Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett.org. It was good, y'all. You listening to Code Switch from NPR? I'm Gene W. We all know that fashion is cyclical and ephemeral, right? Especially among younger people, who are always trying to define themselves in contrast to old hits. Genuxers were looking to get away from the angular styles of the 1980s, so they embraced bell bottoms in the 1990s. Hip-hop's explosion into the mainstream in the 1990s saw clothes get wild baggy, but then everything went streamlined and tailored and elegant in the arts in 2010s. And now the fashion for youngs are wearing baggy clothes all over again. Because that's slim shit. That's just so millennial, right? And so the youngs are confounding the old with super-wide silhouettes and boat neck tops and quartersips? What? Quarter-zips. Yes, one of the most talked about Sartorial selections of the last few months has been the humble quarter-zip. The sorta sweater, sorta sweatshirt thing that is the preferred attire of the middle-aged suburban dad taking his kids on a tour of a liberal arts college, right? The quarter-zip is having a moment among a certain segment of Zoomers and we can actually con the pinpoint what sparked it all. We don't do like it's hard, we don't do coffee, the straight quarter-zips and marches around. It was this TikTok video posted by a user named Who Is Jason, two young black dudes, you know, dole hair and they basically like, "Shite Steve's Nike text, come on man, we off that, we grown now." And at the time we're recording this, that video has four million likes. And because this TikTok, you know, it sparked a whole lot of remixes. Other dudes trying to swag out their quarter-zips, which is honestly one of the most banana sentences I've ever said out loud. And there's just like lots and lots of comments here around it, like this one from a user called J William J. So much of that discourse was from Black folks watching it all unfold and talking about how good it was to see these young black men dressing like they had some self-respect. This quarter-zip trend is anti-black. Please do not do this movement, but respectability politics and think pieces that somehow infer that black people wanting to level up their laws and their taste level is anti-black. And that's the reason why I hate this trend. Know I'm not a Hebrew, Israelite, know I'm not a hotel and know that video was not as intellectual as he tried to sound. Actually, can I believe I make? Let's talk Nike techs and quarter-zips. I don't have a problem. Your antenna are twitching because you know what's coming. Conversations and think pieces about black folks and black dress and respectability, I know, I know it's a lot of way to put on sweaters that double as camouflage for the cubicle jungle. But that's what we're getting into on this episode. Trying to make sense, it may be overthinking this moment when the quarter-zipy is sort of drippy. I'm chopping it up with a scholar who side note really be having that shit on. Who answers my questions about quarter-zips and black folks dress and how folks perform and make sense of their blackness on the internet. And what's happening in the world that is shaping the embrace of the quarter-zip. Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hulett Foundation. Investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at hulett.org. You can see from his socials that Jonathan Square is an unusually flop professor which makes sense because he teaches at the Parsons School of Design in Manhattan. And like any respectable fashion plate, he expresses some disdain for the humble quarter-zip. But we call them lacking on the day we spoke to him. Are you wearing a quarter-zip right now? That was not planned, I promise. I promise you today's the first thing. Are you really committed to this? First off, that's hilarious. I did not plan to wear a button zip actually. It's not fully quarter-zip. And just the heads up, Jonathan lives in New York and Brooklyn. There's a few things, there's construction site across the street and I also have the heat blasting because of cold. You might hear some of that as we talk. Okay, so there's this quarter-zip trend that really got kicked off on TikTok. That was sort of the place where there was like the ground zero for this thing sort of going everywhere. Why do you think they picked a quarter-zip? Like why not? I don't know. Vogue tile or some other sort of like sort of like preppier or sort of like this is a grown people attire kind of aesthetic. And I'll honestly, I don't really think it's about the quarters of I think the quarters of wasn't intrigued into a bigger conversation. And so it's not so much about the garment. It's about what the garment is tapping into about respectability politics and I don't think they necessarily were aware of the conversation that they were tapping into. Can you walk us through some of that history? You got time. Go off that. Take all the time you need. I don't even know where to start. Yeah, I mean black bodies have been policed and surveilled since time immemorial. And I think an important touchdown is emancipation because in the United States prior to 1865, sorry, when most African-Americans were enslaved, they didn't have full control over their self-presentation. Then after when black folks gain their freedom, then there was a greater level of surveillance in policing the black bodies. And so this conversation keeps on coming up. It started in the 19th century. It's happened throughout the 20th century and it's happening now and there's so many different moments where it bubbles up. I'm thinking about the infamous Bill Cosby pound cake speech. The pound cake speech, yeah, yeah. And would she castigate it, you know, people naming their children African-Americans are their names like Shinikwa. I can't even talk the way these people talk. Why are you away? Where you in? Go off that. I don't know who these people are and I blame the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except he's not going to hear it. I'm thinking about the comedian Monique in an viral video that she posted of like Black Youth wearing pajamas and bonnets exactly in the airport. I've been seeing it not just at the airport. I've been seeing it at the store at the mall. I've been seeing sisters showing up with these bonnets and headscalts and they slip us. And the questions that I'm having to you, my sweet babies, when did we lose pride in representing ourselves? I mean, I think it surfaced with, you know, Michelle Obama, even though Michelle Obama completely conformed to respectable dress. It still wasn't enough. Her body was constantly surveilled and policed and commented upon. What were some of the big flashpoints for these tensions in the 20th century? I think the civil rights movement is an important moment. So there were two different strategies that Black folks used in the civil rights era. One was to wear respect to the dress. In the other case, it was to wear more counter-cultural, more rebellious forms of self-expression. A few months before this quote is in a moment, there was this very much discussed Ralph Lauren spread. It was set among the oak bluffs set, the sort of upper crusty bougie black folks who summer as a verb on the vineyard. And there was a lot of conversation about the styling in that spread, right? Yeah, you know what's funny about that collection is that