Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Pro­duc­er CNC3

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

Shakaila Forbes-Bell is the first black per­son in the world to grad­u­ate with a Mas­ter’s de­gree in Fash­ion Psy­chol­o­gy. Fash­ion psy­chol­o­gy is the study of the ap­pli­ca­tion of psy­cho­log­i­cal con­cepts to our re­la­tion­ships with cloth­ing. As Forbes-Bell ex­plains in a post on her In­sta­gram ac­count @fash­ion­ispsy­chol­o­gy, it doesn’t mean that she can read your mind, though she might be able to ac­cu­rate­ly guess some of your key per­son­al­i­ty traits based on your choice and treat­ment of what you choose to wear. What she re­al­ly does is use psy­cho­log­i­cal the­o­ry to help peo­ple im­prove their sense of self.

She came in­to the field at the very be­gin­ning of the Black Lives Mat­ter protests when as an un­der­grad­u­ate stu­dent she no­ticed how the same hood­ie that la­belled Trayvon Mar­tin a threat, sym­bol­ised the heights of tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion in Sil­i­con Val­ley. It led to her in­ter­est in the re­la­tion­ship be­tween “race, clothes and im­pres­sion for­ma­tion.” That work opened her eyes to the mes­sages that our clothes can send about who we are, what we like and how we feel about our­selves. It al­so made her aware that there could be dis­con­nects in what we think our clothes say about us, and how they are be­ing per­ceived.

She was among the first co­hort of the post-grad­u­ate course in Fash­ion Psy­chol­o­gy at the Lon­don Col­lege of Fash­ion which is a Mas­ter of Sci­ence de­gree in Ap­plied Psy­chol­o­gy. Forbes-Bell’s pa­per on the ef­fect the un­der­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of black mod­els on the ma­jor fash­ion run­ways had on young black women was pub­lished in the In­ter­na­tion­al Jour­nal of Mar­ket Re­search af­ter grad­u­a­tion.

As a hall­mark of her work as a psy­chol­o­gist, Forbes-Bell’s opin­ion is al­ways un­der­pinned by re­search. She is con­stant­ly re­fer­ring to peer-re­viewed stud­ies to sup­port her analy­sis. A blog post on con­fir­ma­tion bias on her web­site takes you to a jour­nal ar­ti­cle in the Re­view of Gen­er­al Psy­chol­o­gy. This is on­ly one of four pa­pers quot­ed in her ar­ti­cle, which in­cludes ad­di­tion­al ref­er­ence points for the read­er who wants to ex­plore the is­sue fur­ther.

When WE mag­a­zine spoke to her af­ter her Fash­ion Psy­chol­o­gy work­shop which was part of the 2023 Bo­cas Lit Fes­ti­val sched­ule, we found her to be a thought­ful and in­sight­ful so­cial sci­en­tist.

On the mat­ter of the Trinida­di­an ap­proach to fash­ion, she loved the bold use of colour in gen­er­al, es­pe­cial­ly when com­pared to the al­most uni­ver­sal black in her na­tive Lon­don. She was al­so in­ter­est­ed in the op­por­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ed by those who would wear clothes made for them by seam­stress­es and tai­lors be­cause it al­lowed the user to ex­ert cre­ative con­trol over the way they com­mu­ni­cat­ed their per­son­al­i­ty vi­su­al­ly.

How­ev­er, she was al­so aware of the re­stric­tions ap­plied by pub­lic of­fices on what could be worn in­side those build­ings. Though this in­ter­view was done be­fore the dress code for the pub­lic ser­vice was amend­ed, her com­ment that “in one sense Trinida­di­ans can be tru­ly ex­pres­sive, but they have loads of so­cial norms that is stop­ping them from tru­ly ex­press­ing them­selves,” still holds true.

In an in­dus­try that is grap­pling with the is­sue of prof­its over peo­ple, fast fash­ion is no­to­ri­ous­ly ex­ploita­tive of work­ers. Forbes-Bell not­ed that while the world seems to on­ly as­so­ciate the Caribbean fash­ion in­dus­try with Car­ni­val, she sug­gest­ed they should look to­wards its ap­proach of build­ing an in­dus­try that avoids those chal­lenges.

“I think when a lot of peo­ple are talk­ing about sus­tain­abil­i­ty they think more about West­ern brands, but they don’t think about the Caribbean brands,” she said. But as re­gion­al fash­ion de­vel­ops, the de­sign­ers are do­ing in­ter­est­ing things “with fash­ion and tex­tiles” in­clud­ing “treat­ing their gar­ment work­ers care­ful­ly.” Those sus­tain­abil­i­ty con­ver­sa­tions, she be­lieves, need to con­sid­er the per­spec­tives of de­sign­ers from the Glob­al South.

It’s an is­sue that is per­son­al for Forbes-Bell, as her moth­er and step­fa­ther are Trinida­di­an, and she spent a lot of hol­i­days here as a child.

As a fash­ion psy­chol­o­gist, her work has led her to make reg­u­lar ap­pear­ances on UK day­time tele­vi­sion with her tips and tricks. She has been fea­tured in Vogue, CNN and The Guardian (UK), and she is the au­thor of the book “Big Dress En­er­gy” which claims that it can “trans­form your wardrobe and your con­fi­dence” by en­cour­ag­ing you to fight against im­pulse shop­ping by us­ing her “4,3,2,1 rule” to help you de­cide if that dress is re­al­ly worth it.