African Expressive Cultures

Patrick McNaughton, editor

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Front cover illustrations: (clockwise from right) Haliatou Traor Kands

fancy wax ensemble, photograph by Chiara R. Bini; two-piece Damali ensemble in bogolanfini by Brenda Winstead, photograph by Kim Johnson;
Kandiouras designs for Farafina Tigne Independence Day Celebration,
photograph by Janet Goldner. Back cover illustration: black velvet ensemble in
modle Mali style by Haliatou Traor Kand, photograph by Chiara R. Bini.

Printed in China

INDIANA

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a
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i
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r

indiana

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.

Karen Tranberg Hansen

Kristyne Loughran
Hudita Nura Mustafa
Leslie W. Rabine
Elisha P. Renne
Victoria L. Rovine

fa s h i o n

Heather Marie Akou

Elisabeth L. Cameron
Janet Goldner
Didier Gondola
Suzanne Gott
Joanna Grabski
Rebecca L. Green

c o n t r i b u t o r s

a f r i ca n

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.
Suzanne Gott

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.

from the foreword by Joanne B. Eicher

C o n t e m p o r a r y

Fashions globally focus on the here and now, embracing and emphasizing change. African fashions have existed across the continent much
longer than often imagined, and the complexity of the continent
itselfgeographically, culturally, historicallymeans that readers
of this volume will quickly learn that fashion is not monolithic in
contemporary Africa, but varied across regions and countries, even
within a single country.

Suzanne Gott and

Kristyne Loughran

a f r i ca n fa s h i o n

Edited by

Mary Jo Arnoldi, Smithsonian Institution

c r e at i v i t y o f

Fashion

The dynamism and

Well written, highly readable, and very accessible . . . covers a whole

range of topics relating to various historical, economic, social, and
artistic dimensions that constitute contemporary African fashion.

Gott and Loughran

A f r i ca . C u lt u r a l S t u d i e s

Fashion

C
o
n
t
e
m

Fash
o

Patrick McNaughton, editor

Catherine M. Cole

Barbara G. Hoffman

Associate editors

A f r i ca n E x p r e s s i v e C u lt u r e s

Eileen Julien

Kassim Kon
D. A. Masolo
Zo Strother

Elisha Renne

ion
Ed i t e d b y

Suzanne Gott and

Kristyne Loughran
foreword by

Joanne B. Eicher
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis

This book is a publication of

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Indiana University Press

601 North Morton Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA

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publisher. The Association of American
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Permissions constitutes the only
exception to this prohibition.

Contemporary African fashion / edited

by Suzanne Gott and Kristyne Loughran ;
foreword by Joanne B. Eicher.
p. cm. (African expressive cultures)
Includes bibliographical references and
index.
ISBN 978-0-253-22256-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. FashionAfrica. I. Gott, Edith Suzanne.
II. Loughran, Kristyne.
TT504.6.A35C66 2010
746.92096dc22
2010008141

1 2 3 4 5 15 14 13 12 11 10

To Roy Sieber and Sophia Sieber,

who urged us to look left, right,
over, and under, and who
taught us by example

contents

Foreword by Joanne B. Eicher ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction
S u z a n n e G ot t a n d K r i s t y n e Lo u gh r a n 1

Part O n e. Fas h ion with in th e African Contin ent

The Ghanaian Kaba: Fashion That Sustains Culture

S u z a n n e G o t t 11

The Visual City: Tailors, Creativity, and Urban Life in Dakar, Senegal
J o a n n a G r a b s k i 29

Secondhand Clothing and Fashion in Africa

K a r e n T r a n b e r g H a n s e n 39

Fashion, Not Weather: A Rural Primer of Style

E l i s a b e t h L . C a m e r o n 53

Contemporary Wedding Fashions in Lagos, Nigeria

E l i s h a P. R e n n e 67

Part two. African Fas h ion D esign e rs

African Fashion: Design, Identity, and History

V i c t o r i a L . R o v i n e 89

Using the Past to Sculpt the Costume of the

Future: An Interview with Kandioura Coulibaly
J a n e t G o l d n e r 105

Intersecting Creativities: Oumou Sys

Costumes in the Dakar Landscape
H u d i ta N u r a M u s ta f a 123

From Cemetery to Runway: Dress and

Identity in Highland Madagascar
R e b e cc a L . G r e e n 139

Part th r ee . African Fas h ion in th e D iaspora

10

La Sape Exposed! High Fashion among Lower-Class Congolese

Youth: From Colonial Modernity to Global Cosmopolitanism
D i d i e r G o n d o l a 157

11

Have ClothWill Travel

K r i s t y n e L o u gh r a n 175

12

Dressing Somali (Some Assembly Required)

H e at h e r M a r i e Ak o u 191

13

Translating African Textiles into U.S. Fashion Design:

Brenda Winstead and Damali Afrikan Wear
L e s l i e W. R a b i n e 205

Further Readings 221

List of Contributing Authors 227

Figure 0.1. Women dressed up for a

kitchen party (bridal shower) in
Lusaka, Zambia, 2002. Photograph
by Karen Tranberg Hansen.

f o r e w o r d

J o a n n e B . E i ch e r

Fashions globally focus on the here and now, embracing and emphasizing change.
African fashions have existed across the continent much longer than often imagined, and the complexity of the continent itselfgeographically, culturally,
historicallymeans that readers of this volume will quickly learn that fashion is
not monolithic in contemporary Africa, but varied across regions and countries,
even within a single country. Changes in the way people dress, in so-called traditional or ethnic garments (wrappers or pagnes, head ties, and boubous), are easily
apparent when traced over time in fabric design and color, as well as variations
in styling. Africans are well aware of fashions beyond the continent, too, and
adopt them readily, as President Nyere of Tanzania did in combining elements
of a Nehru suit and Mao jacket with Western-style trousers or as youth of both
genders do in the twenty-first century in wearing jeans and T-shirts. In an earlier
time, the farthingale had an impact on the forms of dress worn by the Herero
women in Namibia and the gowns of the Efik women of Nigeria. Middle Eastern
dress, caftans and hijab, are also found along with those called Western, but
may be more appropriately termed world or global fashion (Eicher and Sumberg
1995; Akou 2007), although typically with local interpretations and variations. In
this volume, examples of the early adoption of European clothes include Suzanne
Gotts discussion of the incorporation of European blouses into Ghanaian womens kabas and Elisha Rennes description of the white wedding dress introduced
in early twentieth-century Lagos.
In addition, Africans have contributed fashions to the rest of world. African
women brought head-covering customs to the Americas at the time of enslavement that have extended as fashion statements into contemporary times. In the
1960s U.S. Peace Corps volunteers in Nigeria adopted the Yoruba upper garment
called dashiki and continued to wear it on their return home. Handcrafted textiles

from West Africa, such as bogolanfini, adinkra, and kente, have also traveled across
the Atlantic and into Europe and become fashionable.
Fashion applies to many facets of life as Herbert Blumer (1969) pointed out,
not just dress, but also dietary habits, medical beliefs and practices, and scientific
theories. In this volume, the focus is on fashions in dress, how the human body
using all the senses is groomed, attired, perfumed, coiffed, accessorized, and
adorned in many ways for personal satisfaction, as Gregory Stone indicated in an
early analysis of the process called presentation of the self (1962).
A recent book, Places and Spaces of Fashion, 1800 to 2007 (Potvin 2009), provides
a perspective for analyzing contributions within Contemporary African Fashion.
The editor, John Potvin, introduces space and place as critical, saying, To be in
fashion is both at once sartorial and spatial. . . . Spaces and places have often been
overlooked in the writing of the visual and material cultures of fashion (p. 1).
Potvins authors use American and European spaces: the racecourse, the department store, and a college campus. The spaces addressed within Contemporary African Fashion are equally relevant: the streets and marketplaces, funerals and weddings. In all, showing ones clothing competence, as Karen Tranberg Hansen
terms it, by being well turned out is paramount. These spaces and places hover in
the background of each article within the editors tripartite organization: fashion
within the African continent, African fashion designers, and diaspora fashions.
Each section illustrates diversity and creativity related to location, highlighting
the interpretation of fashion at a specific time and in a specific place, such as Hudita Mustafas examination of Oumou Sys designs within the contemporary Dakar
landscape and Elisabeth Camerons contrast of Zambian rural and urban styles,
as well as Didier Gondolas analysis of sapeur high-style dress in both historic and
current contexts in the Congos and in Paris.
The creativity of human beings extends to using it in dressing the body, seeking innovation when resources are available to make changes easily. The history
of dress is intertwined with the history of the human race, traced archeologically
through fossil finds to Africa, dating to 130,000 years ago. Many finds in Africa
relate to possibilities for dressing the body, such as shells dating to 82,000 and
75,000 bce in Morocco and South Africa, some with holes suggesting they were
strung together, perhaps as necklaces or bracelets. Such African data set the stage
for documenting that early humans dressed their bodies and likely sought change
over time. To have fashion, there must be surplus and enough of a production

Foreword

system allowing change. Production, however, does not have to be industrial in

a factory sense alone. Tailors and dressmakers construct garments and accommodate the changes needed for fashionability with remarkable creativity, a point
well made by Joanna Grabski on tailors in Dakar, Victoria Rovine on Malian,
Ghanaian, and South African fashion designers, and Kristyne Loughran describing Malian and Togolese dressmakers designing ensembles for Haliatou Traor
Kand, who lives in Italy. Leslie Rabine and Janet Goldner present two designers philosophical interpretations of their creativity using interviews with Brenda
Winstead in the United States and Kandioura Coulibaly in Mali. The secondhand
clothing from Western countries that becomes refashioned in Zambia, depicted
by Karen Tranberg Hansen, is a striking example of creative interpretation for
specific place and space. The assemblage performed by Somali women residents
in the MinneapolisSt. Paul setting focuses on a completely different example
of creativity in another milieu, as discussed by Heather Marie Akou. Certainly
transforming the use of highland Madagascar silk textiles originally designated
for shrouds is a brilliant example of creativity, as Rebecca Green portrays.
Georg Simmel (1904) pointed out that fashion allows both conformity and
distinction, that is, showing allegiance to others by dressing like them as well as
showing individuality by dressing differently. We know that the climatic differences, technological developments, and histories of settlement and colonization
affect how fast changes may occur, leading to this volume on African fashion into
the twenty-first century. The media have had an impact as Africans have been
aware of and involved with newspapers, magazines, television, and, most recently, the Internet. Movies have had an impact as well, with Nigerian production of
films having a special cachet, known as Nollywood.
To add a personal note, I turn to what fashions looked like in 1963 when I first
arrived in Nigeria, driving east from Lagos to Enugu to establish a home. I saw
Yoruba women wearing indigo adire wrappers, bubas, and head ties, and Yoruba
men, two-piece African print garb that looked to me like mens pajamas, and
I was queried about whether my one-year-old daughter was a boy because her
outfit was a one-piece overall and she didnt have pierced ears and wear earrings.
In offices, many men frequently chose Western apparel, trousers and shirts, and
women, dresses or skirts and blouses. In the eastern part of Nigeria, Igbo men
more often wore Western trousers and tailored shirts unless in the village wearing
a wrapper and shirt, while Igbo women wore wrappers of African prints often in