the garments themselves weren't that interesting. Like it was typical, like, Ralph Lauren gear, what changed the meaning. It was the bodies that it was styled on and like the sit, the location. Like Markter's Vineyard oak bluffs. And I think that's really interesting how a black body can completely change the meaning of a garment. Like a quarter zip is just a basic sweater that many people probably have in their closets. But when these young black men put it on their bodies, they made a video about it. It changed the meaning of the garment, which I find really interesting. If fashion is sort of like always sort of in conversation with broader things going on the world, I'm wondering why you think that this quarter zip thing is happening right now and maybe not like in 2019. Yeah, that's an important question. And I'm still thinking through like what it means, which is as important ever having this conversation right now, like reflecting on that moment. I think one thing that I noticed in 2025 was our turn to like black elite dress. So we're talking about the quarter zip trend right now. And you mentioned the Ralph Lauren oak bluffs collection. That was also the third season of Guilded Age, which focused more so on the black characters in it, in that series. and also thinking about
and I'm biased here because I wasn't advised on this exhibition, but super fine, which I'll still focus on more traditional sort of, um, soothing and masculine clothing. Mm-hmm. Like black dandism and so on. Exactly. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And just explain black dandism to us real quick. Black dandism is, um, particular attention to, um, masculine self-presentation. And I think what makes it dandism and versus just being well-dressed or being dapper or being smart is that there's always like a wink in it. There's always a hint of subversiveness in dandism. And also when you add oratial lens to it, that just complicates it even more. Is the quarter zip downstream from like dandism in a way? That's a great question. I mean, my knee jerk reaction is to say no. It is. You just not feeling the quarter zip. Like as a, but when I think about it, yes. Absolutely. I mean, I think the reason why my knee jerk reaction is no is because the former dandism that I tend to gravitate towards is the more sort of bohemian sort of where coded Jimmy Hendrix, Lenny Kravitz, Andre D. Thousand, version of dandism, and like quarter zip's to me. Even on wearing one right now. Even on wearing one. I just think it's a little more basic. But I do think if you put it in context and how their dejummin were sort of just opposing themselves against stereotypes against young black men, I would say absolutely it is a form of dandism. One of the sort of central tensions in like respectability, like when people are not into it, is like this is the idea that if you comport yourself a certain way, if you are doing yourself a certain way, he will then mitigate at least some of the friction that comes with man-of-black person in a world that doesn't like black people. Yeah, I think there's a myth that if you dress right, you'll be treated right. And I mean, there's some truth to that. I can change a bit people. Think about me by how I dress and show up in the world. So it's not untrue. I just think it has limits. And like a suit is not armor. Like it's not going to save you from being gunned down. It just provides you a modicum of safety. I do have to say now, I go back and forth about this. It's a complex conversation because when I dress up, because it's the first day class or I'm going to an event, like people do, like make space for me in a way that doesn't happen on a everyday basis. So, you know, I'm a fashion scholar, understand the power of self-presentation. But like I said earlier, it has its limits and it's not going to save you from least brutality. So what do you think is like sort of happening more broadly in the world? You said like obviously there's a sort of return to black elite dress, right? Like a sort of a re-embrace of that kind of dress. Do you think that this quarter is at moment in response to some larger sort of like social political stuff that's happening right now? I do. I do think it's in response. It's like the current moment that we're living in. It's a hard question to answer, though, because we're living in the moment. And so we don't have the benefit of hindsight quite yet. But what I find interesting is that people have been posting photos from 2016, out of a sense in nostalgia. And I think part of it's like the sort of calcium days of the ideal bomb of years, like it was before Brexit. It was before the pandemic. And so yeah, and now like since then, there's been like a shift in the United States, but also globally towards conservative movements. And I wonder, and this isn't a definitive answer, because like I said, it's hard to sort of know this down because we're living in the moment. But I wonder if this rise of indeed black dress might be a response to the rise of conservatism. And what ways is it a response? A former protection, black bodies are constantly policed and surveilled. And it's not a complete safeguard, as we said earlier, like it's not armor by any means. But you know, for black folks, dress is a matter of life or death. Like it takes a split second for a police officer to decide whether you deserve to live or not. And that becomes even more extreme when it's a person of color. It becomes even more extreme when it's a black person. And so dressing more respectively, it comes down to whether you live or not in some cases. I mean, Trayburn Martin was killed because he was wearing a hoodie, even though it was a protective garment. It was a practical garment. It was drizzling when you left his home. But George Zimmerman looked at him and was like, you look suspicious to me. If you were wearing something else, if his hair wasn't covered, he might be living. What do you think you want people to sort of think about the next time, you know, in five years, when there's a whole different and it might not be that long because the internet, right? But like, the next time we have a wave, and we're like, we off that and it's sort of a sort of moment of like fashion meets respectability politics meets all this larger history that we're sitting on. What is something you want some people like carry with them to that next conversation? What the takeaway is from this conversation is that it's a larger, more long-standing conversation. And hopefully now that is getting more attention, thanks to this dissemination on the internet that people can start changing their minds about the stereotypes that are placed on black people. And that I'll also challenge people to look at someone wearing a Nike Tick to ensue and a shycy and find them elegant and worthy of respect as well. Like, we're human beings and regardless of how we dress, we deserve to live and be happy and be respected. Jonathan Square is a professor at Parsons School for Design where he teaches about black visual culture. His forthcoming book is Negro Cloth, how slavery birthed the American fashion industry. And it comes out later this year. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you. And that is our show. You can follow us on Instagram @NPRCodeSwitch. That's all one word. If emails more you think ours is code
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