The Nude and the Plaid: Camouflage & Community

The nexus of my research exists where obfuscation meets a shared culture. In thinking about fashion inequality, I became obsessed with a colorway that seemed to sum it up: nude. What color is nude? Why do women wear items that are the same color as their skin or someone else's? These questions slowly led me back to a very old Jamaican skirt, and my inquiries, mixed with current anxieties, racial and otherwise, turned towards a very old revelation: the best way to fight and survive is to let the other believe that you are on their side, at least when it counts.

The Jamaican Independence skirt connects Jamaicans to their European history at first glance, but I posit that its existence was actually a call back to their West African origins with evidence of the plaid dating back to the 16th century, or when European tradesmen would have first encountered it and began to absorb it as their own. Blending in with colonizers while honoring their African heritage is both beauty and resistance. Stepping into another’s skin because that is your only choice may be something else, still on trend, but on some else’s terms. My paper will explore the intertwining relevance of these survival conundrums pulling from psychology (Stockholm syndrome), linguistics (language as symbol), and the economics of power (makers vs. consumers).