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  • Woke-ish
  • Allyson Nadia Field (bio)

For Glamour's celebration of International Day of the Girl on October 11, 2017, television star and Harvard freshman Yara Shahidi wore a sweatshirt by the clothing brand HSTRY, co-founded by Kiran Goraya and Nas (celebrated rapper and Shahidi's cousin).1 She posted a photo taken against the event's publicity banner on Instagram, as did her stylist, Jason Bolden, who tagged it "When Ur #Glamour Is Woke!!!"2 The idea of woke style was picked up by Channing Hargrove on Refinery 29, who called Shahidi's top a "woke sweatshirt."3 A week earlier, Vanessa Friedman had asked the readers of the New York Times, "What Does a 'Woke Woman' Wear?" in her (under-whelmed) review of Paris Fashion Week (Spring 2018 Ready-to-Wear).4 Bolden and Shahidi could be seen as answering this query, at least offering a model of what one actress/activist would wear.

The $38 sweatshirt displays a graphic of two Black women's faces in adjacent blue color-blocks.

One face looks upward aspirationally, while its twin holds a knife and menaces an unseen subject. The lines "respect existence" and "or expect resistance" frame the color blocks, aligning "resistance" with the second figure. Shahidi's stylist paired the sweatshirt with a bright red angora-blend skirt patterned with contrast turquoise bead embroidery of a grain motif from Prada's Fall 2017 collection ($3,390.00). If the sweatshirt connoted wokeness, its pairing with the skirt suggested woke glamour.


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Figure 1.

Photo of Yara Shahidi wearing a HSTRY sweatshirt (October 11, 2017). Photo by Craig Barritt, permission of Getty Images.

As Sarah Mower noted in Vogue, the collection recalls Miuccia Prada's student days when she [End Page 217] was "wrapped up for a time in the left-wing Italian politics of the '70s," for the collection draws from the past both in its style and staging, as the movie posters that adorned the Fall 2017 Ready-to-Wear runway show suggested. For instance, a poster at the mouth of the runway declared, "We have decided to look at the role women had in the shaping of modern society, their political participation and social achievements." To the Vogue reporter, Prada merely said, "I don't want to be political. Not officially political. […] I have to … sneak it in."5 Prada escalated this commitment with the Spring 2018 collection. This collection also was covered by Mower for Vogue, and she opened her review of the show with the exhortation, "The time has come to put away bourgeois, girly playthings and get militant." Prada's political ambitions were aligned with, and perhaps more successful than, those of the other houses, whose Paris Fashion Week debuts left Friedman uninspired. As Mower noted, "These Prada riot girls were in sync with the 'woke' generation's sensibilities."6

Prada might be the woke luxe couturier of the moment, though the house has a long history of anti-snobbery design (if not corresponding commercial practice). The pairing of the red angora skirt with the HSTRY sweatshirt makes a certain degree of sense in relation to this history. But what is this outfit actually conveying? The skirt, in combination with Shahidi's polished look (makeup, jewelry, beige heels), softens the wokeness of the ensemble, making it more accessible for consumption (as the publicity backdrop labeled with Glamour, Condé Nast, and Maybelline likewise brand her appearance). But we could think about this outfit further. The botanical design evoking a staple crop seems at odds with the sweatshirt's assertive appeal. Aesthetically, the turquoise beading riffs on the sweatshirt's blue color blocks and the bright red skirt underscores—literally—the aggressive visage of the "or expect resistance" figure. But considering the agrarian allusion of the skirt, its price-point and juxtaposition with the sweatshirt seem grotesque. The high/low contrast of the pairing is troubled by the reference to agrarian life—and thereby to labor. Further, the slogan "respect existence or expect resistance" has long been invoked by labor movements.

Shahidi's outfit prompts one to ask, "Is woke glamour resistance or collusion?" Or does it instead...

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