Contemporary African Fashion (2010)

By: Suzanne Gott, ed. & Kristyne Loughran, ed.

African fashion is as diverse and dynamic as the continent and the people who live there. While experts have long recognized the importance of clothing as a marker of ethnic identity, life stages, political affiliation, and social class, they have only just begun to discover African fashion. Contemporary African Fashion puts Africa at the intersection of world cultures and globalized identities, displaying the powerful creative force and impact of newly emerging styles. Richly illustrated with color photographs, this book showcases haute couture for the African continent. The visual impact of fashion created and worn today in Africa comes to life here, beautifully and brilliantly.
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Description

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ©2010
Format: xvii, 228 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 23 cm.
ISBN : 9780253222565  0253222567
OCLC: 526083954
 

Table of contents

Table of contents

Foreword by Joanne B. Eicher
Acknowledgments
Introduction / Suzanne Gott and Kristyne Loughran
Part 1. Fashion within the African Continent
1. The Ghanaian Kaba: Fashion That Sustains Culture / Suzanne Gott
2. The Visual City: Tailors, Creativity, and Urban Life in Dakar, Senegal / Joanna Grabski
3. Secondhand Clothing and Fashion in Africa / Karen Tranberg Hansen
4. Fashion, Not Weather: A Rural Primer of Style / Elisabeth L. Cameron
5. Contemporary Wedding Fashions in Lagos, Nigeria / Elisha P. Renne
Part 2. African Fashion Designers
6. African Fashion: Design, Identity, and History / Victoria L. Rovine
7. Using the Past to Sculpt the Costume of the Future: An Interview with Kandioura Coulibaly / Janet Goldner
8. Intersecting Creativities: Oumou Sy’s Costumes in the Dakar Landscape / Hudita Nura Mustafa9. From Cemetery to Runway: Dress and Identity in Highland Madagascar / Rebecca L. Green
Part 3. African Fashion in the Diaspora
10. La Sape Exposed! High Fashion among Lower-Class Congolese Youth: From Colonial Modernity to Global Cosmopolitanism / Didier Gondola
11. Have Cloth–Will Travel / Kristyne Loughran
12. Dressing Somali (Some Assembly Required) / Heather Marie Akou
13. Translating African Textiles into U.S. Fashion Design: Brenda Winstead and Damali Afrikan Wear / Leslie W. Rabine
Further Readings
List of Contributing Authors
Index

About the author

About the author

Suzanne Gott is Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Critical Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. Her work focuses on fashion from the Ashanti region in Ghana.

Kristyne Loughran is an independent scholar who specializes in African jewelry and fashion. She is editor (with Thomas K. Seligman) of Art of Being Tuareg: Sahara Nomads in a Modern World.

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