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 first panelist to speak on the topic Mobility and Cultural Identity Through Fashion, Anna Blume of the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York. Her talk is titled Fluidity of Referents: Maya Appropriations and Adornments. Anna Blume is a professor in the History of Art Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, where she teaches courses on pre-Columbian and South Asian cultures with a particular focus on the relationship between photography and archaeology and art and ethics. She recently studied ancient monumental architecture and sculpture in the Mississippi Valley and is working on a long-term project at the American Museum of Natural History on archaic Native North American lithics. Previous studies have included Maya concepts of zero and pre-Columbian images of human animal hybridity.