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Towards a decolonial feminist fashion design reading list

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2022

Tanveer Ahmed
Tanveer Ahmed*
Affiliation:
Senior Lecturer in Fashion/Fashion Communication and Race Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts Granary Building, 1 Granary Square London, N1C 4AAUnited Kingdom Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Although reading lists are an important part of curricula and play an essential role in decolonizing education, the work to diversify them can often neglect intersectional approaches that consider both racialized and gendered dimensions of knowledge construction. The consequence can be an additive approach in which black authors and authors of colour are included to diversify reading lists, reproducing racist and sexist biases. This paper examines how reading lists are constructed in curricula and presents an alternative decolonial feminist approach to creating a reading list in fashion design. The value of decolonial feminism lies in addressing the gaps in thinking by using a racialized and gendered framework. The Decolonizing the Curriculum Toolkit project at Westminster University, UK is introduced to which the author contributed a Decolonising Fashion Design Reading List, as an example of counter-hegemonic curricula which aimed to reveal the unequal power dynamics that support colonial logics in fashion design education. Exposing hegemonic distinctions in fashion that represent Western fashion as modern and non-Western fashion as traditional can then allow marginalized and excluded fashion narratives to become centred. Such an approach can then provide a key tool towards building a more pluralised and de-hierarchised set of fashion design resources.

Type
Research Article
Information
Art Libraries Journal , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 9 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of ARLIS

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