Bridget Booher in Duke Magazine, March-April 1993:

When Chanel shows models dripping with gold chains on necks and waists, the look, on the surface, is about wealth and privilege. And yet, years earlier, urban blacks began wearing multiple gold chains as a sign of status and as a way of alluding to the image of their ancestors in the chains of slavery.

Janice Radway, a professor in Duke's literature program, says the intricacies of such cross-referencing are endlessly debatable. "Is it that Chanel is longing for the vibrancy and vitality of black culture? Or are they making fun of it, demonstrating its [supposed] vulgarity, so that their usage of it is an expression of racism? I think it's probably both these things. The question of appropriation is very complicated."

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