Foreword

xi

Figure 0.2. Women of the Okpella

Development Association USA

dancing to open the tenth anniversary celebration of the organization
held in Minneapolis, Minnesota,
August 8, 2009. Left to right: Dr.
Habiba Braih, Hajia (Barrister)
C. B. R. Dirisu (spouse of Okpellas
traditional ruler), Ms. Philomena
Kerobo, and Mrs. Amina Imaku.

xii

shades of yellow, orange, and green rather than the burgundy,

blue, and deep indigo of Yoruba women. In the north, caftans
and long tunics garbed men. During my three years residence, followed by an additional ten research trips into the
early 1990s, I witnessed a variety of changes. Nigerian women coming home from abroad in Europe or North America
hustled to learn new hairdo or head tie styles. By the early
1970s, many womens wrappers were worn shorter, sometimes
kneerather than anklelength and with platform shoes.
Fieldwork in the Niger Delta of Nigeria during the 1980s allowed me to observe specific textile and style preferences and
changes of the Kalabari people for everyday and celebratory
wear who proudly wore traditional dress but liberally incorporated textiles and accessories from across the world in
these traditional ensembles. In traveling in other West African countries (Senegal, Cte dIvoire, Mali, Ghana, and Republic of Benin), as
well as to Egypt and Ethiopia, I saw similarities in womens wrapper styles and
other garments, but more often there were differences in fabric types and colors.
And into the late 1990s and early twenty-first century, I have had opportunities
to see Kalabari dress in several celebratory events in the United States along with
attending Igbofest in St. Paul. Everywhere, fashions change. Shifting fabric and
head tie styles in the diaspora amaze me as I watch Africans keeping up with the
folks at home. Indeed, my colleague Jean Borgatti, when attending a 2009 summer reunion in St. Paul of the Okpella people of Nigeria, photographed womens
elegant head ties worn at the closing night event, the latest in current fashion for
textiles, as seen in Figure 0.2.
The World Population Bureau, Washington, D.C., in August 2009 estimated
the African continents population as one billion people, projecting the 2050 population to double to two billion. This leads us to consider the many continued
opportunities for the development of and participation in the fashion scene by
Africans at home and in the diaspora. This volume adds to understanding the
wide range of fashions across the world with Africans acknowledged as savvy participants, instead of being sidelined or ignored. Many thanks to these scholars for
adding to and updating our knowledge of current African fashions and foreshadowing their futures.

Foreword

a ck n o w l e dg m e n t s

Contemporary African Fashion is the result of mutual interests and concerns generated by the many conversations and ideas we have shared over the past fifteen
years with each other and with our mentors, colleagues, and friends. This project
builds upon the work and inspiration of Roy Sieber and Joanne Eicher, whose research and writings were instrumental in establishing African dress and fashion
within African art scholarship.
Dee Mortensen at Indiana University Press was the first to suggest we conceive of an edited volume on African fashion, and she has been an enthusiastic
and very supportive adviser throughout the project.
We wish to thank Mary Jo Arnoldi, Paula Girshick, Phyllis Martin, Patrick McNaughton, and Diane Pelrine for their encouragement and thoughtful critiques
since the projects inception. Christine Mullen Kreamer, Leslie Rabine, Doran
Ross, and Victoria Rovine have all contributed invaluable advice and insights
as the project developed. We also acknowledge our two anonymous reviewers,
whose incisive comments greatly contributed to the books conceptual framework. Our greatest debt of gratitude goes to our contributors: we thank them for
their excellent scholarship and for their unflinching belief that the volume would
indeed become a reality.
We want to thank the editorial, managing editorial, and production and design
staff members at Indiana University Press for their careful work and attention to
detail. We express our appreciation to photographer Mamadou Tour Bhan for
his kindness in granting us the use of his photographs. We also thank Christophe
Lepetit and Agns Rodier.
We are especially grateful for the private contribution received in memory of
John and Katheryne Loughran and to the University of British Columbia Oka-

nagan for generous grant funding, which enabled the use of color photographs
necessary to truly illustrate the richness and variety of African fashion.
Finally, we wish to thank our families and spouses for their support and patience as we prepared this volume.

Contributor Acknowledgments
Heather Marie Akou
I would like to thank Dr. Joanne Eicher and Dr. Kate Daly for working with me on
the early stages of research for my chapter, and the merchants at the Somali malls
in Minnesota who allowed me to photograph their shops.
Elisabeth L. Cameron
My first thanks go to the Chitofu family who graciously hosted me in Kabompo
District during numerous extensive visits since 1992. Without their including me
as part of their family, I never would have been able to do my work. I am also
indebted to Rebecca Mpumba for her assistance. In Kabompo, the Brooks family offered friendship and assistance. I also thank Manuel Jordn for inviting me
to Kabompo at the beginning. The research for my chapter was made possible
by the IIE Fulbright (19921993), the Fulbright-Hays (20032004), the UCSC
Committee on Research Faculty Research Grants, and the UCSC Arts Research
Institute.
Janet Goldner
My contribution to this volume is a result of fifteen years of successful ongoing
artistic collaboration with the members of the Groupe Bogolan Kasobane and
especially Kandioura Coulibaly and Kletigui Dembele. I want to thank them for
a rich artistic friendship that fosters our research, artistic creation, and communication. Through a shared purpose, our work as artist/colleagues has brought
understanding and support for our cultural and political inquiry. Among the
factors that make this work are Kasobanes skill at collaboration through thirty-

xiv

Acknowledgments

five years of work as a group and the Malian value of collectivity, one of the aspects of Malian culture that Kasobane has fought to explore and preserve. Tangibly, our collaboration has resulted in individual and collective projects and works
of art.
Suzanne Gott
I want to thank the many individuals who have generously collaborated in the research for my chapter, especially Mrs. Angelina Bilson and family, Dr. Takyiwaa
Manuh, Madam Akua Abrafi, Mrs. Mary Owusu-Ansah, the Damptey family,
Madam Adwoa Manu, Mrs. Dorothy Harding, Mrs. Victoria Dadie, Mr. James
Adu, Madam Theresah Osei, Mrs. Elizabeth Longdon, Mrs. Selina Sarpong, Mrs.
Selina Aggrey, Mrs. Christina Boakye, and Mrs. Comfort Mends. I also want to
express my gratitude for research support from Fulbright-Hays and Social Science Research Council dissertation grants; faculty grants from the Kansas City
Art Institute, Brandon University, and the University of British Columbia Okanagan; and the generosity of the University of Ghanas Institute of African Studies and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technologys College of Art.
And special thanks to co-editor Kristyne Loughran.
Joanna Grabski
My gratitude goes to the many individuals discussed in my chapter who shared
their time and ideas with me. Support from the Denison University Research
Fund in 2001, 2002, and 2009 allowed me to complete this project. As always, my
deep appreciation to El Hadji Sy for his continued support.
Rebecca L. Green
Research has been funded by the Social Science Research Council (1990), Indiana University (1990), Fulbright-Hays (19921993, 2003), the American Association of University Women (19951996), Fulbright (2004), and Bowling Green
State University. None of this work would have been possible, however, without
the support, encouragement, help, and suggestions of my friends and colleagues
in Madagascar, Europe, and the United States. In particular, I would like to
thank Jean-Aim Rakotoarisoa, Chantal Radimilahy, and everyone at the Muse
dArt et dArchologie and the Institut des Civilisations in Antananarivo, Nanou

Acknowledgments

xv

Ravelo, Suzanne Ramananantoandro, Mirana Abraham Andriamanantena and

Rado, Jol Andrianomearisoa, Martine Razanamanana, Zo Razakaratrimo, JeanRene and Bako, Paul Cunningham, Sarah Fee, my family, especiallywithout
whom I could not do what I doand so many more!
Karen Tranberg Hansen
My chapter draws on observations from field research I conducted in Lusaka
throughout the 1990s. The discussion is developed in more depth in my book
Salaula: The World of Secondhand Clothing and Zambia (Chicago, 2000). The research was supported by faculty grants from Northwestern Universitys Research
Grant Committee, the Social Science Research Council (U.S.), and the WennerGren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
Kristyne Loughran
I wish to express my gratitude to Haliatou Traor Kand for her willingness to
share her personal views and thoughts on fashion and for her continued enthusiasm and interest during follow-up conversations. I thank Suzanne Gott for her
discerning comments, Chiara R. Bini for contributing her portraits of Haliatou,
and Daniele and Giovanni Milazzo of Sky Photographic in Florence for their
invaluable professional advice over the years. Finally, my heartfelt appreciation
goes to my parents, whose example continues to be a source of inspiration, curiosity, and strength.
Hudita Nura Mustafa
Much gratitude to Oumou Sy and, especially, the late Michel Mavros, business
manager for Metissacana and for Sy, for providing information, clarification, and
images over the course of many years which made possible my writings and lectures on Sys work. Thanks to the late Nancy Schwartz for encouraging me to consider more closely the way that Oumou Sys work represents and engages multiple
senses, not only the visual.

xvi

Acknowledgments

Leslie W. Rabine
I would like to express heartfelt gratitude to Brenda Winstead for her generous
and spirited collaboration on my article for this volume. Grateful thanks also to
Kim Johnson of Urban Oasis Studio, to Karym Fall and Fatima Fall of the Centre
de Recherches et de Documentation du Sngal, and to Karyl Ketchum for her
help and advice on the illustrations.
Elisha P. Renne
I would like to thank those involved in the fashion industry, particularly wedding fashions, in Lagos for their kind cooperation and helpful interviews. Special
thanks go to Sola Arowolo, Aina Esho, Bawo Ikomi, Maria Ogunsi (Mya), Maggie Oviosun, and Bolarinwa Oyewoleall of Lagos.
Additional thanks go to Josiah Olubowale for research assistance and general
good advice and to Suzanne Gott and Kristyne Loughran for conceiving of this
volume and for their persistence in carrying it though.
Victoria L. Rovine
The research on which my chapter is based has been generously funded by several
University of Florida competitions, including research and curriculum development grants from the College of Fine Arts and the College of Liberal Arts and
Sciences. I am very grateful for their support. Before 2005, the University of Iowa
provided me with travel support in the early phases of this research, for which I
am grateful. Many thanks as well to Kristyne Loughran and Suzanne Gott for
their editorial expertise and their hard work on this volume. Of course, I also
thank the designers and other fashion aficionados who have shared their time and
knowledge with me in Africa and elsewhere. And I thank Florence Babb, who is
my closest reader.

