A very personal story
Covid has given us all the chance for self-reflection.
So, mapping out how I have used fashion to challenge cultural norms, during the years and how I have been knowingly using my privilege, it's important to acknowledge the learning I began over 30 years ago.
This happened during daily race-equality conversations with my partner the late Mandu Saldaan in the 80s and early 90s.
Caryn and Mandu Saldaan (formally Derrick MClintock). Image Kevin Davies
I met Derrick (as he was then called), at a club in Soho where he told me about the film he was writing called Young Soul Rebels. As co-editor of i-D at that time, I was excited about this film soon to be in production with a narrative about music, race and class and directed by Isaac Julien. I made a shoot in the magazine to include a profile of Derrick, commissioning Kevin Davies to take the image below. Derrick and I began a relationship that would end at the close of 1992, when our daughter Mateda was born.
Image by Kevin Davies for i-D Magazine circa 1988
At the time, the gift of race knowledge from my first daughter's father, was welcome but not fully appreciated by me for a variety of reasons. I was resistant to hearing daily, about my racism and my class privilege. I thought I was a good human being and not a racist for a start. I was wrong of course.
Our relationship however would soon be beset by many more conflicts, so much bigger it seemed, than race and class. Some of this, I talked about in the Guardian in 2013. Becoming my partner's carer after a health diagnosis of accelerated Multiple Sclerosis, five months into our relationship, meant that things quickly descended into a very rocky ride for us both. I, with further privileges - now physical and mental, experienced the inequalities in our relationship making it difficult for us both as depression and anger kicked in for my partner. Family normally rally during these times but Derick's single parent mother or her sisters were not in the country and he had no siblings.
It was a long time before I could understand the learning I had received. Crediting Derrick in the Guardian feature with education around health and body positivity, I still did not understand the bigger picture and I missed something out in the way I relayed my experience of that difficult time.
Today I see that the common practice of reviewing my race learning together with my desire to challenge the unachievable and white body and beauty ideals that fashion favours, has informed so much of my work.
This early i-D shoot intended to challenge super-hero bias (circa 1989)
This learning was certainly an underpinning for All Walks Beyond the Catwalk. My 6 year journey as co-founder of this initiative (2009 - 2015) then led (unexpectedly) to study of an applied psychology MSc in 2015. This course run by Dr Carolyn Mair opened my eyes to the way the brain stores information and shapes learning into patterns or templates. Cognitive bias is a result of the flawed system by which our lazy brain organises information.
Now, with a better understanding of the brain's process, which I shared with i-D readers in an interview with Professor Richard Crisp, in 2016, my practice has expanded. Currently, as Visiting Professor of Diverse Selfhood at Kingston School of Art, my lectures address our brain's information retrieval system and its reliance on stereotype, along with identity politics and the power of fashion to perpetuate or challenge. I have been able to challenge leadership protocol during commercial presentations to city CEOs and I have also been shaped by the welcome and knowledge I have received from Trans and Queer folk.
Now, my engagement with FACE, since the summer of 2020 has delivered accelerated learning. FACE colleagues have laid out the career barriers for Black academics and creatives that appear as multiple micro-aggressions and obvious anti-Black behaviours from many of us good human beings. FACE aims are the future of higher education protocol for us all.
We didn't use words like race-privilege, white gaze or white-centred culture between us back then Mandu, but belatedly, thank you for showing me another viewpoint back there. Thank you for the emotional labour you undertook to help me see a more complex world through your experience. You are no longer here Mandu, but your daughter, who passes as white, understands her privilege.
Thank you FACE for welcoming me through the door. I will use the unearned privilege I have, to dismantle racism in systems and individuals.
Thank you Kevin Davies for sending me the lost (to my mind) studio image of Mandu and I at the top of this feature. You sent them during the first lockdown when you were sorting through your archive. You have taken me on a journey stretching back decades and reaching far into the future.
Photos and captions
Young Soul Rebels, was directed by Isaac Julien and starred Sophie Okonedo, Valentine Nonyela, Mo Sesay, Jason Durr and Francis Barber. Written by Derrick Saldaan McClintock, Isaac Julien and Paul Hallam, it won the critics prize at Cannes in 1991 upon its release.
Personal archive above: Walking slowly with a cane and missing the Cannes award ceremony through frail health, we created our own moment of celebration outside our local Indi cinema - The Hackney Rio (circa 1991)
Derrick or D, later to become Saldaan, converted to Islam during his illness - hence his final name-change to Mandu Saldaan (1962-2014).