Last night I discovered (via <a href="http://www.sewweekly.com/2011/03/romanticizing-the-past.html">Sew Weekly</a>) the Tumblr blog <a href="http://ofanotherfashion.tumblr.com/">Of Another Fashion: An alternative archive of  the not-quite-hidden but too often ignored fashion histories of women of color</a>.

Finding this blog was exhilarating for me -- you all know how I love vintage style -- but also like a punch in the gut. There was a blog full of images of glamorous women -- images that are so familiar to me because my family albums are full of images like these. My mother and aunts, my grandmother, all looking beautiful and fashionable in bygone times.

<a href="http://www.everydaytreats.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/tumblr_lhucuhqXJf1qfu6z3.jpeg"><img class="size-full wp-image-1094 alignnone" title="Toyo Miyatake Studio Rafu Shimpo Collection" src="http://www.everydaytreats.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/tumblr_lhucuhqXJf1qfu6z3.jpeg" alt="" width="385" height="560" /></a>

But the images were also exotic, even to me, because women of color -- women like me -- were rarely featured in aspirational media.

Here's why the blog was started
<blockquote>In providing a glimpse of women of color’s material cultural histories - a glimpse that no doubt only begins to redress the curatorial and critical absence of minoritized fashion histories - this archive and the forthcoming exhibition commemorates lives and experiences too often considered not important enough to save or to study.</blockquote>