Acknowledgments

xvii

Fashion

Figure I.1. Mrs. Grace Asane in a kaba

ensemble of African-print cloth with the

Owuo atwede design (The ladder of death
[everyone climbs it]). Kumasi, Ghana,
1990. Photograph by Suzanne Gott.

Introduction

S u z a n n e G o t t a n d K r i s t y n e L o u gh r a n

African fashion is as diverse and dynamic as the continent itself. African fashion
takes many forms, including haute couture fashions by African designers, stylish creations of local seamstresses or tailors, and fashionable imported secondhand clothing. Awareness of fashion trends is certainly a phenomenon of the city,
but fashion also plays a significant role in rural life, and African fashion remains
essential to African diaspora communities in Europe and North America. The
awareness of and interest in fashion brings young Congolese men to Paris to find
European haute couture to wear in their own status-seeking fashion shows at
home, while brides-to-be in Lagos attend fashion shows featuring wedding gowns
by Nigerian designers. African fashion designers celebrate and transform their
own cultural heritage in runway fashions emphasizing the use of local textiles
and African themes.
Contemporary African Fashion presents the complex nature of African fashion
systems, the rich facets of African creativity, and the contemporary experiences
African fashion conveys. Fashion, to quote Ulrich Lehman, is the supreme expression of that contemporary spirit. It changes constantly and remains necessarily incomplete; it is transitory, mobile, and fragmentary. This quality ties it in with
the pace and rhythm of modern life. Certain aspects of African fashion reveal

the shaping of contemporary identities and the meanings of individual beliefs

and approaches to modernity. Localized notions of modernityfueled by accelerating access to electronic mass media, international travel, and transnational
migrationhave also laid the foundations for the globalization of fashion and
instantaneous dialogues between different peoples, nations, and continents.
Fashion, whether African, Asian, or Western, and dress are two different
spheres, and many studies are careful to distinguish between the terms dress, or
clothing, and fashion. Fashion implies constant change: it is volatile, hybrid, and it
crosses many boundaries. Dress, on the other hand, is considered stable, distinctive, and related to the social practices of individuals. Dress also symbolizes the
more private aspects of personhood throughout an individuals life cycle.
The numerous volumes on African dress published in the past four decades
have highlighted the importance of clothing as a marker of life stages, ethnic
identity, soci0-economic class, and political affiliation.
Publications geared toward a general audienceNomads of Niger (1983), Africa Adorned (1984, 1994), Ndebele: The Art of an African Tribe (1986), Maasai (1990),
and African Elegance (1999), to name a fewprovided stunning images of African
dress practices. Other volumes such as Ethnic Dress (1995), (Un)Fashion (2000),
and Parures Ethniques (2001), illustrating the distinctiveness and beauty of ethnic
dress, included a section on Africa.
Over the past fifteen years, an increasing number of books included representative studies of African dress, reflecting the growing interest in the topic of African fashion. Many of these edited volumes and case studies drew on innovative
field research by scholars from the disciplines of art history, anthropology, history, fashion and design, and womens studies.
Edited works by Arnoldi and Kreamer (1995), Eicher (1995), Roach-Higgins,
Eicher, and Johnson (1995), and Hendrickson (1996) concentrated on fundamental issues pertaining to social identity, social action, authenticity, and gender as
they relate to dress practices. Others (Perani and Wolff, 1999) analyzed the aesthetic and cultural roles of dress and patronage systems in Africa.
The anthology by Van der Plas and Willemsen (1998) addressed the richness
and diversity of African fashion, with a special emphasis on sartorial ecumenes,
hairstyles, textile design, and African fashion designers. The insights presented
by this influential work on African fashion and Revue Noires (1998) special is-

Suzanne Gott and kristyne loughr an

sue devoted to African fashion have been enriched by the more recent works by
Mendy-Ongoundou (2002), Manservisi (2003), and Geoffroy-Schneiter (2005).
Many case studies presented African dress practices from Africa and the
diaspora. Fall and de Cugnac (1998) illustrated the art of Senegalese fashions and
womens attitudes and approaches to femininity and style, while Gardi (2000)
shed light on the history and use of the boubou, a long, loose-fitting West African
robe. Hansen (2000) elucidated the secondhand clothing trade and its central
role in the fashion system in Zambia, whereas Rabine (2002) focused on the aesthetic systems, the meanings and histories of fashion networks between African
nations and Los Angeles. Over the past decade, anthologies have also focused on
fashion as a political language (Allman 2004).
Recent exhibition catalogs from Europe, such as Tulloch (2004), Luttman
(2005), the ModeMuseum (2005), and Brand and Teunissen (2006) examined
attitudes toward fashion and identity and revealed the importance of African
fashion and creativity in various diaspora contexts. Some placed special emphasis
on the historical development of fashion traditions and the effects of globalization on fashion practices.
These recent studies have all contributed to expanding the manner in which
we think about fashion and dress in Africa. Another inherent message in these
works is the need to move beyond the Eurocentrism of fashion studies and to
investigate African fashion as part of the wider discourse in fashion studies. In
this vein, the most recent comprehensive collection of essays that seeks to accomplish this is the Africa volume of the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion
(2010), edited by Joanne B. Eicher and Doran Ross.
As many authors have observed, African fashion is not a phenomenon of the
late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The earliest written accounts of
sub-Saharan African peoples attest to the presence of fashion trends in African
dress and adornment. From the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, travelers described changing tastes in textiles, adornment, and hairstyles. The European glass bead trade was particularly subject to changing tastes and fashions,
and merchants failing to keep abreast of the latest bead preferences might find
no market for previously popular bead types or colors. Eighteenth-century British cloth manufacturers substantially altered their textile products to suit West
African consumers preferences for lighter weight, brightly colored East Indian

Introduction

cottons. Twentieth- and twenty-first-century manufacture of African-print cotton textiles for the lucrative West and Central African cloth trade has required
careful monitoring of African consumers ever-changing tastes, trends, and styles
by European, African, and now Chinese textile companies.
The introduction of tailored clothing over the course of the last five hundred
years presented new possibilities for the development of local styles and fashion
trends. By the twentieth century, mass media in the form of newspapers, local
and imported magazines, and, most recently, satellite television and the Internet,
offered new sources of stylistic inspiration and innovation.
The contemporary production of African fashion varies from local small-scale
workshops to global enterprises. The workshop-based system, which produces a
substantial percentage of contemporary African fashion, has the ability to respond
to and create new style trends more rapidly than the large-scale mass production
of fashion systems. Like its more industrialized counterparts the world over, the
production of African fashion has evolved into an important factor in national
economic-growth rates. It provides jobs, probably for hundreds of thousands of
people, and important public relations resources for national governments.
In the postcolonial and globalized world many Africans have immigrated to
Europe, creating pluri-ethnic neighborhoods in Paris, London, and Rome. There
are large African communities in North American cities such as Washington,
D.C., New York, MinneapolisSt. Paul, Los Angeles, Toronto, and Montreal. The
Barbs neighborhood in Paris is home to many North and West African nationals.
Here, young African women can have their hair dressed and have access to fashion products from their home countries. Similar resources may be found in shopping malls catering to MinneapolisSt. Pauls large Somali community. African
womens and mens desire for fashions from home has stimulated a new avenue for
African fashion production. In Ghana, for example, there are seamstresses who
specialize in producing the latest local fashions for export to Ghanaian women
living abroad.
Late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century globalization and new technologies have given African designers new ways of expanding their clientele both
within Africa and around the globe. The Nigerien designer Alphadi, for example,
has created a website (www.alphadi.net) featuring haute couture, prt--porter
(ready-to-wear), and sportswear fashions. Alphadi also uses his public relations

Suzanne Gott and kristyne loughr an

savvy to create glamorous runway shows in different African nations, which have
become international media events. The growing number and recognition of African fashion and its designers, such as Alphadi (Niger), Oumou Sy (Senegal),
Ben N (Ghana), Lamine Kouyat (Mali/Senegal), and many others create the
need for an accessible and nuanced treatment of contemporary African fashion
that comes from within the African continent as well as the diaspora.
The essays presented in this volume all highlight various aspects of the contemporary African fashion world. The authors emphasize the important role fashion plays in different African social contexts, highlighting the interdependence
of the personal, the regional, and the transnational. While the dynamics of globalization and changing identities underlie many contributors essays, other essays explore contemporary relationships between fashion and cultural identity
and highlight the diversity and richness present on the continent and the diaspora.
Contemporary African Fashion has been organized in three parts. Authors have
not used an academic reference style; rather theyve included suggested readings
pertinent to their chapters in the Further Readings section. The first part of the
volume, Fashion within the African Continent, concentrates on case studies
and the histories of individuals from different nations. In The Ghanaian Kaba:
Fashion That Sustains Culture, Suzanne Gott discusses the development and
importance of the Ghanaian kaba, an ensemble combining indigenous and European elements of female dress with the capacity to simultaneously honor the
regions cultural heritage while embracing the ever-changing world of fashion.
She examines how new fashion trends originate at the grassroots level, blending
cultural heritage with fashionable innovation. The Visual City: Tailors, Creativity, and Urban Life in Dakar, Senegal, by Joanna Grabski, reveals the importance
of the city to the creative process of tailors in the Sandaga market area known as
Niayes Thioker, in Dakar, Senegal. The tailors attribute their capacity to translate trends into new fashions to the urban pulse and visual traffic the city offers
them.
The economic aspects and the importance of change are illustrated in Karen
Tranberg Hansens Secondhand Clothing and Fashion in Africa. The author
examines the burgeoning secondhand clothing business in which used clothing
from the West is then incorporated into local dress universes and Zambias lo-

Introduction

cal fashion scene. In tandem, but from a different perspective, Elisabeth L. Camerons Fashion, Not Weather: A Rural Primer of Style examines the tensions between concepts of rural and urban fashion in Zambia, revealing the importance
of dressing fashionably and well in a rural community.
Fashion entrepreneurs have developed creative ways to remain ahead of the
times and to satisfy new market trends. Elisha P. Rennes chapter on bridal fashions, Contemporary Wedding Fashions in Lagos, Nigeria, vividly highlights
special fashion shows attended by high-society Lagos women and men which
feature trend-setting wedding fashions and accoutrements that retain certain aspects of the Nigerian past.
The second part of the volume, African Fashion Designers, presents some of
the continents leading and most creative designers. In her essay African Fashion: Design, Identity, and History, Victoria L. Rovine presents fashion as an
ideal medium for exploring changing identities at the intersection of cultures.
She focuses her study on the fashions of designers Chris Seydou (Mali), Lamine
Kouyat (Mali/Senegal), Ben Nonterah (Ghana), and Strangelove fashions Ziemek Pater and Carlo Gibson (South Africa). Janet Goldners Using the Past to
Sculpt the Costume of the Future: An Interview with Kandioura Coulibaly is
a conversation with this Malian fashion, costume, and jewelry designer. Coulibaly describes his artistic development and articulates his views on fashion as a
vehicle of thought, of ideology, of research, of love. Through his fashion designs
and plan for establishing a fashion museum, Coulibaly seeks to preserve and perpetuate his countrys cultural heritage.
Hudita Nura Mustafas Intersecting Creativities: Oumou Sys Costumes in
the Dakar Landscape characterizes Senegalese designer Oumou Sys work as a
reclamation of African heritage with a parodic rendition of modernity. Mustafa
examines Sys negotiation of past and future by blending fashion and adornment
with popular culture, fine arts, literature, and film to evoke future dialogues on
the past and present. Rebecca L. Greens From Cemetery to Runway: Dress and
Identity in Highland Madagascar offers the historical gaze on the development
of lamba fitafy, an indigenous silk cloth seeped in ritual and cultural tradition. The
author explores how Malagasy designers use this cloth to combine global trends
with indigenous traditions and materials to create new fashions expressing a contemporary Malagasy aesthetic.

