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Black is Beautiful at the Skirball

The photographs and activism of Kwame Brathwaite are an excellent companion to the Rudi Gernreich show at the Skirball Center. Brathwaite was a photographer, an activist, a jazz promoter in the sixties and a believer that natural hair and African inspired fashion was necessary to supplant an exclusively white energy (eg Gernreich and the other white designers) however forward thinking they might be. He helped debunk the straightened hair and lighter skin models who had given black women largely unattainable role models.