Buffalo Arts Studio presents the panel discussion “Blue Jeans and Black Hair: Decolonizing Fashion,” featuring artists, academics, and activists discussing fashion within its colonial context, acknowledging that the fashion-industrial complex is and has always been a colonial enterprise. Even as it appropriates Indigenous, Black, and/or Brown aesthetics, culture, spirituality, and technologies, the fashion-industrial complex actively employs destructive environmental policies, exploitative labor practices, and unequal profit distribution. It will be held on Friday, October 24, from 5:00 to 8:00 pm as part of M&T Fourth Friday at Tri-Main. The talk will start promptly at 6:00 pm.

Moderator:
Rahwa Ghirmatzion is a Senior Policy Fellow at the Just Solutions Collective, a national climate organization that partners with communities disproportionately impacted by climate change to turn their priorities and ideas into policies and laws. 

Panelists:
Victoria Udondian is an artist and professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo whose practice is rooted in her interest in textiles and the ways clothing shapes identity through the histories embedded in everyday materials. 

Erin Habes is a faculty member in Fashion & Textile Technology at Buffalo State University, where she has mentored countless students and serves as director of the university’s signature RUNWAY fashion show. 

Dr. Shantell Reid is an Assistant Professor in the Fashion & Textile Technology department at Buffalo State University. Her research focuses on addressing garment sizing inconsistencies and adjustability, and promoting sustainable garment construction practices. 

Yayi Dia is an entrepreneur, model, strategist, and creative who brings her expertise to the Los Angeles beauty-tech brand, LOO-SHA Inc., and works as the Media and PR Manager for Buffalo Fashion Runway in 2024. 

For more information about Buffalo Arts Studio, please visit www.buffaloartsstudio.org