Weaving absences

black bodies, textile practices, and the silence of narratives in design and fashion

Abstract

This article examines how Black people's textile practices constitute their own epistemologies of making, challenging Eurocentric design paradigms and proposing alternative ways of producing, narrating, and remembering. Adopting a decolonial and intersectional approach, the research analyzes the absences of Black bodies in Brazilian fashion design historiography, investigating how race, gender, and class traverse the historical constitution of textile work in the country. Through situated literature review, analysis of historical narratives, and examination of contemporary practices, it identifies how Black textile making operates as a territory of memory, resistance, and political creation. The results demonstrate that Black textile practices — historically situated in domestic spaces, on the edges of industry, and at the margins of the arts — configure an episteme that challenges the coloniality of knowledge in design. It concludes that reinterpreting the Brazilian fashion design field from the trajectories and practices of Black people is fundamental for a decolonial historiography that recognizes textile making as a political territory of social transformation.