POLITICIZING BLACK MEN'S FASHION

TOUGH GUYS MARCH AHEAD, AN IMAGE THAT IS EMPHATICALLY MALE

High Noon by Fred Zimmerman with Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, 1952

The documentary Black Dandy, a Political Beauty uses the march to claim "the art of opposition by style," while in fact reinforcing authority...

Seen on the French television station Canal + (in 2015)

The dark-suited models do not touch, take themselves ultra-seriously and advance like a posse.

Props: the school bus, implicitly conservative because associated with small-town America, and the white hat, like a law-and-order sheriff.

...while Sapeurs use it for satire :

The colorfully-dressed models link arms fraternally and by recalling the colonial helmet, the white hat taunts masters as a whole.

One image boosts the status quo,
the other mocks it.

End of this section.

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II, 3. 5. f.

Textiles, tailors and roots