Suzanne Gott and kristyne loughr an

The third part of the volume addresses African Fashion in the Diaspora as
an important dimension of contemporary African fashion, which involves transnational movements between Africa, Europe, and North America. La Sape
Exposed! High Fashion among Lower-Class Congolese Youth: From Colonial
Modernity to Global Cosmopolitanism, bridges the gap between African and
European fashion systems. Author Didier Gondola examines the importance of
fashion in the Congo since the early 1900s and its significance in negotiating a
positive postcolonial identity of modernity and emancipation. The high-fashion
male sapeur represents all the contradictions of the postcolonial Congos, and in
the future, Gondola predicts la sape will remain a vehicle for Congolese youth to
express their modern cosmopolitanism.
Peoples ideas about the self, their national identity, and their approach to fashion are illustrated in Kristyne Loughrans Have ClothWill Travel, a cameo
and conversation with Haliatou Traor Kand, who has been living and working
in Florence, Italy, for eighteen years. Kand articulates her views on the Togolese
fashions she favored as a young woman, as opposed to those she wears as an adult.
Kand, like many of her co-nationals, purchases African-print fabric through the
Vlisco catalog and mails it to Togo, where she commissions the latest fashionable ensembles. In this essay, Loughran highlights the differences and meanings
Kand associates with wearing fashionable Togolese ensembles, as opposed to
fashionable European ones, and explores how these practices make up Kands
perception of expressing her own modern identity.
Africans living in the diaspora have also transposed and adapted their fashion and identities to fit the norms of their new physical and social environments.
Heather Marie Akous Dressing Somali (Some Assembly Required) focuses
on Somali shopping malls in MinneapolisSt. Paul. These are the stage for the
postmodern practice of bricolage by Somali refugees, who select from a myriad of
global trade goods, Somali imports, and Western styles to create fashionable new
ensembles expressing a diversity of Somali, Islamic, and Somali-American identities. Leslie W. Rabines Translating African Textiles into U.S. Fashion Design:
Brenda Winstead and Damali Afrikan Wear introduces this African American
designers fashions and artistic concepts. Damali Afrikan Wear is an African-inspired line, first appearing in the United States in the 1970s. It stands out for its
visual beauty, design creativity, and grounded social practices. Rabine has cre-

Introduction

ated striking collage illustrations combining Winsteads Damali fashions with

historical prints and photographs of fashionable West African women, mirroring
Winsteads style and practice of mixing textiles from different African cultures.
Today, African fashion is at the intersection of diverse cultures and transnational identities. Using fashion, individuals intentionally redefine their aesthetic,
social, political, and cultural selves. Contemporary African Fashion seeks to reveal
the dynamism and creativity of African fashion and its designers. It is our hope
that this volume introducing the diversity of fashion in sub-Saharan Africa and
the diasporas will encourage more studies and publications in this fascinating
field.

Suzanne Gott and kristyne loughr an

the economic and creative relationships

between seamstresses, tailors, market
vendors, and specialized dress shops
and their clients. These essays address
issues of modernity and globalization:
the visuality of the city, urban and rural
identities, and the localization of the
global in different social milieux.
This section reveals the diversity of
fashion contexts and practices in
sub-Saharan Africa.

within the

and rural Africa. Here, authors examine

fashion

spectrum of different fashions in urban

african

continent

Part one

The following chapters present a broad

The Ghanaian Kaba

Fashion That
Sustains Culture
Suzanne Gott

Women in southern Ghanas Ashanti Region, especially those living in the cosmopolitan capital of Kumasi, take great pride in their fashionable dress and sense
of style. At the center of womens fashion world is the kaba, a three-piece wrapped
and sewn ensemble which developed through the creative fusion of indigenous
and European elements of female dress (Figure 1.1). While this ensemble is not
unique to southern Ghana, this hybrid style does have particular, localized value
as a result of the Ghanaian kaba ensembles unique capacity to simultaneously
honor the regions cultural heritage while embracing the ever-changing world of
fashion.
The Ghanaian Kaba Ensemble
The Ghanaian kaba is one of the three major types of female ensemble worn in the
Ashanti Region. A womans choice of ensemble depends on the occasion and on
her stage of life. For the two-piece dansinkran ensemble, which received its name
from the Asante dansinkran hairstyle, women wear two different, yet coordinated
cloths for the upper and lower wrapped components. The Asante consider dansinkran to be especially beautiful, expressing time-honored custom and cultural
pride. Dansinkran ensembles are worn by Asante queen mothers, elderly women,

11

Figure 1.1. Mrs. Lydia Kyei

dressed in a kaba ensemble of

the African-print design Bonsu,
named in honor of a nineteenthcentury Asante king. Kumasi,
Ghana, 1990. Photograph by
Suzanne Gott.

and chief mourners at Asante funerals. In contrast, girls and young women usually wear sewn dresses, skirts and tops, or, most recently, pants or jeans and tops.
The three-piece kaba ensembleconsisting of a sewn kaba blouse, a sewn or
wrapped skirt, and a third cloth that can be wrapped as an overskirt or tied into
stylish headgearremains emblematic of fashionable Asante womanhood.
Within West Africa, the term kaba is applied to three different ensemble
styles: the three-piece Ghanaian kaba; the kaba sloht dress of Sierra Leone; and
the smocked kaba dress style worn in Cameroon. Each of these kaba styles developed through the selective incorporation and local transformation of European
elements of female dress. The hybrid nature of these different regional ensembles
is reflected in the cross-cultural origins of the term kaba, a word believed to have
originated in West Africas coastal pidgin trade languages as a local version of
the English word cover. The pidgin term kaba reveals an important characteristic
shared by each type of kaba, that of covering regions of the female body, particularly womens breasts, which were not concealed by indigenous one- or two-piece
wrapped styles. The efforts of Christian missionaries and the growth of local,
mission-educated communities during the nineteenth century were important
influences in the development of West African kaba ensembles. The prestige long
associated with imported clothing styles and textiles also contributed to the development and appeal of new kaba ensemble styles.
Ghanas three-piece kaba was created by the addition of a sewn, Europeaninspired blouse to womens customary one- or two-piece wrapped ensemble. An
early illustration of this combination, pictured in a British womans 1831 account of
her travels along the West African coast, shows a Fantee mulatto woman wearing a European-style blouse with the local wrapped skirt and distinctive Fante
bustle. Children and descendants of local women and European merchants, some
of whom became wealthy, prominent members of Ghanas coastal trading communities, played an important role in developing and popularizing such hybrid
fashions. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the kaba gained increasing
popularity among coastal women, as well as being adopted by elite women of certain inland states.
But by the end of the nineteenth century, European dress styles had become
the preferred attire for the women of southern Ghanas new, mission-educated
elite, while kaba ensembles were worn by more humble members of these Chris-

The Ghanaian Kaba

13

tian communities. Soon, the Ghanaian kaba became a mode of dress largely associated with illiterates, or women without formal schooling.
However, in the mid-twentieth century, the status of the kaba ensemble rose
dramatically as a result of nationalist sentiments that accompanied the 1957 establishment of an independent Ghana free from British colonial rule. The Ghanaian
kaba gained new prestige as the noble national costume which honored the new
nations cultural heritagea status that it retains to the present day. The threepiece kaba also became a fashionable mode of dress for women in other West and
Central African countries. Today, Ghanaian women from all walks of life wear
kaba ensembles, either on a daily basis or for special occasions such as church,
social events, funerals, and weddings.
The Special Value of African-Print Cloth
In Ghanas Ashanti Region, the special prominence of kaba ensembles in womens
wardrobes is, in no small part, due to the particular esteem and economic worth
of the African-print cotton textiles used for the Ghanaian kaba.
The Asante term for the most highly valued category of ensemble fabrics is
the word ntoma (cloth), or the English word cloth. In the Ashanti Region, the two
locally produced forms of ntoma are kente and adinkra. Kente, a handwoven silk,
rayon, or cotton strip-cloth historically associated with leadership, remains the
most prestigious Asante textile. Adinkra, a cotton textile with hand-stamped designs of deep symbolic meaning, is worn as a special form of mourning cloth. The
third and most widely worn category of ntoma is African-print clotha distinctive factory-produced cotton textile first developed by nineteenth-century European textile companies specifically for the West and Central African cloth trade
(Figure 1.2).
All manufactured fabrics other than African-print cloth are referred to by
the English word materialan umbrella term for the polyesters, cottons, cotton
blends, linens, and rayons that are generally used for the dresses, tops, skirts, and
pants favored by girls and younger women. The more culturally valued dansinkran and kaba ensemblesensembles emblematic of female maturityare made
of the more highly valued ntoma or cloth textiles: kente, adinkra, or African-print
cloth. Kaba ensembles of African-print cloth are the primary mode of prestigious
female dress.

14

Suzanne Gott

African-print cloths special cultural and economic value, in comparison to

all other factory-produced textiles, is the result of this distinctive textiles unique
history. The origins of African-print cloth date back to the early-nineteenth century efforts of European textile companies to develop factory-produced versions
of handcrafted Indonesian batiks, using special manufacturing techniques to
imitate the Javanese wax-resist process.
The great success of these factory-made batiks with African consumers
prompted late nineteenth-century European manufacturers to establish special Africa departments dedicated to the design, production, and marketing of
African-print textiles. These companies sent representatives to West and Central

The Ghanaian Kaba

Figure 1.2. Madam Theresah Osei,

a prominent wholesale and retail

trader in African-print textiles,
in her downtown shop. Kumasi,
Ghana, 2005. Photograph by
Suzanne Gott.

