I’m the first to admit I don’t really get tumblr.
I guess it’s like cocaine: easy to use, instantly gratifying, trendy to the point of omnipresence wherever Hip Young Things are found (I’d call them bright but none that I’ve met particularly fit that description, plus it’s Monday morning and I do my best not to make Evelyn Waugh take a rotating dirt nap until Tuesday after lunch at the very earliest) and totally, utterly lost on me.
Whither the allure?
Whither the context?
Okay okay, I dabbled for a while in the F*ck Yeah Xabi Alonso tumblr, but even that got old quick. It was, as we say in Texas, all hat and no cattle.
Then I came across Of Another Fashion, an elegantly-curated collection documenting “the not-quite-hidden but too often ignored fashion histories of U.S. women of color”
it
is
brilliant.
Brilliant and gorgeous and heartbreaking and empowering and thought-provoking (you must read the “For the camera, you smile” on blog-founder professor Minh-Ha T. Pham’s decision to include images taken in the internment camps for Japanese-Americans the U.S. government set up in the wake of Pearl Harbor).
The experience of being a member of one historically underrepresented group in fashion (big girls) poring through a collection dedicated to another historically underrepresented group in fashion was…complex.
Of Another Fashion is a group-sourced blog and my favorite entries come with abstracts on the subjects, often the submitter’s own relative.
Go have a look.
Thanks for the recommendation; I zipped on over, and was equally impressed. I admit that I use Tumblr for my own blog because I like the varied, easily-modifiable design options, but I agree with you that the platform setup often seems to encourage a lot of regurgitation with very little actual thought.
Comment by Missie Sue — July 24, 2012 @ 5:55 am
I love Of Another Fashion. It used to update much more often, but seems to be languishing recently.
Comment by Louise — July 24, 2012 @ 10:37 pm
I also do not get Tumblr and I also thought it was for the young and foolish, so thank you for introducing me to Of Another Fashion. Very excited about it and such a great reminder of what I’ve been missing in my time away from this fabulous blog.
(Hey, whatever happened to Francesca?)
Comment by Ambrosia Jones — August 1, 2012 @ 5:20 pm