At our first meeting for the In Situ Graduate School, Textile and Dyes as Transnational, Global Knowledge in Leiden the Netherlands, each participant shared an object, image, textile, etc. that holds meaning for particular reasons. I decided to share a pin that I purchased in Chicago, IL at the Silver Room boutique. The pin features Patrick Kelly (1954-1990), an African American fashion designer who came to fame in France, and was the first American designer to be admitted to the Chambre syndicale du prêt-à-porter des couturiers et des créateurs de mode.

I was immediately captivated by this pin when I saw it for a number of reasons, the main one being that it is a form a dress, a modification that I can make to my own appearance, in the name of Black fashion history. I imagined myself wearing the pin on my denim jackets and tote bags. When I learned of Kelly’s legacy, I was captivated by it; here was a Black fashion designer who I had never heard of before who became known as one of the greatest. 

In his designs, Kelly often centered his Black and southern USA-raised identities—reclaiming the galliwog (a historically racist symbol of the Black race) and adopting the use of buttons all over his designs to represent the memory of his grandmother. His innovativeness, courage to reclaim, and expression of memory are admirable and inspire my own research where I explore how style and the personal fashion archive (or the wardrobe) can be understood as moments of memory preservation and curation, and how the styled body can be an embodiment of memory.