It’s been a full two years since From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers in France 1840- 1980 by Michel Fabre has lived on my bookshelf. It’s really scandalous as to how I acquired such gold, signed by the author himself as it was protruding from a friend’s bookshelf at an ungodly hour of the night, so I helped myself to literature ecstasy. From Harlem to Paris is a textbook about the Harlem renaissance that goes beyond Langston Hughes, and gets as deep as the history of the New Orleans influence in black culture and travel in France, as well as describes how the beloved Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson’s (beautiful) slave, was known to be the first black person ever to travel to France.
As Black History month slowly comes to an end, it would be pity if this book and Harlem were not compared to the recent happenings of New York Fashion Week’s Fall 2017 events and collections. After all, all roads lead to Harlem’s creative mecca, as demonstrated by Alexander Wang, Stella McCartney, and ASAP Mob’s faithful push to rebrand Harlem as Manhattan’s truest fashion zeitgeist.
For one, rising streetwear brand VLONE debuted its highly sought after Nike collaboration in Harlem earlier this month. Creative Director ASAP Bari along with members of the ASAP Mob, including ASAP Rocky (rumored to be dating Kendall Jenner at the moment), and dozens of fans visited the Harlem basketball court inspired pop up shop situated on the west side of 116th street. VLONE’s signature orange decorated custom Spalding basketballs, as Nike’s Air Force 1s with “Harlem World” graffiti and spray painted on sneakers and tees were elevated on platforms and displayed on cliche sneaker store walls. The brand’s tagline “Every Living Creative Dies Alone” was also written in old script font on the walls of the red tinted dimly lit space. During the pop up shop’s stint in Harlem, sneakers went for hundreds of dollars; and I suppose the line to get into this streetwear arcade was out the door and never ending. However, beyond all the hype beasts, the VLONE popup shop presented a much more refined brand message with the heavy support and collaboration of a billion dollar athletic company. Moreover, with the brand’s heavy allegiance to Harlem from the very beginning, there’s a lot to be said about its connection to Harlem which continues to breed people who are not only for the evolution of Black American culture creating a new trend, but also how much VLONE resonates to an international audience. As a writer currently residing in Harlem, it’s funny how I wasn’t invited to attend the After-Party or given a press recap which was covered by mainstream outlets like Vogue, yet the event took place right on my front stoop.
Happening or not, Harlem’s burgeoning coolness within the fashion industry is again, flattering but not necessarily needed, as it has always been a place of beauty especially during the Harlem renaissance. As the 400 - page textbook Harlem to Paris outlines, many black writers and artists salvaged their own creative freedom in these two regions because they wanted to escape their own political and social oppression. In the early 20th century, the architecture, the music, and the food had all become well known and popular to be what it is known as today. But yet again, high fashion always seems to exude this Christopher Columbus attitude when it comes to exposing something new to the mainstream. What I mean is, it appropriates certain things in cultures that have always been known to the individuals in which the cultures belongs to, but not necessarily identifiable to the greater majority. When Alexander Wang decided to debut his fall 2017 collections in an abandoned theater in Harlem, he forced the fashion crowd to trek their way uptown for a chic adventure. An invited fashion editor (perhaps sarcastically) tweeted about his lack of knowledge of the train routes that far uptown. Did Alexander Wang’s team care to invite some of the movers and shakers of Harlem or the greater community? Probably not. If this is too much, then perhaps compare this same concept to when Riccardo Tisci hosted the Givenchy Summer 2015 runway collections in New York City and actually came to Harlem to invite random people on 125th street to his show because that’s how much he was inspired by the culture for that particular collection. Were Alexander Wang’s clothes inspired by Harlem? Nah. What exactly compelled him to host his show in Harlem is a question left unanswered at this point, but I’m sure it gained him a lot of cool points. It may seem like a small act of whatever, but the fact of a matter is Harlem is still a community full of black people desperately trying to hold on to their homes and culture, in the light of gentrification and appropriation running rampant in pop culture. Though, Stella McCarney hosted her recent Resort collection offerings at the Cotton Club in Harlem a few weeks prior to the NYFW showings, I couldn’t really tell whether or not it was for show or perhaps it was to genuinely expose the crowd to a historical place in Manhattan. Thought when I was driving past the venue, I was surprised to see some life had been restored back into the business, even if it was for a few hours.
Overall, VLONE’s ability to reclaim the streets and build credibility with hood wear, thus making it appealing to mainstream that is reaches the pages of Vogue, is a huge accomplishment when it comes to owning the true black identity in today’s complex but still very elitist fashion world.
Here are 3 Black American Writers Who Have Travelled to Paris:
- Frederick Douglas is probably the most known black American to have ties to Paris as his writings provide detailed accounts of his travels to the Europe country. He was granted permission to enter France in 1859, but took him nearly 30 years to satisfy his wish to enter Paris in 1886 on his second trip to Europe. Apparently his daughter Annie was ill, so he sailed back to the US to tend to her. Anyway, it has been recorded that Frederick Douglas thought that the people in Paris were “singularly conscious of their liberty, independence and their power.” Douglas liked Paris because he did not feel any color prejudice there and “the negro was not an object to ridicule” because black in Paris were often artists or scholars rather than slaves.
- Mary Church Terrell, the first African American women to earn a college degree from Oberlin university, was apart of “the talented tenth” who traveled to Paris after emancipation. She enjoyed french culture and the racial attitude and when her father offered her a trip to France after studying for a few years at Oberlin. She wrote about her epic travels in The Progress Of A Colored Women which included how she met her African prince who had manners like the french but dresses oriental, her mother’s $25,000 winnings in a lottery which was spent on a fancy France exhibition and her struggle to be independent in France by living with a family instead of out of a expensive hotel. Needless to say she ended up contributing immensely to the feminist movement and ultimately elected to the National Association of Colored Women. Her ties to France would only strengthen as her place in American politics legitimized over time.
- James W.C. Pennington was a lecturer, orator an fugitive slave from Maryland who began his career in Brooklyn New York. He had been sent to London in 1843 to attend the World Anti Slavery Convention, and also lectured about the abolitionist movement that was currently happening in the US in a few Paris universities and independent events.