Mavericks of Style

Uri McMillan is Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance.

Cast of Characters ix Introduction. Insurgent Aesthetics 1 1. Mundane Made Spectacular: Antonio Lopez 23 2. Neophyte to Muse: Grace Jones 75 3. Color That Moves: Stephen Burrows 121 Afterword. Style Is a Feeling 165 Acknowledgments 179 Notes 183 Bibliography 209 Index

"In Mavericks of Style, Uri McMillan takes us on a dazzling journey through the world of Grace Jones and her circle - Antonio Lopez, Juan Ramos, Pat Cleveland, Stephen Burrows and many more. Part archive raid, part love letter to insurgent glamour, McMillan recenters these style revolutionaries whose sharp elbows and sharper aesthetics reshaped fashion, performance, and art as we know it. Mavericks of Style is as seductive and vital as its subjects: a kaleidoscopic archive of those who turned the disco floor, the fashion runway, and their own bodies into living, breathing works of art." - Tavia Nyong'o, author of Black Apocalypse: Afrofuturism at the End of the World "Uri McMillan offers a vibrant analysis of how artistic production and collaboration among Black and Latinx women and LGBTQ artists resulted in a transformative cultural moment in 1970s New York that spanned fashion, photography, art, and performance. Readers learn how dance, color, racialized sexuality, and subculture fed the elite industries of fashion while also creating alternative spaces for Black and Latinx woman and queer self-fashioning. Bringing the milieu of nightlife, leisure, and corporate spaces to life, McMillan makes a major contribution to cultural studies." - Jillian Hernandez, author of Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment