Hidden Gems in Black History: How Black Americans Have Influenced Style & Culture In The 21st Century

African Diaspora style is omnipresent in today’s fashion, impacting individuals of all colors, ethnicities, and creeds. It’s on full display on Main Street, in shops, online, and on runways. Its rising star power is largely due to a conglomeration of causes, including millennials of African descent needing knowledge and pride in their heritage and the convenience and accessibility of online resources. Over The Past 20 Years… Black American artists have emerged as a creative force that has helped shape the modern era. For the first time since the 1970s, there has been such a wide-ranging, deep, and diversified convergence of Black history, politics, and art. There was a clear merging of styles on the comedic “Chappelle’s Show” and the two albums D’Angelo put out fourteen years apart. Barack Obama’s administration is evident in “Black Panther,” Beyoncé’s work on “Black Lives Matter,” and Kendrick Lamar’s work on the nation’s jail issue. You can sense that convergence haunting the fiction of Jesmyn Ward.  The Black community served as a source of inspiration for early performers of all races, and the artists, in turn, influenced and improved upon the Black community’s style reciprocally. Black Americans will recognize several instances of Black style in...