The emergence of a modeling industry in Jamaica that valorizes idiosyncratic style has opened up a space in which black images of beauty take center stage. Caribbean Fashion Week is the major platform for displaying internationally acclaimed Jamaican models. Showcasing a high percentage of decidedly black male and female models wearing spectacular designer clothes, Caribbean Fashion Week enables multiple readings of the body as cultural text. The permissive modeling aesthetic engenders capricious images of beauty that contest the very conception of the 'model' as a mold into which a singular figure of beauty is impressed.
Reviews the book "Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion," volume 2, entitled "Latin America and the Caribbean," edited by Margot Blum Schevill, Blenda Femenías, and Lynn Meisch.