15

Africa to collect samples of local textiles, as well as to observe and report on different regional cloth preferences. European cloth manufacturers success in Africas
lucrative yet competitive African-print cloth trade required expert levels of understanding in regard to the visual culture, aesthetic tastes, and symbolic systems
of different West and Central African cultures, so these companies also employed
local market women specializing in the African-print cloth trade as consultants
who could more effectively assess and influence the popularity of new Africanprint designs.
Ghanas independence from Great Britain in 1957 opened the way for the establishment of Ghanaian African-print cloth factories and the development of
more affordable grades of African-print cloth. However, the costly imported wax
prints that continued to be produced by certain European textile companies,
especially the Dutch manufacturer Vlisco, using long-established African-print
designs, have remained the most highly valued form of African-print cloth (Figure 1.3).
In the Ashanti Region, an important trait of African-print cloth that distinguishes this textile from all other manufactured fabrics is that African-print designs have namesa characteristic that African-print cloth shares with highly
valued, locally crafted kente and adinkra textiles. The Asante, like other Akanspeaking peoples, have a rich heritage of verbal artistry, with the most valued
forms of art and visual culture linked to Akan verbal arts by a name. For this
reason, African-print cloth manufacturers and traders have pursued the strategy
of bestowing names upon new African-print designs in order to make these cloth
designs more appealing to potential customers.
The names given to African-print designs come from a variety of sources. The
African-print Bonsu (see Figure 1.1) is said to have been named after an early nineteenth-century Asante king who earned the honorific title Bonsu (Whale) after
leading the first successful southern military campaign to the coast. The design
dehye Nsu (A Royal Doesnt Shed Tears) expresses the distinction and privilege of royalty in Asante society. Other African-print designs are named after
elements of everyday life, such as two popular designs introduced by European
textile companies before 1920: Kwadusa (Bunch of Bananas) and ABC (see Figure
1.3), referring to schooling and literacy.
Proverbial sayingsan especially rich and highly regarded Akan verbal art
form and a long-established source of design names for locally produced adinkra

16

Suzanne Gott

Figure 1.3. Mrs. Felicia Boadu

wearing a kaba of Dutch

wax-print cloth in the longestablished African-print design
ABC. Kumasi, Ghana, 2005.
Photograph by Suzanne Gott.

The Ghanaian Kaba

17

and kenteare a major source of African-print cloth names. The African-print

design Akwadaa b nwa is an abridged version of the well-known proverbial saying, Akwadaa b nwa na mm akyekyede (A child can break the shell of a snail,
but cannot break that of a tortoise; i.e., only attempt what is appropriate to your
level of ability). Another popular African-print design, Owuo atwede (The ladder
of death [everyone climbs it]), offers a philosophical commentary on the inevitability and equalizing impact of death.
Seemingly straightforward names may have deeper levels of meaning, as in the
case of the African-print design Aya (Fern). This design, which originated as an
adinkra motif, has a double-edged meaning based on the names similarity to the
Asante exclamation aya, meaning I am not afraid of you! Wearing such an African-print design has the capacity to deliver specific messages or commentaries,
in this case perhaps a defiant challenge to a business or marital rival. However, on
most occasions, women emphasize that their decision to wear a particular named
design is motivated by the desire to convey a more generalized message, based
on the widespread consensus that named African-print cloth means quality. In
the words of one young schoolteacher, If you put on [African-print] cloth with
no name, it is not good cloth. It is important to show people that you have put on
good cloth.
Women living in the Ashanti Region, despite differences in ethnicity, educational background, and financial means, have long been united by a shared interest in acquiring high-quality African-print cloth. It is generally understood that
a womans personal and interpersonal well-being and success are often evaluated
in terms of the number and quality of African-print textiles that she owns and
displays by wearing. In the 1980s and 1990s, women reported particularly strong
social pressure to wear good-quality African-print kaba ensembles after marrying, and especially after the birth of their first child, with a new mother expected
to wear a substantial number of new kaba ensembles of costly imported Africanprint textiles. As one friend explained, If you are a young woman who gives birth
and are not rich enough to buy [African-print] cloth, then people will laugh at you,
saying that you are not of an age to give birth.
Although the economic difficulties of recent years have forced a relaxation of
such requirements, wearing kaba ensembles of high-quality African-print cloth
remains an ideal. The capacity of the three-piece kaba ensemblewhich requires
six yards of African-print cloth for all women, large or smallto clearly com-

18

Suzanne Gott

municate clothings monetary value is considered to be one of the reasons for the
continuing popularity of kaba ensembles in the Ashanti Region. Most women
are knowledgeable as to the current prices of different grades of locally produced
and imported African-print cloth, and the six-yard kaba provides a means of unequivocally displaying the financial worth of womens African-print ensembles.
The strong linkage between African-print cloth, female maturity, and ideal
Asante motherhood is based in the more gender-specific significance of textiles
status as a valuable, and inviolable, form of female wealth. The general importance of cloth, clothing, and fashionable display in West and Central Africa is
based in the historic value of textiles as widely traded commodities and forms of
currency. In the Ashanti Region, with its heritage of royal robes of handwoven
kente, costly textiles are long-established means of displaying rank, wealth, and
prestige. For women, the acquisition and wearing of good-quality textiles, especially African-print cloth, have special significance because of cloths customary
status as a distinctively female form of property. Unsewn lengths of good-quality
African-print cloth, an asset that only increases in value, provide a way of saving
for the future or weathering times of financial crisis.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, women were able to invest a significant percentage of their income in costly Dutch wax-print textiles and more affordable
factory prints from Ghana, Nigeria, and Cte dIvoire. But by the late 1990s, the
negative impact of IMF and World Bank Structural Adjustment programs on the
Ghanaian economy brought increasing economic hardship that significantly reduced womens ability to buy imported or even less costly locally produced African-print textiles.
This widespread decline in Ghanaians standard of living has brought greater
acceptance of inexpensive secondhand clothing imported from Europe and North
America as a form of daily dress. However, despite these changes, the Africanprint kaba ensemble has retained its special status as the most highly regarded
form of womens dress. In the words of one friend, Kaba is our national custom.
Its our real Ghanaian dress. . . . To dress well is to dress in cloth. To be dressed
properly, you must put on cloth. In the early years of the twenty-first century, affordable African-print cloth once again became available, now produced by Chinese companies whose lower production costs, while undermining Ghanas own
African-print production, also brought a resurgence in womens ability to wear
fashionable kaba ensemble styles (Figure 1.4).

The Ghanaian Kaba

19

Figure 1.4. Mrs. Monica Boadu

wearing a new kaba ensemble of
African-print cloth manufactured
in China. Kumasi, Ghana, 2007.
Photograph by Suzanne Gott.

20

The Ashanti Regions Dynamic Local Fashion System

In the Ashanti Region, the popular term for fashion or fashionable dressing is the
English word life, an apparent shortened version of highlife, the name coined during the early twentieth century for the prestigious lifestyle and dance-orchestra
music of Ghanas mission-educated elite. p life (she likes life, i.e., fashion) and
b life (she is always fashionably dressed) are two phrases commonly used for
complimenting a womans fashionable style of dress. All women, except the most
elderly, are considered to possess a strong interest in fashionable, prestigious
dress.
The Ashanti Regions historic capital of Kumasi, a city of almost a million Asante and non-Asante residents, is home to a dynamic fashion world in which new
clothing styles emerge and spread rapidly throughout the city. This dynamic fashion system is fueled by the creative talents of local seamstresses and tailors, the
fashionable tastes of Kumasi women, and the ongoing innovations made possible
by the local, workshop-based fashion system.
Women most frequently commission their kaba styles from seamstresses, who
are generally regarded as being more skilled in sewing fashionable kaba styles.
Tailors are considered to excel in sewing dresses, skirts, tops, and pants; however
certain tailors, such as Kumasi tailor James Adu, are also highly skilled in sewing
kaba (Figure 1.5).
Ghana, unlike many other West African countries, has a substantial, wellestablished seamstress population. The roots of Ghanas seamstress profession
may be traced to the mission-based education system that developed in West Africa during the second half of the nineteenth century. Sewing skills were a basic
feature of female education in nineteenth-century Europe and America, and the
missionary teachers from Switzerlands Basel Mission who founded Ghanas first
girls schools made sewing instruction a basic part of their educational program.
At first, sewing was taught within the extended households that served as the missionaries earliest educational settings. Sewing instruction became part of the formal curriculum following the opening of girls boarding schools in the 1880s.
Many early photographs show Basel Mission teachers and students gathered
around sewing baskets, at work on their sewing projects. Students began by learning the basicshow to sew various stitches neatly and in a straight line. As pupils
advanced, they increased their sewing skills by making different kinds of sam-

The Ghanaian Kaba

21

Figure 1.5. Tailor James Adu

instructing his apprentices in
sewing techniques. Kumasi,
Ghana, 2007. Photograph by
Suzanne Gott.

plers. Students used the stitches they learned for a variety of sewing projects. They
began with simple projectsa handkerchief made by piecing together squares of
fabric, or a laundry bag made from a flour sack. The sewing projects of more advanced students reveal their skills in embroidery and in lace making.
Students learned to sew simple garments, such as a cotton slip or childrens
clothing. In these sewing classes, girls also learned to sew simple blouses, like
those worn with a wrapped or sewn skirt for the Ghanaian kaba ensemble. Sewing projects produced by these student seamstresses might be sold as a means of
generating funds to support these mission schools, thereby introducing a vocational aspect to the training of these young seamstresses.

