10/13/2026
DID YOU KNOW? 👀
In 1740, South Carolina went so far as to police what enslaved Black people could wear.
Under Section XL of the Slave Code, clothing considered finer or more valuable than the permitted fabrics could be confiscated.
Think about that. A system so determined to keep us “in our place” that even our appearance had to be controlled.
That restriction lost its legal foundation in 1865. But when a law disappears, do the ideas behind it disappear too?
There's an account from Camden that I cannot stop thinking about.
In 1865, Mary Boykin Chesnut wrote about stories she'd heard of Black maids putting on their mistresses’ gowns, right before their eyes, and walking away.
Imagine what that moment might have meant: a woman once told what she was allowed to wear deciding, for herself, what belonged on her body.
And look at what Black creativity has made possible since.
From Ridgeway’s Sergio Hudson, whose designs have graced Michelle Obama, to Spartanburg’s Kitty Black Perkins, who created the first Black Barbie, South Carolina has helped reshape how the world sees Black elegance. Let’s also honor the seamstresses, tailors, and independent designers whose names history too often leaves out.
But here's the question I really want us to sit with:
WHEN WE PUT ON THEIR GARMENTS, DID WE ALSO PUT ON THEIR MINDSET?
Did we free ourselves from their rules about clothing only to inherit their rules about class, status, and who gets called “refined”?
When does style express who we are, and when does it become a search for someone else's approval?
I love seeing us dressed in our finest. But our dignity was never stitched into a designer label, and our worth has never depended on who could afford one.
Maybe real freedom is not simply wearing what they once denied us. Maybe it’s deciding, at last, what beauty and success mean on our own terms.
💬 I want to hear from you: Are we defining our own standards, or still trying to live up to somebody else’s?
