Ep 38: Cultural Appropriation

Monocycle with Leandra Medine

Monocycle

Arts

4.9 • 779 Ratings

🗓️ 23 September 2016

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Not to beat a horse that has been killed multiple times already but in this week's episode of Monocycle, we reopen the conversation around the dreadlocks at the Marc Jacobs Spring 2017 runway show. It's not to throw more shade, or say anything that hasn't already been said, but rather, to talk about two larger problems. The first is, of course, cultural appropriation and the overarching blindspot of the privilege that occurs outside of a minority. It's a huge coup that this is becoming less tolerable and acceptable as our society evolves, but I wonder, as the outrage machine continues firing up, when we've constructively added to the conversation vs. just made noise. Designers, artists -- all creatives, really -- build their collections on reference. There is no art, at least as we know it, without the act of riffing, but the solution isn't pulling ideas from the sky, shutting ourselves off to the incredibly rich cultures of both yore and now. On the contrary, it's proper accreditation and more importantly, the second step towards becoming better people, it's doing something (not just saying something!) to give back to the culture from which you're borrowing. So here, I speak with our new editorial director, Leslie Price, who wrote the original Man Repeller story on the Marc Jacobs show on what we're doing, and stuff like that. As always, this podcast is only as valuable as the feedback you provide, so... Related Stories: On Cultural Appropriation, Racism and Fashion’s Blind Spots Let’s Talk About It: Diversity in Fashion MR Round Table: We Need to Talk About Race A Letter from Leandra: We’ve Updated Our Mission Statement In partnership with Squarespace. Logo by Kelly Shami - legsny.com/ Edited by Nicholas Quazzy Alexander

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This episode of Monocicle is brought to you by the very aproposk
0:11.1	Squarespace, the easiest way to create a blog or website.
0:16.5	And for a limited time, you can get 10% off your first purchase by using the code Monocicle at checkout.
0:25.0	Together forever, you'll stay in my browser and I will love you.
0:37.0	Hi, welcome back to Monocicle, a podcast by Man Repeller, hosted by Leander Medine.
0:42.2	You know, I've been thinking a lot about the Mark Jacobs incident of last week.
0:46.3	For the uninitiated, here's a brief summary.
0:49.1	Mark Jacobs showed his spring summer 2017 collection, and the collection was really inspired by rave culture.
0:56.1	On each of the models were dreadlocks sewed into their hair. Of course this is problematic
1:01.8	out of the gates. The minute I saw that hair on the runway, all I could think was Mark Jacobs
1:06.8	is going to have his ass handed to him after this show. But the more I thought about it, the more it occurred to me that it wasn't actually the dreadlocks that were a problem so much as it was the accreditation and the response of Mark Jacobs. So when Mark Jacobs' hairstylistido, was interviewed, he very specifically said,
1:29.1	the interesting thing about Mark is how he takes something so street and so raw, and because
1:33.3	of the coloration of the hair and the makeup, it becomes a total look.
1:36.4	Something that we've bypassed on the street and not really looked at or seen a million times,
1:40.3	he makes us look at it again in a much more sophisticated and fashionable way.
1:44.6	So this is really where the problem started. And of course, as was expected, the internet threw
1:49.6	their arms up, the outrage machine came out to play, and people started freaking out. Mark's response
1:56.2	initially was pretty upset and taken aback, and I kind of get where he was coming from because my understanding
2:02.1	of Mark Jacobs would be that he didn't see this coming because it never even crossed his mind.
2:07.0	It never quite occurred to him, which of course is problematic in and of itself, because we shouldn't
2:12.2	be making decisions without taking into account what the public reaction to said decision will be.
2:19.1	We wrote a story about this on man-repeller, and the story was, I don't want to call it a takedown of the show, because that
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Monocycle, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Monocycle and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.