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"A perfect time to look at the ethos of black hair in America -- and the perfect person to do it is Tanisha Ford" -- Changing America

"Everyone from the shopaholic to the clearance rack queen will see themselves in [Ford's] pages." -- Essence

"Takes you not only into the closet, but the inner sanctum of an ordinary extraordinary Black girl who discovered herself through clothes." -- Michaela Angela Davis, Image Activist and Writer

"[A] delightful style story." -- The Philadelphia Inquirer

From sneakers to leather jackets, a bold, witty, and deeply personal dive into Black America's closet In this highly engaging book, fashionista and pop culture expert Tanisha C. Ford investigates Afros and dashikis, go-go boots and hotpants of the sixties, hip hop's baggy jeans and bamboo earrings, and the #BlackLivesMatter-inspired hoodies of today.

The history of these garments is deeply intertwined with Ford's story as a black girl coming of age in a Midwestern rust belt city. She experimented with the Jheri curl; discovered how wearing the wrong color tennis shoes at the roller rink during the drug and gang wars of the 1980s could get you beaten; and rocked oversized, brightly colored jeans and Timberlands at an elite boarding school where the white upper crust wore conservative wool shift dresses.

Dressed in Dreams is a story of desire, access, conformity, and black innovation that explains things like the importance of knockoff culture; the role of "ghetto fabulous" full-length furs and colorful leather in the 1990s; how black girls make magic out of a dollar store t-shirt, rhinestones, and airbrushed paint; and black parents' emphasis on dressing nice. Ford talks about the pain of seeing black style appropriated by the mainstream fashion industry and fashion's power, especially in middle America. In this richly evocative narrative, she shares her lifelong fashion revolution--from figuring out her own personal style to discovering what makes Midwestern fashion a real thing too.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Ford, a professor of history and Africana Studies, follows up 2015's Liberated Threads with this thoughtful memoir in which "clothes are never just garments." She traces her journey from industrial Fort Wayne, Ind., through boarding school on the East Coast (where she had to balance the baggy jeans she loved and the Mary Janes the preppy kids were wearing) and a year of college in Atlanta (where the lure of knee-high boots eventually surrendered to the desire to move back to Indiana, where her young son was living with her parents), to a protest of the death of Michael Brown (where hoodies, which were utilitarian for the factory workers of Fort Wayne and fashionable for their kids, became political) and a Louis Vuitton store on Fifth Avenue in New York. The dashiki runs through it all, beginning as a symbol of her parents' individualism in the 1970s and continuing as a shorthand for their dreams for her. Ford sprinkles in the history and politics of the styles she highlights as well as a deep affection for her mother, the first style icon she knew. Her knowledge of fashion and her love for the women who influenced her style makes this appealing for anyone who's ever loved a piece of clothing. Agent: Tanya McKinnon, McKinnon McIntyre. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

A colorful dashiki. A U.S. Navy leather bomber jacket. A Trayvon Martin hoodie. For academic, pop-culture expert, and fashionista Ford, growing up projects-light with Black radical parents in conservative Fort Wayne, Indiana, these clothing items are talismans charting her evolution into an independent Black woman. Fashion and hair choices have always had particular significance for African Americans as protest against being told all your life that your hair is wrong, your culture is primitive, your family is broken, your mind will never be good enough for college, your money will never be good enough for luxury. Ford's memoir explores the connections between Black style and Black struggle; her nostalgia for Nike kicks is tempered with pain over the crack and gang era they represented ( We watched as our parents' freedom dreams morphed into crack vapor"") and anger at Nike executives who for damn sure weren't showing up on our doorsteps to give their condolences to so-and-so's mama after her kid was gunned down in their shoes or beaten and robbed for them. Ford's ultimate fashion achievement, successfully bucking racial profiling at a Louis Vuitton store, represents enfranchisement . . . a feeling few black folk in this country get to feel. --Lesley Williams Copyright 2019 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

A professor and pop-culture observer finds insight behind the statement, "clothes are never just garments."For Ford (African Studies and History/Univ. of Delaware; Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul, 2015, etc.) and her generation of black women who came of age in the 1980s and '90s, born to parents who embraced the civil rights and Black Is Beautiful movements, certain garments carried cultural import. In a narrative that progresses by discrete, chronological chapters, the author presents a kind of memoir of her life through certain iconic looks that she incorporated over the years, creating through hairstyle, clothes, and accessories a "powerful social skin." Her topics include the dashiki, baggy jeans, "coochie cutters," knee-high boots ("according to the churchgoing adults in our young lives, knee-high boots werefor club-hopping women, street walkers, strippers, and drug dealers' girlfriends"), bamboo earrings, the afro puff, and the hoodie. Each of these, she asserts, was a black innovation that encapsulated "rich, textured stories of our lives." The dashiki was adopted by black militants in the late 1960s as a symbol of pan-African struggle. In a humorous section, Ford describes the Jheri curl craze of the 1980s, sported by Michael Jackson and others. "Hands down," she writes, "the Jheri curl is the most maligned hairstyle in black history" as well as "the messiestsmelliest hairstyle ever invented." As the author delineates, many of the looks were inspired by urban culture and the emergent genre of hip-hop. As Ford moved from high school to college, where she majored in English literature and African studies, she continued to experiment with her look as a reflection of her inner self. Later, "with three degrees behind my name," she championed the hoodie look as a form of protest and sympathy with the Black Lives Matter movement.An entertaining coming-of-age memoir from "a proud dashiki daughter, dressed in my own dreams." Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.