ABSTRACT
In 2019, Burberry’s Fall London Fashion Week show featured a sweatshirt with what creative director Riccardo Tisci described as a “nautical” themed drawstring. For almost everyone else, including Liz Kennedy (the model wearing the look), the drawstring was clearly a noose. This chapter shows how Black femininity is simultaneously harnessed in service to capitalism while it also challenges that harnessing, seen in Kennedy’s off-stage performance and Samuels’ performative choices on stage. The 2020 commercial is immediately locomotive and embodied. Instead of finding shelter from the storm in stillness, the dancers fully and collectively engage their bodies with the storm. In response to the massive ice mounds, they adjust and shift, while at other times, they make direct contact. Both Kennedy and Samuels participate in the harnessing of Black femininity in service to capitalism. However, the former employs voice and the latter employs body to demonstrate a larger choreography of resistance.
