The Yarn #2 - On Colonial Violence in Fashion Museums

This second issue of The Yarn explores colonial violence in fashion museums, museums often acting as “hygienist” entities—fixated on “cleansing and disinfecting their contaminated past” (Deliss, 2022). At stake here is the intersection of two frameworks invented in colonial contexts, fashion and museums, and how their entanglement involves specific negotiations. Fashion’s sympathy capital has driven many Western museums to curate exhibitions that foreground national historiographies through designers’ stories, social movements, and selected notable figures. What role, then, does the fashion museum play in upholding colonialism and imperialism? This bilingual anthology provides a platform for reflecting on the role of fashion museums in the decolonial discourse and exploring ways to challenge their foundations.

It welcomes texts by Alison Moloney, Angela Jansen and Karolien de Clippel, Françoise Vergès, Audrey Bartis, Pallavi Chamarty, Morolake Dairo, Sharifa Jamaldin, Marius Janusauskas, and Pierre-Antoine Vettorello. It also features in dialogues, Kaat Debo, Janice Deul, Gangadhar gaaru, Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja, Nyanchama Okemwa, and Michaëlle Sergile