Since the mid-20th century, relations between Africa and China have grown stronger leading to a significant change in the mutual adaptation of fashion between both nations. A 21st century, Sino-African style has been formed by the intercultural meshing of traditional garments, textiles, and motifs.
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Textiles are a major form of aesthetic expression across Africa, and this book examines long-standing traditions together with recent creative developments. A variety of fine and venerable West African cloths are presented and discussed in terms of both artistry and technique. Wrapped around the body, fashioned into garments, or displayed as hangings, these magnificent textiles include bold strip weavings and intricately patterned indigo resist-dyed cloths. Also considered by the authors are striking contemporary works—in media as far-ranging as sculpture, painting, photography, video, and installation art—that draw inspiration from the forms and cultural significance of African textiles.
This catalogue accompanies an exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, September 30, 2008–March 22, 2009.
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From Africa-inspired to African-made, this guide is the first to celebrate a new wave of fashion designers who are emerging on the global stage.
Ever since the late 1960s when Yves Saint Laurent and Paco Rabanne presented African-inspired collections, the textiles, details, and colors of Africa have moved into the realm of high fashion. In the past few years, young designers from the continent itself have emerged as people to watch in the fashion world. Helen Jennings, editor of award-winning ARISE magazine, offers in this book a brief history of African fashion, beauty and style, follows its influence on modern designers, and spotlights the best designers, photographers, and models from across the continent and the African diaspora. Profiling popular lines such as Duro Olowu, Jewel by Lisa, Black Coffee, and Eric Raisina, Jennings explores the myriad reasons why African fashion is having its moment in the sun. She shows how designers are looking beyond clichés of the African aesthetic by embracing both traditional and contemporary fabrics and garments, and how the passion for ethically and environmentally conscious clothing is fueling this trend. As colorful and exciting as the fashions it features, this volume will appeal to anyone interested in following the world’s most exciting new fashion development.
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Dress and fashion practices in Africa and the diaspora are dynamic and diverse, whether on the street or on the fashion runway.
Focusing on the dressed body as a performance site, African Dress explores how ideas and practices of dress contest or legitimize existing power structures through expressions of individual identity and the cultural and political order.
Drawing on innovative, interdisciplinary research by established and up and coming scholars, the book examines real life projects and social transformations that are deeply political, revolving around individual and public goals of dignity, respect, status, and morality.
With its remarkable scope, this book will attract students and scholars of fashion and dress, material culture and consumption, performance studies, and art history in relation to Africa and on a global scale.
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Initially developed by European manufacturers for the West and Central African textile trade in the late nineteenth century, African prints became a vital part of many local “popular” fashion systems over the course of the twentieth century. While distinct styles developed, so did shared regional preferences, resulting in African-print fashions that are diverse yet often interconnected. Print fashion has over time come to present distinctive visual codes that carry a sense of African identity and cultural heritage, and because of this, it is pervasive and prominent in twenty-first-century African and diasporic visual cultures. Today, the expanding virtual presence of African-print fashion on the Internet and social media attests to its immense popularity, as well as to its capacity to generate global interest and appeal.
Featuring an abundance of colorful, boldly patterned African-print cloth and garments, vintage photographs, and contemporary works of art, African-Print Fashion Now! is the first major volume to delve into the history, significance, and multifaceted meanings of this dynamic fashion mode. The book foregrounds the stylishness and cosmopolitanism that have long flourished on the continent, while highlighting the expansiveness and innovation of twenty-first-century print fashion.
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The traditional, handcrafted textiles of Africa are sumptuous, intricate, and steeped in cultural significance. Region by region, African Textiles covers, as no other volume has, the handmade textiles of West, North, East, Central, and Southern Africa, outlining the range of weaving techniques, and the different types of looms, materials, and dyes that create these sumptuous works. Nor does it neglect the cultural context of African textiles, assessing the various influences of religion, culture, trade, tradition, fashion, and the changing role of women that inform their creation.
The breathtaking skill and creativity of the African peoples are presented here in radiant color—the gorgeous stripweaves of the Ashanti and the Ewe; the lace weaves of the Yoruba and the bogolanfini mud cloths from Mali and West Africa; the Berber weaves from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia in North Africa; the unique, crocheted, embroidered, and feathered hats from Cameroon; the ancient weaving tradition of Ethiopia; the beadwork of the Zulu, Xhosa, and Ndebele peoples of Southern Africa; and the Asian-derived tradition of weaving silk and raphia in Madagascar.
A guide to African textile collections open to the public, a glossary, and suggestions for further reading make this volume a practical as well as beautiful guide to the rich art of African textiles.
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The Fez and the Ottoman Path to Modernity
1869 – Red Silk Dress
katazome (stencil printing)
1905 – André Derain, Lucien Gilbert
Inès Gâches-Sarraute and the Straight-Front Corset