One coat, two lives

Purchasing a custom Burberry coat previously owned by a White, former British army officer confronted me, viscerally, with the social contentions of dress for a Black man. Until then, I had been a student and critical observer of it, only occasionally reflecting on how my personal dress experience intersected with what I have been studying. But my desire to get rid of the coat right after I had bought it, forcefully brought on by a slew of questions and discomforts around my identity and that of its former owner, better realized these tensions in my own consumption. I have since combined styling methods and Black historical knowledge to resolve them. This snapshot illustrates how the dress experience differs for Black men and the role that race, power and gender play in my story. I reveal how arming oneself with knowledge of the past – in this case, how West African soldiers once wore their oppressors’ garments after defeating them to upturn the power dynamic – can help remedy such vexations. The article makes clear the personal stories clothes tell, the ones we ascribe and those we remake. It contributes to current scholarship on the role of dress for Black men, applicable to numerous disciplines within the arts, humanities and social sciences.