22

Suzanne Gott

To become a successful seamstress, or tailor, in contemporary Ghana requires

good sewing and business skills, as well as the ability to stay abreast of the latest fashion trends. Seamstresses and tailors must also be good teachers, because
sewing workshops operate according to the apprentice system, which provides
training for the profession (see Figure 1.5). In exchange for their students labor,
seamstresses and tailors are responsible for the proper training of the apprentices
under their supervision.
Beginning apprentices learn different sewing skills, often by sewing with inexpensive recycled paper. As apprentices acquire more skills, they are given simple
and later more difficult steps to complete in sewing a clients ensemble. Cloth is
expensive, so only the seamstress, tailor, or a senior apprentice is permitted to
actually cut a customers cloth. Ghanaian seamstresses and tailors practice the
freehand method of clothing construction. They dont use a pattern in cutting
and constructing a garment but rely on their tape measure and expertise to ensure that the garment will be a success.
Accomplished seamstresses, such as Mrs. Victoria Dadie and Mrs. Christina
Boakye (Figures 1.6 and 1.7), pride themselves on their knowledge of the latest
fashionable kaba styles and on their skill in creating their own stylistic innovations. In Kumasi, women distinguish between two basic categories of kaba ensembles, simple and complicated styles. Most women tend to have their betterquality African-print cloth sewn in a simple kaba style that can remain in fashion
for two or three years (see Figures 1.13). Complicated or fancy styles are more
distinctive styles that will remain fashionable for only a relatively short period
of time (see Figure 1.4). The added expense of a complicated kaba style due to
the quantity of decorative materials that are often used, as well as the extra labor
involved in sewing such elaborate styles, adds to the prestige of these distinctive,
short-lived styles.
When women take their African-print cloth to a seamstress, there are several
ways that they can order a new kaba style. Sometimes a client may bring in a kaba
ensemble to be copied. In the 1980s and 1990s, seamstresses attracted customers
by displaying finished garments outside their shop, sometimes on fashionable
lady plywood hangers created and sold by local sign painters. Seamstresses also
might display full-sized sewn paper versions of the latest kaba blouse styles. Clients could then mix and match elements of the different paper kabaschoosing

The Ghanaian Kaba

23

Figure 1.6. left: Seamstress

Mrs. Victoria Dadie at her
Kumasi workshop, 2005.
Photograph by Suzanne Gott
Figure 1.7. right: Mrs. Christina

Boakye, holding a fashion poster

featuring her own kaba ensemble
designs. Kumasi, Ghana, 2005.
Photograph by Suzanne Gott.

the neckline of one and the sleeve style of another. Since the late 1990s, new kaba
styles are increasingly inspired by the colorful fashion posters that are now produced in Ghana and other West African countries (see Figure 1.7). Women may
also leave the choice of kaba style up to a trusted seamstress or tailor by simply
asking that they sew a nice style. A kaba ensemble is judged to be an artistic
success when the seamstress, or tailor, achieves a harmonious balance between
ensemble style, cloth design, and the personality of the individual client.
The Ghanaian Kaba: Fashion That Sustains Culture
In contemporary Ghana, the fashionable stylishness associated with virtually
all women continues to find its most valued expression in the three-piece kaba
the real national costume, combining culturally and economically valued Af-

24

Suzanne Gott

rican-print cloth with the locally developed hybrid style of sewn and indigenous
wrapped components. The special significance of the kabas cloth and style provides women who wear kaba ensembles with the capacity to fulfill important social expectations for womens dress and honor the regions cultural heritage while
remaining actively engaged in a dynamic grassroots fashion system.
In the Ashanti Region, a womans attainment of motherhood has long been
an occasion for distinctive personal display, and kaba ensembles have provided
women with a fashionable means of continuing customary practices associated
with celebrating childbirth. Until the mid-twentieth century, especially in smaller towns and villages, the new mothers body would be decorated with a special
white clay, known as hyire, as a symbolic expression of joy, victory, and ritual purity. Today, this celebratory display of whiteness is accomplished by a new mother
dressing in kaba ensembles of white African-print cloth (i.e., white cloth with
an indigo design) to express her victory and joy in successfully giving birth.
The new mothers ability to acquire and wear good-quality African-print cloth attests to her readiness for the financial responsibilities of motherhood as well. New
mothers, dressed in fashionable new kaba ensembles of white African-print cloth,
are a distinctive sight in Kumasis markets and downtown shopping district. The
weekly clinic for the weighing and immunization of infants at Kumasis Central
Hospital has also provided a special occasion for new mothers to publically display their joy and financial maturity.
The hybrid nature of the Ghanaian kaba ensemble, combining womens indigenous wrapped style with a sewn blouse and wrapped or sewn skirt, has enabled women to fulfill customary requirements for dress in a manner that doesnt
interfere with the utilitarian demands of daily life. Mens customary ensemble,
in contrast, is a voluminous wrapped, toga-like style that is too ungainly for
regular wear. For this reason, womens kaba ensemble has provided women with
a greater capacity for wearing customary dress in the course of their everyday
lives. This capacity became especially clear one afternoon as a friend, Kumasi
dressmaker Elizabeth Longdon, explained why she had changed from her usual Western-style dress into an African-print kaba ensemble of red, orange, and
blackthe customary colors of mourning and emotional distressfor a brief
shopping trip into town. During the two weeks of mourning leading up to the
funeral for her husbands close friend, Elizabeth explained that she would be
expected to wear only kabas of African-print mourning cloth for all public

The Ghanaian Kaba

25

appearances. Since her husband wouldnt be able to do so because the mans

toga ensemble was too awkward for daily wear, she would be dressing in cloth for
both of us.

The continuing popularity of womens kaba ensembles, particularly within

the Ashanti Region, is inextricably linked to the role of textiles, especially goodquality African-print cloth, as an important form of female wealth. The inclusion
of African-print cloth in the same valued textile category as handcrafted kente
and adinkra is the result of this textiles particular history. Although initially developed and produced by European-based textile manufacturers, the commercial
success of African-print cloth was the result of these foreign companies concerted efforts to meet the standards and tastes of their African customers. The marketing of African-print cloth in Ghanas Ashanti Region and other Akan areas has
also required European, African, and, most recently, Chinese textile companies
to produce African-print designs with culturally meaningful names in order to
satisfy the verbal-visual aesthetic of Asante and other Akan peoples.
Womens development of the three-piece Ghanaian kaba ensemble, perhaps as
early as the sixteenth or seventeenth century, created a new mode of dress with
the capacity to satisfy the seemingly contradictory needs of cultural continuity
and fashionable innovation. The addition of a sewn, initially European-inspired
blouse to womens indigenous one- or two-piece wrapped style resulted in an ensemble that, by the mid-twentieth century, could meet Ghanaian womens growing desire to express nationalist pride as well as fashionable modernity. The hybrid
sewn and wrapped kaba ensemble provided women with a more practical, wearable form of customary dress than mens wrapped and comparatively ungainly
customary ensemble. The kaba ensembles sewn componentsthe kaba blouse
and, more recently, the sewn slit skirtalso substantially increased the fashion
potential of womens previously wrapped styles.
In todays Ashanti Region, especially the capital city of Kumasi, womens kaba
ensembles remain the center of a dynamic, locally based fashion world that presents an alternative to Western views of fashion as a system in which stylistic innovations are introduced, or imposed, from above. Instead, new styles and fashion

26

Suzanne Gott

trends originate at the grassroots level, within a commissioning process that enables fashion-conscious Kumasi women to enlist the expertise and creative skills
of local seamstresses and tailors. The creation and wearing of stylish new kaba
ensembles of African-print cloth, with their successful blend of cultural heritage
and fashionable innovation, reveal the cultural vitality and longstanding sophistication of this distinctive West African fashion system.

The Ghanaian Kaba

27

The Visual City

Tailors, Creativity,
and Urban Life
in Dakar, Senegal
Joanna Grabski
Dakar, the capital of Senegal, is a city where visual traffic is dense, abundant, and
dynamic. Both residents and visitors alike admit that it is virtually impossible to
venture through downtown streets without encountering a kaleidoscope of visual forms. The facades of commercial and residential buildings are plastered with
advertisements, graffiti, and wall murals. Pedestrians, always considered potential consumers, happen upon makeshift market stalls as well as ambulant street
vendors selling mass-produced gadgets and goods from abroad. City streets are
further animated by brightly painted public mini-buses, called car-rapides, weaving together with a mass of passenger cars, yellow taxis, and mopeds.
Dakars well-dressed and fashionable population provides another vibrant
layer to the citys visual landscape. Style-conscious individuals elegantly dressed
in billowing embroidered boubous or tailor-made ensembles of colorful wax-print
cloth walk alongside individuals sporting blue jeans, jogging suits, and Sean John
shirts. Clothing and dressing well are important topics of everyday conversation
in Dakar, and many Senegalese devote substantial resources and time to looking
their best. Several types of garments are available in Dakar, including the custommade work of tailors, imported new and secondhand clothing, and the exclusive
designs of internationally appreciated haute couture designers such as Oumou
Sy, Claire Kane, and Diouma Diakhate.

Of these diverse fashion options, the custom-made work of tailors and imported clothing are the most visible on city streets. Tailoring is among the most
common neighborhood businesses, and it is no exaggeration to say that a tailors studio always seems to be just around the corner. In fact, in a population of
3 million, it is estimated that more than 20,000 tailors practice their trade in
Dakar (Figure 2.1). A great deal of variety and specialization distinguishes the
citys tailors. Some are celebrated for their original designs while others are
known for their meticulous replication of clothing advertised in catalogues, often
from the United States, or garments acquired in Dakar and abroad.
The prices associated with custom-made attire also vary greatly and are contingent on materials, the tailors reputation, and production costs. Due to economic constraints, the majority of tailors in Dakar rent sewing machines and
workspace, aspiring to someday own their own machine as well as studio. Tailors
with extensive experience and the right connections might also take jobs at an
upscale boubou boutique such as Nabile Couture, Mandele Couture, and Plateau
Broderie, located in downtown Dakar. These boutiques cater largely to a clientele
with the financial resources to purchase elaborately embroidered, custom-made
boubous for holidays or special occasions.
Dialogues with the Marketplace of Ideas: Tailors in Niayes Thioker
Even with the availability of tailors in every Dakar neighborhood, clients desiring
the latest and trendiest garments visit tailors in Niayes Thioker, a neighborhood
located between Medinas urban sprawl and upscale downtown (Figure 2.2).
Because Niayes Thioker is home to March Sandaga, Dakars largest and most
central market, the neighborhood is both a nerve center and crossroads for information flow. People, goods, and ideas bustle in and out of this space with ease
and regularity. From electronics and cosmetics to apparel and food, the range of
merchandise sold here is vast and diverse. Over the years, March Sandaga has
grown beyond the confines of its main building, with vendors and stalls spilling
onto the nearby streets.
In our interviews, tailors in Niayes Thioker recalled that their clients come
to them from neighborhoods as far away as Pikine, Parcelles Assanie, and Nord
Foire, because the tailors location in Niayes Thioker makes them more connected to an urban pulse and rapidly changing trends in style. Tailors in this neigh-

30

Joanna Gr abski

Figure 2.1. Tailor Maguette Sy

of Central Couture at work on

a dress with embroidered
designs. Dakar, Senegal, 2009.
Photograph by Joanna Grabski.

