Southern Discomfort: Tearing At The Seams Forum #SouthernDiscomfort #TearingAtTheSeams

Yesterday I walked into the Southern Discomfort: Tearing At the Seams forum with lots of hesitancy. The reason why was because the last Southern Discomfort discussion left me with a lot of concern. Guess that’s why they call it ‘Southern Discomfort’ – shrugs. The concern was coming from a place of listening to young, black creatives airing out their issues with white-owned bars, restaurants, and venues in downtown Charleston who were literally not returning phone calls when a hip-hop artist would call inquiring about booking their establishments for a gig. The bigger concern was if we know this is happening, why are we still supporting these establishments, why are we trying to force them to accept us, why should we spend our money with them? I left feeling like at some point the panel was begging for their acceptance, and it was disappointing.

However, last nights discussion hosted by Monachopsis Magazine and the creators of Southern Discomfort was refreshing. The panel was led by a group of power players in Charleston’s fashion scene, and I believe that the discussion lit a fire for everyone in the room. The panel included the creator of Charleston Fashion Week – Ayoka Lucas, Venita Aspen of the Aspen Agency , Jessie Parks – owner of Grease Kelly Vintage and Vice Chair of We Are Family, style blogger Ireana Nathan of Xoxo, I. Joelle, Sabrina Hyman of Ill Vibe The Tribe, fashion blogger Nikki of LookFabuless.com, and a host of others.

The conversation was birthed from an the Instagram account of @CharlestonShopCurator, Andrea Serrano and her Afro, 70’s inspired post ( I will not post the picture here simply because we already know what it is). In her post, which she took down and reposted, many people both black and white were attempting to explain to her why her post was no culturally appropriate, and could be deemed offensive. After reposting, probably after she received some courage and encouragement from her peers, she explained how she’s mixed, and how she never intended to offend anyone. She continued with, “I can respect other people’s opinions, but I think my opinion is equally as important.”Ayoka Lucas gave us the background of the exchanges on Instagram with this Serrano and others; Lucas even explained that Serrano requested a forum – unfortunately, she was not in attendance to discuss her position.

Luckily, we didn’t spend much time discussing Serrano, there were other gems and jewels that were dropped as we listened to the panel. We continued with Ayoka Lucas and her story of how she started Charleston Fashion Week. This is a dope story because many people in attendance didn’t know she was the curator of this event. Lucas gave us details that she hadn’t discussed prior to this forum as to the reasons why she decided to leave Charleston Magazine, and leave the thing that she calls her ‘baby’ – CFW. Her story is one we’ve all heard before – the employee with the dope, unique ideas that manifest. Then somewhere, somehow, and for some strange reason, instead of the company promoting the employee or partnering with the dope employee – they simply and slyly figure out ways to stifle them. Hopefully, Lucas will be able to put this story in a book because it is a fascinating testament of someone who took nothing and built something amazing, with the help of other Creatives.

We don’t want to continuously see our culture being celebrated, but not actual people of color being celebrated; because like someone said yesterday- WE ARE THE CULTURE!

Ayoka’s story inspired a plethora of questions and comments from the audience. Creatives in attendance were inspired by all of the bloggers on the panel including Venita Aspen, who was able to take her experience in Charleston and with Charleston Fashion Week, and turn it into a viable business.

One great aspect of this discussion was that there were many people there who didn’t realize that Charleston’s creative communities and Charleston’s fashion communities of color are bubbling! We write, we promote, we design, we sing, we blog, we curate, we own, we build, and we are here! We want to tell stories, we want to see our community shine. However, we also want to see people of color shine. We don’t want to continuously see our culture being celebrated, but not actual people of color being celebrate; because like someone said yesterday- WE ARE THE CULTURE! We want to see more shops owned by people of color; we want to see more people of color as gate-keepers to Charleston’s fashion and creative community. What I would love to see most is for young business owners, bloggers, and creatives to not feel like they need to cosign of the white community in order to make things happen.

Again, this was an great discussion and an awesome forum. The hope now is that we can continue having these types of gatherings, bringing people within the creative communities together, and breaking the glass boots that are continuously on our necks! Excited to see creatives building bridges and kicking down doors in Charleston, SC.