1/5 Working-class Black women are “ingenious purveyors of fashion,” but their influence has been ignored, @charlienchargie writes. Designer Charles Harbison reflects on how women like his mom and grandmother wrote their own beauty narratives. theatlantic.com/culture/archiv…
2/5 Harbison’s mom worked at a tool factory, but on the weekends “she became a sexy Donna Karan power woman,” he writes. 
3/5 Harbison’s grandma was a factory knitter. But the “smell of machinery” and “lint littering her short cropped hair” vanished on the weekends: “Her hair and cocoa complexion served as the perfect canvas for the silky sheaths and matching clutch-and-pump sets she preferred.”
4/5 “I think about the Black women of the ’50s and ’60s, service workers anchored in the civil-rights movement,” Harbison writes. “They used clothing and accessories as mechanisms for freedom, dressing with a sense of strategy and deliberacy.”
5/5 “These women have inspired every illustration and idea that has come from my hands and found its way to the bodies of people around the world,” he writes. They can show us “a better way forward.” theatlantic.com/culture/archiv…
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