Native/American Fashion: Inspiration, Appropriation and Cultural Identity - Mobility and Cultural Identity

Summary: Native/American Fashion: Inspiration, Appropriation, and Cultural Identity explores fashion as a creative endeavor and an expression of cultural identity, the history of Native fashion, issues of problematic cultural appropriation in the field, and examples of creative collaborations and best practices between Native designers and fashion brands. In this segment, we hear from the fourth panelist to speak on the topic Mobility and Cultural Identity Through Fashion, Daniel James Cole of the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York. His talk is titled Everything’s Better with War Bonnet on It! Daniel James Cole teaches in the Fashion Design program at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, and in Graduate Costume Studies at New York University. He is co-author, with Nancy Deihl, of The History of Modern Fashion (Laurence King, 2015) and has presented at academic conferences internationally. His areas of expertise include religiously motivated dress, and Malaysian and Indonesian dress and textiles. He has curated two exhibitions for OPERA America/National Opera Center: Martin Palkedinaz: A Tribute (2013) and Divas of the Gilded Age (2015). Earlier this month, Cole presented the paper “Indigenous Invention: Hide Clothing of the Plains Indians as a Sustainability Paradigm” at New York University at another symposium in conjunction with the Native Fashion Now exhibition.