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Personal Fashion Statements

This week staff writer Ji Lim and our fearless team of interns (Carlie and Allison) braved model search events, fashion premieres, thrift stores and the streets of San Francisco to bring you our semi-annual fashion issue. All this got me thinking about personal style and its importance. Here at the AsianWeek office, personal style ranges from finely pressed Banana Republic to head-to-toe Adidas gear; open-toed sandals to brown platform boots.

A few weekends ago, I attended the huge 911 Power to the Peaceful festival in Golden Gate Park — a free concert and social justice rally in support of Mumia Abu Jamal, featuring the likes of KRS-One, Spearhead and Bay Area female MC Mystic. With crowds pushing 10,000 people, I spent a lot of time sitting back and people-watching. I noticed, somewhat sheepishly, that I was sporting the skirt-over-pants combination that about 75 percent of the other women there were wearing. My friend and I thought about documenting all the blatant commodification of Eastern culture that we saw — it seemed like there were a large number of young children wearing t-shirts with Hindu deities on them.

Speaker and activist Sat Santokh — who has for the past 40 years “been working to make a difference as to whether or not humanity will survive on this planet of ours” — led the audience through a breathing exercise. I was pretty surprised when I caught sight of him through the crowd — this white man with a long beard, turban and traditional Indian clothes. I wonder whether Santokh, in his Sikh attire, has faced the same kind of backlash as those with brown skin.

This year Asian Pacific Americans definitely got a kick in the seat of our Abercrombie & Fitch sweatpants, when the seemingly innocuous Midwestern company showed us exactly how political clothing can be. I say, beat them at their own game. While many complain that politics and activism can sometimes seem like nothing more than a fashion statement, I am personally way more empowered by wearing a shirt with Gandhi’s words emblazoned across the chest than a GAP logo. In fact, check out Stuart Ikeda’s great round-up of all the best APA personal billboards in “Identi-tees: Stereotypes, Abercrombie & the Chest as a Battlefield” on www.imdiversity.com’s Asian American Village. Or just go ahead and self-silkscreen your own personal manifesto.

— Neela Banerjee