Hurston saw adornment as artistry. Modern America often interprets the same impulse as failed discipline. That distinction matters because the policing of Black style has never been merely aesthetic. It is also about regulating who gets to occupy public space comfortably and under what conditions.
In her 1934 essay “The Will to Adorn,” Zora Neale Hurston argued that adornment was not superficial decoration, but a deeply human impulse toward beauty, invention, display, and self-making. She descr...
