Over the summertime, Columbus Faculty of Artwork & Design senior Angela Jernigan worked Downtown and lived just up the street from the center of the town, which put her correct in the center of the racial justice protests that erupted right after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. For the duration of the media protection of the uprisings, Jernigan could not assistance but observe how Black guys were being often introduced.
“They’re viewed with a focus on on their again, and the only way that media portrays them is by their trauma,” Jernigan claimed lately by cell phone. “Why is it that the only time I try to remember seeing Black folks in the media is when they’ve been killed?”
Jernigan, a trend layout significant, began considering about how she could existing a diverse narrative of Black men in her outfits collection. “I’m displaying him in a different light, building him search extra vulnerable and more vulnerable to putting on pastel shades with a a lot more female silhouette,” stated Jernigan, who bundled a tunic, crop tops and high-waisted pants. “I preferred to demonstrate how Black adult men do not have to wear black or tans or neutrals in buy to be these masculine beings. Pastel colours pop on their skin tone. It can make them search incredibly vibrant.”
Jernigan’s assortment, titled “Alive,” will be a single of 18 showcased in the 2021 CCAD Manner Exhibit on the night of Friday, Might 14 the socially distant, in-particular person variation of the show will just take put at the Easton Neighborhood Push-In, and CCAD is also hosting a virtual working experience. Now (Monday, May well 10) is the last day to acquire tickets for this once-a-year party that raises income for college student scholarships.
Jernigan, a graduate of Dublin Jerome Significant Faculty, in the beginning obtained into style by way of the skateboarding scene. After a phony start out pursuing a nursing diploma (“I understood I hated all the things about it”), she enrolled at CCAD, where by she started exploring the aesthetics of skateboarding. “As skateboarding has develop into far more acknowledged, the manner guiding it has develop into extremely entrance-site. … In skate tradition, there is certainly hippie skate boarders, grunge skate boarders, street skateboarders, metallic/hard-rock skate boarders. I was pretty into the hippie, rock-and-roll, ’60s/’70s era when I began,” she reported.
“But as I’ve formulated, I’ve definitely gotten into making narratives with the clothes that I’ve created, and accomplishing more androgynous outfits,” Jernigan continued. “I recognized, through my time at CCAD and in skateboarding itself, all clothing are pretty significantly androgynous. I have worn so numerous guys’ garments, and guys have worn so lots of girls’ garments. I just really don’t believe there should be way too much of a label set on what women can dress in and what guys can wear.”
This new solution is on total display in “Alive,” which difficulties notions of femininity and masculinity, and not just through the aforementioned pastel colour palette. Jernigan also sourced some of her materials by next-hand blankets purchased at thrift outlets, which evoke the acquainted comfort and ease of a check out to grandma’s residence.
“I preferred to give that sense of residence and that perception of nurturing that you will not normally get from Black gentlemen depicted in the media — that perception of warmth, a sense of home, that sense of getting approachable and nurturing and welcoming,” she claimed.
Though Jernigan’s tactic may possibly be unanticipated, she argues that it should not be astonishing, in the similar way that it should not be exceptional to see a Black feminine style designer.
“If you glimpse at all the major-time fashion designers, they are ordinarily white gentlemen,” she said. “It is definitely really hard for Black girls to get out there and be witnessed, [and] it is seriously, definitely hard for Black gals, in general, to be taken critically. They have to carry them selves a distinct way and talk a distinct way in purchase to not be taken for granted and to be appreciated.”
In that way, Jernigan hopes to flip the narrative not just in her selection, but in her chosen vocation. “I want to start off remembering Black people today in the media mainly because of the things that they have successfully carried out,” she claimed.