a more nuanced understanding of southern women's work.
