NYTimes | THE best posts on the style blog Street Etiquette find its principals, Travis Gumbs and Joshua Kissi, in motion. As opposed to the fascistically frozen street-style snaps of The Sartorialist and others, these pictures are styled and plotted fictions but also affecting ones, depicting a pair of young black men taking ownership not just of the body and what goes on it, but also of the environment it moves in. No one ever smiles on Street Etiquette: there’s business to attend to.
Most days, the actual business of Mr. Kissi and Mr. Gumbs takes place in a work-space-cum-clubhouse on Bergen Street in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. With vintage sweaters hanging from the ceiling and art books lining the walls, this is the nerve center of the Brooklyn Circus, whose flagship store is just a few dozen steps away, and which is a key collaborative partner for Street Etiquette, which began as a basic beautiful-things blog in 2008 but is now one of the foremost online repositories of black style.
The posts on Street Etiquette straddle the modern and the historical. Mr. Gumbs and Mr. Kissi, both 22, highlight specific themes — floral prints, the saddle shoe and so on — modeling them and detailing their history. They are careful caretakers, respectful students, tailoring loyalists and handsome models.
And they have become Internet-age fashion polymaths: stylists and models, but also writers, preservationists, photographers and editors — and soon, designers and retailers.
Making a strong statement about cultural pride is central to the Street Etiquette mission. “It shows people of African descent in a good light,” said Mr. Kissi, whose family hails from Ghana. With Ouigi Theodore, the owner of Brooklyn Circus, Street Etiquette is collaborating on college speaking engagements under the “style and character tour” banner. Said Mr. Theodore: “Where they’re from and where I’m from, self-refinement isn’t welcome in a sense. If you’re hood, you’re hood forever.”
The musician and actor Mos Def was turned on to Street Etiquette by a friend, and was taken by the founders’ direction. “They want to elevate the awareness level of young people in their communities,” he said. “As opposed to ‘We’re better than y’all,’ it’s ‘You can be this, too.’ ” He now serves as a mentor to the duo. “All of it is a political expression,” he said. “White people have all kinds of archetypes, from Brad Pitt to Al Bundy, everything in between. The cultural paradigms that are aggressively promoted to young black people and young poor people are extremely narrow.”
43 comments:
Dopamine Hegemony
When a term is used as unconscious mantra you take the bite out of it. I am not sure what that means when reflecting Young Black Males life and aesthecticism. Are they to dress as ascetics instead of nihilistic bonobos, as if life is ending?
It's not my corner of the culture, but people like to dress nice, what the heck?
In a more utilitarian vein, as an anti-racism measure, the more options young Black people have to dress in style, the more the racist part of all our minds will be puzzled and taken aback.
I've done nothing in my comment of an unconscious nature. The point is that dress is an outward signal of status display and seeking. The core of any such behavior is dopamine hegemony. It is of a particular noxious form of dopamine hegemony as pointed out in the recent video on depreciation because the primary driving force is advertising (which hijacks this built-in tendency) and the deliberate out-dating of fashion.
As for how to dress otherwise, that's not an observation but a judgement call. As I am not a black man, nor am I actively interested in status display, I reserve the judgement calls for others to make. Though dressing as an ascetic -- whatever the hell that means -- would also be making a status statement.
Also, bonobos are not nihilistic. In fact, they are an excellent example to follow as they are a generally gentle, caring, non-status-driven species.
"what the heck? "
The Ultimate_Cool is a fat bank account and no debts...think "The Millionaire Next Door..." the folks who don't give a ratsass about artificial image...
When one studies aesthectic, which a whole book is done on Africa, as Europeans wanted to know how a woman could put a bone in her nose and be deemed a beauty; this also came as a debate on why black males like to dress and as a ethnicity place a lot of money into that part of the market. They have even looked into tattoes. I for one believe that the species grew form the art of aesthectics. When one had first hand knowledge of raising a black male boys and being from the black middle class, one knows there is truth to, how you takes care of ones self is a key to how one's thinks. What is one sign of depression?
And in the animal, it is always the male who pretty up for the female. Once empircal experience is not truth, once again. Now the question of shallowness is a different question
there it is..., the complete absurdity of ersatz preppiness, when cast over the historical and sartorial truth that "preppiness" is founded in deepest disregard for such affectations. be sure to be in or at least be qualified to be in "prep" school before putting on the Harry Potter eyeglass frames and the topsiders while being an empty-headed twit with an acute allergy to books and learning.
I have my children indentured to the uniform, khaki trousers, white shirts, jackets, ties, clean, plain hard black shoes and white sneakers (i.e., ascetic) and they are each highly qualified in all the susbstantive areas, fully embedded in authentic prep schools, and in no way preoccupied with fakery and foolishness.
an empty head, empty wallet, and empty ammunition clip surrounded by all this frippery is the very height of uselessness http://jezebel.com/5407685/gentlemen-of-bacongo-the-dandies-of-sub+saharan-africa/
who profits from this foolishness???
everything else is self-comforting conversation....,
Ok, and me too as best I can. However, most people are interested more in the surface appearances.
