BIO

McKenna Oakley is a first-year student at FSU majoring in Creative Writing. McKenna is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, but now lives in Fernandina Beach, Florida. She enjoys taking her dogs to the beach, reading thriller novels, and watching sitcoms in her free time. McKenna is interested in learning more about poetry technique, creative writing pedagogy, and book publishing during her undergraduate and possibly graduate studies at FSU.

How can postcards be applied to understanding the history of ethnic diversity in the American fashion scene?

Abstract

This project is a microhistorical visual analysis exploring what postcards from the early 20th to 21st centuries visually communicate about ethnic diversity in the American fashion scene. The project utilizes inductive coding methods to visually analyze the fashion of pictured subjects in the postcards. The research was conducted through Florida State University’s Digital Card Archive, an online postcard repository created by Dr. Michael Neal. This project derives its meaning from approaching fashion as a “symbolic system,” meaning a social construct that represents how people perceive their social status through visual symbols; ergo, fashion encompasses identifiers such as ethnicity and becomes an easy site for bias (Crane 1). Thorough research has been conducted on this sociological aspect of fashion. However, these studies are mostly confined to using physical dress garments (Aspers and Godart 171). This project supplements the existing body of research by exploring fashion through the lens of a secondary art medium: the postcard. Each postcard reflects the values and social norms of its cultural origin, picturing the “best” that a person, place, or thing was perceived to offer. Each pictured subject is chosen for a postcard because they--and their dress--were believed to be the ideal embodiment of their ethnic community. Understanding this insight, this project visually analyzes relevant postcards to help illuminate the history of ethnic diversity in American fashion. These postcards ultimately indicate a narrative of white cultural dominance with varied oppressions and few social progressions, which can be witnessed through specific fashion examples, like the “afro” hairstyle.

Keywords: fashion, representation, ethnicity, postcard, history