In “Duty Free Ranger: Taste for Romance,” I read aloud from a romance novel by Barbara Cartland whilst eating powdered donuts on a bench in Prospect Park over the course of two days. Colonial history, fashion, and white blindness are raw material for parody in this iteration of my “Duty Free Ranger” performative public intervention series.

“Taste for Romance” offers a dramatic interpretation of historical romance literature that evokes white colonialist capitalist hetero-patriarchal hegemony at its most ethereal and ludicrous. The reading with commentary reflects on and plays with questions around gender roles, class dynamics, hypocrisy, sex, guilt, and the possibility of love.

I call “Duty Free Ranger” public rituals “fashion actions” with an intention to destabilize colonialism, militarism, and complacency. In these, I embody, satirize and on a vibrational level undo imperialism’s damaging effects. DFR fashion actions connect contemporary cultural expressions, in this case, fashion, with our violent history through public actions or rituals of various kinds. This fashion action serves as an act of acknowledgement and resistance designed to inspire and awaken random passersby on their day-to-day paths.

Duty Free Ranger clothing functions as contemporary partywear for men. It manifests as a reworking of masculine, heteronormative, and militaristic menswear aesthetic ideals in dandy Techniclolor. I design the pieces using repurposed fabric.