The Changing of the Guard: Style Versus Fashion as Defined Within the Rise of the Black Middle Class

Though most people within the black diaspora share a common history and heritage, our views on that history and heritage are skewed and separated due to our varying memberships within the class structures of our society. Though believed to be a reconstruction-period invention, the black middle class, and higher social classes still, extend as far back as the beginning of time-in Africa.

To know that we are a people with such a vast history is also to know that both style and fashion have played a major part of our culture since its ancient origins. Within every class structure, there has always existed a standard of dress which defined and divided the classes.

In modern times, it would seem that those standards have all but disappeared. The Old Guard of yesterday, a formal society consisting of top hats, pearls, silk gowns, canes, tuxedo jackets, shawls, and wingtips is being replaced with the The New Guard of today, a shapeless mass of people prone to jeans, graphic Ts, stilettos, Timberland boots, and gaudy diamonds.

When looking at the relaxed standards of dress between the classes, the question arises: Is our clothing defined by our social class? Another question can also be pondered: Does our belonging to a particular class dictate our wardrobes.

I am not an expert on fashion. But I am an expert on literature. In the African American Literature genre, our peoples travels from Africa, to Europe, to Asia, to the Carribean, and to America have been documented. Within the pages of these books also lies the testimony that clothing was essential to our culture.

Looking back allows us to look at now. And perhaps if we knew of our rise, we would understand where and how we fell- with style and fashion that is. Also, we would understand that the things we put on daily do, or at least once did, speak volumes of our backgrounds, families, home sizes, cars, back accounts, cattle heads, and yams stored in barns.