Figure 2.2. Tailor Maguette Sy

describes the act of looking at

the citys visual traffic as central
to his creative process. Dakar,
Senegal, 2002. Photograph by
Joanna Grabski.

borhood are not only footsteps away from cloth, thread, and other supplies sold
at March Sandaga, but they also enjoy unparalleled access to the dynamic visual
traffic and marketplace of ideas converging in this neighborhood.
Tailors in Niayes Thioker describe the act of looking at the citys visual traffic
as central to their creative process. Tailors do much more than merely observe the
visual life around them. They draw from the urban visual environment, thoughtfully selecting and adapting the expressive elements at their disposal. The expressive elements they consider encompass formal design features including garment
cut, fit, and length as well as detail work such as embroidery, gathering, pleating,
smocking, shoulder pads, ruffles, flounces, scalloped edges, and slits.
To be successful, tailors must be astute and able to devise clever solutions to
design problems (Figure 2.3). Not only must tailors determine whether a particular cloth is suitable for a specific garment, but they are also faced with the challenge of designing garments that flatter the clients figure while highlighting the
selected cloths motifs. What better place to observe a repertoire of potential design solutions than on neighborhood streets teeming with pedestrian traffic? In
this respect, all that tailors see on a daily basis serves to enlarge their formal and
conceptual vocabulary. For instance, while taking in the visual life of the streets,
tailors may notice that a certain dress design is especially flattering for a particular body type. The tailor will likely apply this lesson the next time the opportunity arises. Similarly, in an effort to accentuate the upper body, tailor Maguette
Sy incorporated ruffles across the bodice, a feature he noticed in another dress
design.
Because the tailors creative process allows them to select and combine formal
elements from various sources by integrating them into one garment, the citys
rich visual resources act as a repertoire of forms and a source of inspiration. As
tailor Bira Diouf explained, I develop my designs in relation to the society in
which I live and I also try to create even when I am walking in the street. Here I
take my ideas and the ideas of others. I put them together and I create something
else. That is always what I do, even if I am just looking, I am always working.
With its geographical location on the westernmost point of the African continent and its historical role as a crossroads, Dakar has long been a site for the
blending of ideas from near and far. Many images populating the urban visual
landscape are local in origin, such as the hand-painted signs advertising restaurants, hair salons, and tailors shops. Others, including billboards along the citys

32

Joanna Gr abski

main avenues plugging Nescaf, Michelin tires, and Coca-Cola signal the presence of international consumer culture.
Two significant forms that reveal the interaction between international and
local spheres as well as their influence on Niayes Thiokers tailors are the mass
media and imported clothing. Media such as the local RTS (Radiodiffusion Tlvision Sngalaise) and satellite television as well as national and international
magazines offer a significant source of images and inspiration for tailors. For
instance, clothing designs and the names they are given derive from television,
especially soap operas such as the Mexican Marimar and music videos by Senegalese and international hip-hop, rap, and popular musicians, including Vivianne
Ndour, Youssou Ndour, and Coumba Diallo Seck. In watching television, especially soap operas and music videos, tailors pay sharp attention to fashion. In fact,
designs popularized in music videos and soap operas often stimulate new trends

Figure 2.3. Tailors often work

together, dividing their tasks

and enjoying camaraderie.
Dakar, Senegal, 2006.
Photograph by Beti Ellerson.

and styles in Dakar. As Maguette Sy explained, clients come in here and ask me
if I watched a recent episode of Marimar or Sublime Mensonge and describe what
a certain actor was wearing. Similarly, it is common to see international fashion
magazines such as Amina and Elle for sale in Dakar. Their pages indicate international trends and offer a wealth of visual forms from which both tailors and clients
can select and reinvent.
Imported clothing offers another important element in Dakars visual environment. Like many cities in Africa, shops and vendors selling imported new and
secondhand clothing are widely accessible throughout downtown Dakar. New
brand-name attire such as mass-produced Gap jeans, Levis overalls, Air Nikes,
and Sean John shirts are available to many consumers just as is used clothing,
called fuug jaay, meaning shake and sell in Wolof. Conversations in Dakar indicate that opinions about imported clothing vary greatly. For some, new imported clothing is desirable and stylish, while others argue that such items are
worn only by youth or individuals with limited financial means. Although new
Western-style T-shirts, collared shirts, sports jerseys, jogging suits, and trousers
are desired by some because of their availability, reasonable price, style, and relatively good quality, they have the disadvantage of being mass-produced and not
custom-made. Secondhand clothing is usually considered even less desirable because it is regarded as outdated by the time it arrives in Dakar. As with new imported clothing, it is not cut to fit and so does not hang on the body perfectly as
should tailor-made attire.
From an economic perspective, some tailors lament the availability of used
clothing because it negatively affects demand for their services. However, at the
same time, the presence of imported garments enriches tailors creative resources
because new and used clothing offers a steady supply of ever-changing stylistic
components. Thus, like clothing designs circulating on city streets or visible in
the media, imported garments offer potential ingredients in new recipes. For
instance, clients might bring a new or secondhand blouse to a tailor to have it
replicated or to have certain design features such as open cuffs or a particular
neckline incorporated into a new design. Similarly, any article of used clothing
can be modified or reinvented. Tailor Bira Diouf described this process: if you
buy a jacket with two buttons, the tailor can change it, re-cut it and so used clothes
can be transformed. A good tailor could even buy a secondhand bed-sheet and
make an expensive dress from it.

34

Joanna Gr abski

Just as the tailors creative process involves an on-going dialogue with the citys
visual resources and marketplace of ideas, so too is the exchange of ideas between
clients and tailors central to the process of commissioning a garment. Because
tailors work by custom order and according to a clients specifications, dialogue
is essential to developing a particular design and enlarging the tailors creative
repertoire. Typically, a commission consists of a client bringing in a photograph,
magazine, or garment in order to illustrate the desired design. More rarely, clients
simply describe the idea for a desired design to a trusted and reputable tailor.
At the tailors studio, clients may consult additional clothing catalogues, fashion
magazines, photo albums of previously rendered designs, or posters showcasing
a variety of garments, all of which offer visual references. Then, tailors often combine multiple design elements from different sources, sketching and modifying
their design as they converse with the client (Figure 2.4).
An innovative tailor might incorporate a design element noticed in the garment of a passerby with a clients request for a sleeve length from an existing

Figure 2.4. Drawings adhered to

interior wall of Central Couture
demonstrate how tailors develop
and sketch their garment designs.
Dakar, Senegal, 2002. Photograph
by Joanna Grabski.

The Visual City

35

Figure 2.5. facing. Client

modeling finished wax print

ensemble inside Central
Couture. Dakar, Senegal,
2006. Photograph by
Beti Ellerson.

blouse and a flared cuff seen on a soap opera. These design features might then be
combined with a scalloped neckline illustrated in a fashion magazine. While tailors acknowledge the importance of conversations with clients, they also emphasize that such discussions are mere points of departure for their creative, artistic
expression. Moreover, in discussing their productions, tailors emphasize that artistic concepts such as creativity, self-expression, and personal style are essential
to the very process of commissioning a garment. Commissioning a garment implies that the garment will not be mass-produced but will be developed by way of
the clients specifications and the tailors imagination. The result will be a unique,
custom-made garment (Figure 2.5). The creation of custom-made garments is at
the heart of the tailors enterprise, and dialogues with numerous clients ensure
this. For example, even when a particular style is in fashion, one is unlikely to see
the same tailor-made garment worn by more than one person on the street. Even
if one observes the same fabric for a dress, it can be produced, depending on the
tailors expertise and creativity, from an infinite variety of combined formal elements. Tailors have seemingly endless opportunities to interact with a constantly
changing array of clients, each of whom brings individual preferences and ideas
to the commission. Consequently, the possibilities for creative invention appear
as boundless as the contours of March Sandaga itself.

Tailor-made fashions are among the most dynamic propositions enlivening

the visual traffic of Dakars streets. Not only do tailors play a central role in giving
shape to the visual city, but they also draw from the visual city and dialogue with
it. For tailors in Niayes Thioker, Dakars visual environment is critical to their
enterprise. Their location in the city stimulates their creativity and provides them
with a steady stream of visual resources, a veritable marketplace of ideas. Dakars
visual resources originate within and beyond the city, as suggested by the interconnection among tailor-made fashion, the mass media, and imported clothing.
Along with urban visual traffic, these resources inspire the tailors while providing them with an ever-changing array of visual forms from which their creative
process departs. With their ingenuity, resourcefulness, and expertise, tailors in
Niayes Thioker illustrate how creativity and the citys visual life go hand in hand,
each nourishing and catalyzing the other.

36

Joanna Gr abski

Secondhand Clothing and

Fashion in Africa

Karen Tranberg Hansen

Secondhand clothing from the West is a popular imported commodity in many

countries in Africa. The consequences of this trade are manifold and controversial. When Western observers view Africas secondhand clothing markets as
dumping grounds for the Wests charitable clothing donations, they only see the
dress practices these imports give rise to as a dated and worn imitation of Western fashion. Such views are misleading. They effectively foreclose any further inquiry into how African consumers deal with the imported secondhand clothes
that they so eagerly have been purchasing in several countries. When we follow
the secondhand clothing trade all the way to Africa, we will realize that it is African consumers who actively are putting their mark on the process. As this chapter
demonstrates, the specifics of this incorporation depend on the context of interaction and the economic and cultural politics of its time.
Beginning with a brief sketch of the international secondhand clothing trade,
this chapter first describes some of the different ways in which the Wests used
clothes are incorporated into local dress universes, distinguishing between dress
practices in West, East, and Southern Africa. The differences hinge on distinct

The trade figures used in

this chapter are taken from
a 2003 publication by the
United Nations, 2001 International Trade Statistics Yearbook,
vol. 2: Trade by Country (New
York: United Nations).

cultural notions about bodies and dress as well as on distinct textile and dress
histories in different parts of Africa. The chapter then turns to Zambia for a more
detailed discussion that draws on the authors long-term research in that country.
The argument of the chapter is that fashion does not depend on the origin of garments but is created in dress performances where both wearers and viewers collaborate in the evaluation of dress.

n That
ns Culture

40

The International Secondhand Clothing Trade

In much of the West today, shopping for secondhand clothing has become a pastime rather than a need. Fashion-conscious shoppers, young and old, female and
male, turn to the secondhand clothing racks for vintage or retro looks. But vintage style on the fashion runway is merely one twist, though a glamorous one,
on a rapidly growing global trade that on the one hand grosses exporters of secondhand clothing millions of dollars and on the other fulfills clothing needs and
desires in many countries in the Third World.
The international secondhand clothing trade is about commerce, not charity.
The secondhand clothing trade both in domestic and foreign markets is dominated by nonprofit charitable organizations and private textile recycling/grading
firms that often are family owned (Figure 3.1). The financial side of this trade has
largely eluded public scrutiny. Thriving by an ethic of giving, the major charitable
organizations look like patrons in a worldwide clothing donation project. And
growing environmental concerns in the West in recent years have enhanced the
profitability and respectability of this trade, giving its practitioners a new cachet
as textile salvagers and waste recyclers.
The charitable organizations are the largest single source of the garments that
fuel the international trade in secondhand clothing. These organizations routinely sell a large proportion of their donated clothing, between 40 and 75 percent. The textile recyclers/graders purchase secondhand clothing in bulk from
the enormous yield gathered by the charitable organizations, and they also buy
surplus clothing from resale stores.
The bulk of this clothing is destined for new lives in the secondhand clothing export market. Poor quality, worn, and damaged garments are transformed
into fibers or wiping rags for industrial use. At their warehouses/sorting plants,

Kar en Tr anberg Hansen

the clothing recyclers sort clothing by garment types, fabric, and quality. Special
period clothing is set aside to be purchased by domestic and foreign buyers on
the lookout for stylish garments for the changing vintage market. The remainder
is compressed into bales of 50 kilograms standard weight, although some firms
compress bales of much larger weight, usually containing unsorted clothing (Figure 3.2). The bottom quality goes to Africa and medium quality to Latin America,
while Japan receives a large portion of top-quality items.

