Advisory boards of external experts are becoming a trend at fashion houses: after last December some of the fantasy charms in the Pradamalia range were deemed offensive as they seemed to evoke blackface, Miuccia Prada created a diversity council, hoping to organise a group of enlightened minds ready to educate people to the art of inclusiveness. In a similar way, after Gucci was forced to pull from stores a balaclava jumper with a a cut-out mouth and red lips that summoned up blackface imagery, the brand stated it will hire new figures such as global and regional directors for diversity and inclusion and launch a series of multicultural programs focused on diversity and inclusivity awareness and global exchange.
Yet a good way for brands to avoid falling into certain faux pas could be to study a bit better history and explore collections preserved in museums that may show connections between fashion and slavery.
Glasgow Museums have collected on a dedicated site articles about Scotland and slavery, some of them revolving around textiles and cotton.
One of the posts on its blog focuses on a piece that could be filed under the craft category - a colourful needlework panel depicting a lady walking among flowering plants, fruit trees and exotic birds with a page, an enslaved African boy in an elaborate yellow uniform (hinting at the fact that he worked for a wealthy family) carrying her trail.
The scene, vividly depicted in multi-coloured threads, actually refers to a painful page of history: young African and Asian boys and girls were indeed brought back to Britain by slave traders, merchants and high-ranking naval officers and were trained to become domestic servants. Young black enslaved pages appear as train-bearers in different portraits and illustrations, such as Nicholas Bonnart's "Dame de la Cour" print (about 1678–93; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art).
"It is as if a black page was merely the latest accessory a fashionable lady should have," Rebecca Quinton, Research Manager at the Art Department at the Glasgow Museums' collections states in one of her posts.
Quinton also focuses on some of the white cotton dresses from the early 19th century included in 2015 in the exhibition "A Century of Style: Costume and Colour 1800-1899", at Glasgow's Kelvingrove Museum.
Their silhouettes point at neoclassical styles and evoke heroines hoplessly in love in romantic novels. Yet there's a terrible dichotomy behind these designs: their romantic and feminine details clash indeed with the history of the fabric used to make theses dresses - cotton - pointing at the exploitation of slaves.
Cotton became fashionable around the 1770s and cotton muslins were imported as woven cloth from Bengal; by the late 1700s raw cotton started being imported from the southern states of America and the West Indies. Cotton plantations in these areas were owned or managed by Scots, and cotton was sewn and harvested by enslaved men, women and children brought over from Africa as part of the transatlantic slave trade, or by their descendants.
Imported via Clyde ports, the raw cotton balls were spun and woven by cotton mills in Scotland (many of them were based in Glasgow and in the surrounding areas). Cotton was then embroidered, dyed or printed, and sold in Scotland or exported.
Among the Glasgow cotton merchants there was also James Finlay & Co. and when Kirkman Finlay took over his father's firm in 1790 he expanded the business, becoming the leading importer of raw cotton and exporter of cotton yarn. The cotton he imported from New Orleans was the product of slave labour in the plantations of Southern America and his profits were made from slavery.
Scottish cotton manufacturer David Dale, founder of the New Lanark cotton mills in 1785, worked as apprenticeship with a hand-loom weaver in Paisley and then became a linen merchant in Glasgow. In 1784 he met and went into partnership with Richard Arkwright, who had patented a spinning frame machine in 1769 and a cotton carding machine in 1775.
Dale worked with cotton sown, cultivated and harvested by enslaved men, women and children on plantations in the West Indies and in North and South America, yet, while his fortune was based on the slave economy, he was interested in the rights of workers and in philanthropy. In 1791 Dale became the chair of the Glasgow Society instituted for the purpose of co-operating with the other Societies in Great Britain in their endeavours to effect the Abolition of the African Slave Trade.
Dale died in 1806, a year before the Slave Trade Act 1807 abolished the British transatlantic slave trade, but historians highlight how the cotton entrepreneur supported the improvement of conditions for workers, but we don't know if he would have agreed with the abolition of slavery for the workers on the plantations that supplied his business.
Pieces preserved in museums may look like relics from ancient history to some of us, especially to younger generations, but they should make us ponder: if you read more about the history behind certain garments preserved in some collections, you realise that their terrible but invisible legacy of slavery lives on in what we wear and consume nowadays, products that are often the results of modern slavery (can we make sure the supply chain can become free from slavery?). In the same way certain images like the ones of Vogue Brazil editor Donata Meirelles celebrating her birthday on a throne-like seat with two black women in traditional dress standing either side of her (posted on Instagram in mid-February and deleted after it was criticised on social media for being racially insensitive and evoking slavery and colonialism; Meirelles resigned since then, while Vogue Brazil apologised and said it would form a panel of experts and academics to address concerns about inequality at the publication, yes as stated at the beginning of this piece, panel of experts are trending...) are directly linked to that needlework image of a lady with the page used as fashion accessory.
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