The Fashion Industry’s Appropriation of Bantu Knots
Yet again, the fashion industry didn’t fail to dismiss Blacks’ contributions within the industry. Bantu knots have served as a protective style for Black women for centuries. However, white designers such as Marc Jacobs didn’t find it problematic to introduce it to the European fashion world as a new, modern trend.
Allure Magazine’s Afro Tutorial
Back in August, Allure Magazine, a beauty publication mainly targeting young white women, featured a step-by-step tutorial that showed how to turn straight hair into an Afro, but there was no mention of it’s cultural context. The model in the image was a white woman donning Afro-textured hair The heading read as follows: “Yes (You Can) Have An Afro*even if you have straight hair.”