I believe that the preoccupation with these surface appearances are a major (possibly even primary) distraction from shifting cultural values toward genuine competence instead of lazy, dopaminergic superficiality.
Oh, Christ, don't even get me started. I have family on the upper east & west sides in Manhattan. It's all about the spending. The people who don't even know where the money comes from for all this spending, no, the people who don't even know the difference between income and new borrowings, i.e., don't even know whether there's any money, they're the ones who monopolize the decision making process.
Forget about surviving if the money collapses, these people don't know what money is now. They pay a (fairly-well-concealed) 4% a year to have their own money very carelessly 'managed.'
Where's the Bill Cosby for white people, that's what I want to know.
so dandy's imitating these hyper-resourced useless eating engines of conspicuous consumption would in effect be one of the most pernicious cultural influences imaginable?
Well ... you have a point. I don't let my kid imitate them.
I thought that was Kelsey Grammer's side-gig now http://rightnetwork.com/videos/kelsey-grammer-on-right
Erk. Wow. Is the Cos that far gone too? I was just feeling like I was turning into a grumpy ranting straighten-out-fly-right Dutch uncle type, and he came to mind.
Don't you recall that incident a few years ago when puddin-man roofied and diddled an assistant women's b-ball coach at Temple? if I recall correctly, it was after he got busted full freak-flag inflagrante that he came out wagging his finger at the denizens of Sherwood Forest....,
Yeesh. No, either I forgot or I somehow missed that one.
SMDH...,http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/beauty/men-wearing-heels-it-s-really-happening-2528663/
Thanks for using the time and effort to write something so interesting.
My blog:
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And that is not different than a mofo wearing a pants off his ass, or a young girl who walks the street with a man draws on Why not a beautiful African robe with pants under, Muslims don't have a claim to that. And those who been brought up middle class and flirted with The Black Muslim or the Catholic knows that uniform is a basic classic and does not prove the future of the person. I rebel against being black middle and I thank the day that my auntie taught me to look dress without having to be rich or buy$60 dollar pair of jeans. Suit jacket, shirt, slacks, good pair of shoes. I don't wear sneaker, or buy ties. But when dress, I am one good looking Afro-Caribbean man. You attack something then turn around and write an agreement in reference to your children LOL. Where do you think khaki come from, Africa
Ascetic is having one pants and shirt until it falls off. Known folks like that. And you can not convine me with the friends you have/had on the web, since me met, that you was n0t into looking good, please negro Listen to yourself.
btw - no one knows shallowness like me -
When I was a young man a older man said to me - Cool is being able to blend in and still keep your own drum. The level that these young men white or black who can't dance to the game or even change the game is f_king amazing. Social interpersonal skills is not the same as Dopamine Hegemony, and anything can be taken to lunch by capitalism. I thank g_d I walked among many cultures and was not afraid of Strangers, I really never knew how special it was for me till after the birth of my twins.
Blue-Notes
Walking across land
Family shaping consciousness
Poetic song begot
©kac
AND here smoething I knew long ago for you parents and so call conspicous consumputions fighters
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/thinking-cap-angst-before-high-school/
THE FINDINGS Mr. Fryer and Mr. Dobbie were surprised by their results: “The impact of attending an exam school on college enrollment or graduation is, if anything, negative. There is also little impact of attending an exam school on SAT reading and writing scores, and, at best, a modest positive impact on SAT math scores.” The results were the same for both boys and girls, and for those who came from different types of middle schools. “Our analysis of exam schools suggests that students are encouraged or pushed to take harder course work, but that their actual human capital essentially remains unchanged.”
The one exception, Mr. Dobbie and Mr. Fryer wrote, was borderline students: “Attending an exam school increases rigor of the marginal student’s high school course work, and makes the marginal student more likely to graduate from high school with an advanced diploma.” The authors pointed out that the only measures they looked at were SAT scores, college enrollment and graduation. “Without longer-term measures such as income, health, or life satisfaction,” they note, “it is difficult to fully interpret our results.”
Good Weekend Sir:
lol...,
Hit your inhaler and take a deep breath Nana.
These fruity fakers are not embarked on a deep and classical educational or other preparatory odyssey.
Empty-headed male models coming to the game long after the fact and playing dress-up and make-believe posing on campus pretending to read books knowing full-well they're allergic to reading is being used TO SELL CLOTHING - not to sell the value of education and literacy. Moreover, these fake-assed outfits won't be profiting anybody in the communities to which they're being peddled.
So enough already. Listen to your own self peddling and defending fashionista nonsense for the purpose of making an argument with me - save that crap for CF and the female Charles Murray already....,
Social interpersonal skills is not the same as Dopamine Hegemony
smooth talking, cool walking lizards with empty heads are sociopathic neurotypicals and some of the VERY WORST perpetrators and contagion vectors of dopaminergic pathology
Sorry to butt in, and I don't like douchy guys myself, but the worst perpetrators? Really?
