This study is a multi-method, qualitative project using Youth Participatory Action Research through ethnographic design to examine the uses of fashion/style by Black youth as a form of critical literacy. Taking place in the setting of an urban, public, Midwestern middle school, the work outlines the ways these students communicated through their fashion sense and thus made sense of their identities and the identities of others as messages critically coded and decoded daily. This work examines current texts/theories surrounding characteristics of uniform policy, critical literacy, and identity development through fashion/style. Ultimately, through this study’s action-orientation, this work highlights how students participated in student-led development of a uniform/dress code policy that incorporated their own critical fashion literacies. Critical Fashion Literacy, a particular form of critical literacy this work seeks to contribute to literacy studies at large, is centered upon the notion of how we each possibly read and write messages and meanings through fashion/style daily. Essentially, this study works to center youth voices with a potential impact on possibilities for their future as change agents in education in their own right – moving beyond fashion statements to the statements they are making through fashion.
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