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In Shreveport, Louisiana, on February 5, 2019, police noticed a Black man running while trying to hold his baggy shorts up.

The police started following him and after noticing that he had a gun on him, shot at him eight times.

Three shots hit him when he was already lying on the ground.

31-year-old Anthony Childs was found to be in violation of the city’s “saggy pants” ordinance passed in 2007, which was supposed to be punishable with a fine of $100 and up to eight hours of community service

Childs was killed in the incident.

Only in 2019, after outrage over Childs’ death, did the “unconstitutional and discriminatory ordinance” get abolished, according to Katie Schwartzmann, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, reports CNN.

In this context, one can understand the outrage being pitted against Balenciaga for designing a $1 190 pair of sweatpants with boxers sewn into the waistband.

Yes, that’s almost R17 000 for a pair of casual grey sweatpants with some boxer briefs peeking out, which is controversial in its own right.

But the deeper controversy started when a TikTok user posted a quick snippet of the pants in store:

@mr200m__You know when something feels racist @sxbwxyy I have questions #fypシ♬ original sound – Mr200m

Now fashion industry insiders and Black history experts are calling the big fashion brand out for cultural appropriation.

Marquita Gammage, an associate professor of Africana Studies at California State University, sees it as exploitation of “Black culture with the hopes of securing major profits”.

She wrote Cultural Appropriation as ‘Agency Reduction’, published in the International Journal of Africana Studies in 2018:

In it, she writes about the misappropriation of Black culture and how it undermines the ingenuity, functionality and beauty of Black cultural expressions while simultaneously delegitimising Blacks experiences of injustices for capital gain, she said.

Over the years, hip hop culture has popularised the style of lowered, baggy pants that expose underwear.

But the style has also been used to “criminalise Blacks, especially Black males as thugs and a threat to American society”:

“Balenciaga men’s Trompe-L’Oeil sweatpants in red triggers immediate concern given the grotesque similarity to the iconic African American hip hop aesthetic worn by Black Americans for decades that has resulted in the imprisonment and death of Black men,” Gammage told CNN over email.

“The trousers have commercial cultural appropriation written all over them; branded with the name Balenciaga.”

The chief marketing officer for Balenciaga defends the pants by pointing out that the brand often combines different wardrobe pieces into a single garment and that the Trompe L’Oeil trousers were a mere “extension of that vision”.

Others argue the brand has totally missed the deep historical and traumatic context that surrounds the specific style of their Trompe-L’Oeil sweats.

Stella Jean, the creative director and co-founder of We are Made in Italy, a fashion and social awareness initiative that puts designers of colour at the forefront, references how Black culture often gets appropriated for financial gain:

“Black culture is so often sampled, but rarely ever cited. And beyond giving credit where credit is overdue, the payout for those who have created and selflessly shared their genius, creativity, risk-taking, and innovation, rarely if ever comes,” Jean said.

“In Black culture, there’s a thing we refer to as the ‘Black tax.’ This refers to the extra amount of effort, sweat, and nonsense you’re going to have to put forth and put up with to get even half of the success that someone else with your talent and skills who happens to be white might attain.”

Something to think about this Monday morning.

[source:cnn]