And, as you so clearly say, everything else is merely conversation.
Yep. They put the major beat-down on neuroatypicals which includes bullying through both social and physical violence. They literally beat the desire for the inner culture of competence out of them.
Tom, let's air a little of the dirty laundry of the 2nd and 3rd line inheritors of the civil rights movement - umm-kay?
As an interested, informed, and sympathetic majoritarian mostly on the outside and looking in, but comfortably privvy to the ruthless interrogatories that take place here and in the broader "knitting circle" as we've come to be known - what do you see in the pubic eye when it comes to accountable and unaccountable black political leadership?
Preachers
Lawyers
Professional Politicians
Pundit/Activists
Anybody else?
Do you have any idea of the magnitude of the crime committed by these self-serving, self-dealing, gatekeeping ass-hats to the collective political interests of black folks in america? Seriously?
Do you know where they relegated the black technologists, scientists, and hardcore operational professionals too back in the days of organizing and grassroots operating? Licking envelopes!!!!! Seriously, that was about the full extent of the participation in leadership and thought leadership "permitted" to the best trained, best educated, brightest and most creative minds in the black american collective.
The results of this catastrophic failure of political leadership are painfully and panoptically self-evident.
Riddle me this? Are their any sartorially ascetic persons of substance in the collective black public eye?
If you can think of one, drop me a link__________________________?
Douchy oxygen thieves have not only been running things, they've run them into the ground and it's long overdue time that they be excoriated and systematically run out by.any.means.necessary.....,
BINGO!!!!
And those whom they cannot defeat, they convert into implacable and relentless adversaries....,
CNu, thanks for the kind explanation. I'm thinking.
By collective Black public eye you mean specific to the Black community? So the Obamas don't count.
We may differ on what's 'ascetic enough.' To me Bill Gates/Warren Buffett, or pick-your-Chinese-leader, is good enough. The message is "It's just clothes" not "I am a monk." I'm open to seeing why the message needs to be more severe than that, except maybe in school years, but I don't see it now.
best trained, best educated, brightest and most creative minds in the black american collective.
LOL. Obviously they were not creative at all. They accepted positions "licking envelopes" rather than organizing and developing their own programs. I suppose you'll still be whining about this when you become an oxygen-thief yourself.
The stamp-licking type stuff is ridiculous and self-destructive, but not completely unfamiliar.
I'm tempted to say that my* sub-community has the same problem, without so much of the clothing fixation. We get high on pure incompetence rather than ornamentation, Manhattan women notwithstanding.
But as you've pointed out I'm an observer, working in the dark. You've seen both sub-communities and can compare. I'm hearing that fashion-douchery is a more serious problem in your* sub-community.
---
*We really have to try and found, or discover, or continue to expand and develop, an ethnic group based on competence. "English-speaking competent people, and we don't give a siht how you pronounce your English." It doesn't replace anything, people can and will be hyphenated ethnicities African-American-Competent or Malaysian-Competent, but it gives us a new freaking axis to work with at least.
Back to my point long ago at BD and Umbrarchist. The alien is on the ship. We don't have so much time to spend on complaining about each other; acknowledged my ethnicity are the star complainers-about-others.
ass-clown - they accepted handsomely compensated positions in the corporate and federal sectors, moved out to the suburbs and the hills, and left the kinte cloth comic book convention, and the well-dressed breath and britches crowd to wither on the vines of their own incompetence.
the ice was colder, the grass was greener, the loot was longer, the beckies were finer and the urban core has been systematically and very predictably imploding under its own helpless and utterly dependent uselessness ever since...,
When you got mailroom clerks outdressing the ceo, then you know something is waaaaaaay out of kilter...,
The Obamas went HARD HARD HARD in the wrong direction right up front - http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2010/01/mixed-signal-of-bourgeois-brand.html
Look Tom, I don't care in the least when somebody ascends to the heights of their profession on merit and then dresses any way they see fit. To your point, Gates and Buffett occupy conspicuous public pinnacles and are about as concerned about their dress as monks - so also Jobs, Schmidt, Zuckerberg, et al
What you are saying is that once these "brilliant" envelope lickers were locked out of civil rights leadership positions they took their assets to corporate America and started living the "good life" in upper middle class America. Which means had they been accepted into the gatekeeper leadership they would have been on the Al Sharpton-pimp track, contributing to the deepening cynicism and nihilism we see amongst many of the dispossessed. From that perspective I'm damn glad the bastards got locked out. We have too many pimps already, including Iceberg Slim in the White Hourse--the hero to both the gatekeepers and these highly educated former envelope lickers.
the highly educated former envelope lickers don't give that much of a damn about Obama and they sure as hell don't give a damn about the impotent and incompetent whining going on about Obama - as you noted - they walked out of Sherwood Forest and left it and its cares and concerns to rot and to die...,
preachers, politicians, pundits and perfidy..., http://youtu.be/IYXHvBDYOM8?t=3m59s
homo dolosus...,
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