Racechange Is the New Black: Racial Accessorizing and Racial Tourism in High Fashion as Constraints on Rhetorical Agency

Abstract

This essay argues that racial performance in high fashion functions as a disciplinary visual rhetoric which severely constrains objections to the myth of postraciality and enables claims that race is no longer a meaningful category of analysis. Racial performances limit the rhetorical agency of marginalized groups in two ways: They reduce racial identity to a mere accessory and they frame racial interaction as a short-lived tourist encounter. Treating race as an accessory equates Black and White bodies, creating an illusion of equality, while fashion tourism reduces race to spectacle at the expense of the voices of marginalized groups. Racechange in high fashion thus functions as part of a postracial ‘‘common sense’’ that limits the rhetorical agency of persons of color. doi:10.1111/cccr.12037 Beginning in late 2009, the fashion industry turned, en masse, to the use of makeup and costuming in an attempt to visually transcend the boundaries of race—a photograph in V Magazine depicted two White models, one in blackface and one in her ‘‘whiteface,’’ wrestling naked; Karl Lagerfeld opened a fashion show in Shanghai with a film featuring models in yellowface; the 90th anniversary issue of Vogue Paris featured a White model in black body paint and elaborate ‘‘African-inspired’’ costuming; and models on an episode of America’s Next Top Model (‘‘ANTM’’) performed biracial transformations. Not to be outdone by the race-inspired fashion that followed his PreFall 2010 Collection, Paris-Shanghai, Lagerfeld recently introduced his Pre-Fall 2012 Collection, Bombay-Paris, with a lavish recreation of a maharaja’s palace populated by White and Indian models in thick black eye makeup and ornate jewelry. The New York Times dubbed the show ‘‘Exotic India Wrapped in Chanel,’’ and Lagerfeld described his styles as ‘‘saris worn like a scarf and a touch of what hippies would like’’ (Menkes, 2011). While ANTM has been putting models in racial and ethnic costuming since Cycle 2, the practice of racial performance increased dramatically, and I would contend not coincidentally, throughout the fashion industry after the