In some ways, a best-dressed list is an arcane idea. Clothes are clothes, and thin people tend to look rather better in them. End of story. But this year the subject of style and attitude had an especially powerful counter-narrative: it wasn’t what you looked like that counted but how you felt. This was the year when dressing according to your inner conviction, or elective dressing, came of age.
Rachel Dolezalwas the first to hit the screamers. The president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Spokane, Washington, was forced to resign from her position after being outed as a white woman who was passing as black.
Despite having what was revealed to be avowedly Anglo-Saxon DNA (with a possible sprinkling of Native American), in addition to blonde hair and a creamy, if somewhat Tangoed complexion, Dolezal insisted she had been identifying as black since childhood. From the age of five, she explained, “I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach.” The case ignited a furious debate about race appropriation and ethic identity, further fuelled by Dolezal’s insistence that rather than misrepresent anyone her deception had been built on a personal conviction. “I wouldn’t say I’m African American,” she conceded, “but I would say I’m black.”