Secondhand Clothing and Fashion in Africa

Figure 3.1. HUMANA , a resale

store in Cologne, Germany.

HUMANA is a nongoverment
organization headquartered in
Denmark. 1996. Photograph by
Karen Tranberg Hansen.

41

Figure 3.2. Compression of a

500-kilogram bale of secondhand clothing at a sorting plant

near Utrecht, Holland. 1997.
Photograph by Karen Tranberg
Hansen.

42

The economic power and global scope of the secondhand clothing trade were
never as vast as they have been since the early 1990s in the wake of the liberalization of many Third World economies and following the sudden rise in demand
from former Eastern Bloc countries. Worldwide between 1980 and 2001, the trade
grew more than sevenfold. The United States in 2001 was the worlds largest exporter in terms of both volume and value, followed by Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.
The countries of sub-Saharan Africa are the worlds largest secondhand clothing destination, receiving close to 30 percent of total world exports in 2001. That
year, close to 25 percent of world exports went to Asia, where Malaysia, Singa-

Kar en Tr anberg Hansen

pore, Pakistan, and Hong Kong are large net importers. The export does not exclusively target the Third World. Sizeable exports go to Japan, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, which all import and re-export this commodity. In
fact, Europe, including Eastern Europe and the former USSR, imported about 31
percent, slightly more than Africas part of world totals.
African Secondhand Clothing Markets
Secondhand clothing consumption practices in Africa are shaped by the politics
that regulate the import of clothing and by distinct regional conventions concerning bodies and dress. Some African countries have at one point or another
banned the import of secondhand clothing, such as Cte dIvoire, Nigeria, Kenya, and Malawi. Some countries have restrictive policies, such as South Africa,
which only allows import of secondhand clothing for charitable purposes rather
than for resale. African secondhand clothing markets undergo changes not only
because of the legislation that guides the entry or prohibition of secondhand
clothing imports but also because of civil strife and war. Some small countries
like Benin, Togo, and Rwanda, before their civil wars were large importers and
active in transshipment and re-export. And although secondhand clothing imports are banned in some countries, brisk transborder trade moves this popular
commodity across Africas penetrable borders.
There is considerable regional variation in Africas clothing markets. In Muslim-dominated North Africa, for example, secondhand clothing constitutes a
much smaller percentage of total garment imports than in sub-Saharan Africa.
Dress conventions differ, not only in terms of religious normsfor instance,
whether people are Muslim or Christianbut also by gender, age, class, and region/ethnicity. Taken together, these factors inform the cultural norms of dress
practice, influencing what types of garments which people will wear, and when.
Briefly, in several countries in West Africa, distinct regional dress styles that
are the products of long-standing textile crafts in weaving, dyeing, and printing
today co-exist with dress styles introduced during the colonial period and after.
The kaba in Ghana, discussed in this book by Suzanne Gott, illustrates this complexity. In Nigeria and Senegal, secondhand clothing has entered a specific niche.
Although people from different socioeconomic groups, and not only the very
poor, now purchase imported secondhand clothing and use it widely for everyday

Secondhand Clothing and Fashion in Africa

43

wear, Senegalese and Nigerians commonly follow long-standing regional style

conventions, dressing with pride for purposes of displaying locally produced
cloth in African styles. This is much in contrast to Zambia, where such textile
crafts hardly existed in the precolonial period and where today people from across
the socioeconomic spectrum except the top are dressing in the Wests used clothing. In effect, people in Zambia have been wearing Western-styled clothing for so
long that they have made it their own. Last but not least, there are also invented
dress traditions. In Zaire during the rule of President Mobuto Sese Seko, for instance, the authenticity code forbade men from wearing Western coats and ties
and women from wearing jeans. One of the first edicts of his successor, Laurent
Kabila, when he assumed power in 1997, was to ban womens wearing of jeans and
miniskirts. I am not aware of whether any specific dress codes are observed in the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) at the moment.
Secondhand Clothing Markets in Zambia
Zambia is classified in United Nations terms as one of the worlds least developed nations. Elections in 1991 replaced a one-party regime with a multiparty
government set on liberalizing the economy and following economic adjustment
policies advocated by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in
order to improve the livelihoods of the countrys population of nearly ten million
people, about half of whom live in cities. The manufacturing sector had all but collapsed at the time of the elections, including the textile and garment industry. Retrenchment in the public and private sector and wage freezes were accompanied
by a decline in the provision of health and services. The gap between poverty and
wealth had increased. Given the decline in purchasing power, the significance of
secondhand clothing is not surprising. Yet the enormous cross-over appeal of this
commodity cannot be explained merely in economic terms but above all with
reference to the importance people in Zambia attribute to dressing and dressing
well.
The shop window of Zambias secondhand clothing trade, the big public markets, creates an atmosphere much like the Wests shopping malls, where consumers can pursue almost unlimited desires (Figure 3.3). Since the mid-1980s, imported secondhand clothing in Zambia has been referred to by the term salaula,

44

Kar en Tr anberg Hansen

which means, in the Bemba language, approximately selecting from a pile by

rummaging or, for short, to pick. The name describes vividly the process that
takes place once a bale of imported secondhand clothing has been opened in the
market, where consumers select garments to satisfy both their clothing needs and
their clothing desires. They all want to cut a good figure, and buying their clothes
from salaula is a means toward that end.
The value consumers in Zambia attribute to salaula is created through a process of recommodification that involves several phases. In the United States
and Europe the sorting and compressing of secondhand clothing into bales in

Secondhand Clothing and Fashion in Africa

Figure 3.3. Sign on the gate of a

secondhand retailer in Lusaka,

Zambia. 2004. Photograph by
Karen Tranberg Hansen.

45

the recyclers warehouse strip these garments of their prior social life. The decommissioned value of the Wests unwanted but still wearable clothing is then
re-activated on local terms in transactions between overseas suppliers and local
importers. Through subsequent transformations, the meanings shift in ways that
help redefine used clothing into new garments. These transformations begin
in communications between exporters and importers and in onsite visits, continue at the wholesale outlet and in public markets, and are made visible in how
consumers put themselves together with salaula. In addition to these processes
through which the register of meaning of clothing shifts, there are also physical
and material changes involving alteration, mending, and recycling.
On first sight, these salaula markets meet the nonlocal observers eye as
a chaotic mass of secondhand clothing hung up on flimsy wood contraptions,
displayed on tables or dumped in piles on the ground. That view is, of course,
deceptive. There are a variety of informal rules that organize vending space and
structure sales practices.
Both vendors and customers know these practices. A prospective customer
looking for a specific garment will go to a particular part of the market. The vendors of mens suits, for example, one of the most expensive items in the secondhand clothing markets, tend to be located in a part of the outdoor market that is
near major thoroughfares, such as a main road passable by automobiles. So are
vendors of other high-demand garments, such as womens skirts and blouses, and
the best-selling item of all, at least in Zambia, baby clothes. There are spatial clusters of vendors selling shoes and, during the winter in the southern hemisphere,
cold weather clothing. These demarcations are not static, as vendors sometimes
change their inventory.
The display on most secondhand clothing stands is carefully designed. Highquality items are hung on clothes hangers on the makeshift walls. A clothesline or
a wood stand may display a row of cotton dresses. Everything has been carefully
selected with a view to both presentation and sales strategy (Figure 3.4). Sales
are accompanied by lively discussions and price negotiations. The piles on the
ground include damaged items and garments that have been around for a while
without being sold. Such items are sold on order, that is, several pieces at a discount, and they are often purchased by rural customers who plan to resell them
in the villages.

46

Kar en Tr anberg Hansen

Near the high end of the secondhand clothing stalls of the secondhand clothing markets and near the major roads of this market section cluster the boutiques, where the desire for newness is particularly evident. Boutiques in these
markets sell specially preselected items, coordinated to form matched outfits
that are stylish. They tend to be operated by young vendors who pick, in the
language of the market. Once other traders open secondhand clothing bales, the
pickers descend on them, selecting choice garments which they buy on the spot.
Then they make up, for instance, womens two-piece ensembles, mens suits, and

Secondhand Clothing and Fashion in Africa

Figure 3.4. Secondhand shoe

vendors in Kabwe, Zambia. 1993.

Photograph by Karen Tranberg
Hansen.

47

leisure wear. Most of the boutique operators I met were young men who were very
skilled at choosing their stock with a fine eye for what might sell, a great sense of
style, and a flair for making stunning combinations.
Clothing Competence
The enormous cross-over appeal of secondhand clothing can be explained not
merely in terms of its affordability to poor people but above all by reference to
the importance people in Zambia attribute to the dressed body. Dressing, and
dressing up, is both an end and a means. This preoccupation with the dressed
body involves an aesthetic sensibility that brings together discerning skills from
a variety of sources to create an overall look that mediates experiences of pride
and well-being.
Clothing consumption is hard work. When shopping for salaula, consumers
have a number of things in mind, depending on whether they are covering basic
clothing needs or satisfying specific desires. The scrutiny of salaula takes time.
Color coordination is keenly attended to, and there are issues of size and fit to
consider. Regardless of income group, most consumers considered value for
money a major selection criterion, judging good value in terms of quality and
fashion or style (Figure 3.5). Low-income consumers both in Lusaka, the capital, and the province paid careful attention to garment durability and strength,
whereas young urban adults looked for the latest. This is their own term, and it
comprises influences from South Africa, Europe, and North America as well as
from specific regional youth cultures. In effect, salaula fashions bring consumers
into a bigger world: the world of awareness, of now.
Consumers draw on these influences in ways that are informed by local norms
about bodies and dress. The desired clothing silhouette for both adult women and
men is neat and tidy. It is a product of immaculate garment care and of wearing
clothes in ways that are not considered to be too revealing. Even then, womens
and mens garments are understood differently. The cultural norms about how
to dress weigh down on women much more heavily than on men, with the result
that women feel restrained in their freedom to dress so as not to provoke men.
Women should not expose their shoulders. Above all, women must cover their
private parts, which in this region of Africa includes their thighs. This means

48

Kar en Tr anberg Hansen

that dress length, tightness, and fabric transparency become issues when women
interact with men and elders both at home and in public.
The attraction of salaula to clothing-conscious Zambian consumers goes far
beyond the price factor. Consumers want clothing that is not common. Clothes
from salaula are not what other people wear, one woman said to me when explaining why clothes from salaula are viewed as exclusive. The desire for uniqueness,
to stand out, while dressing the body on Zambian terms entails considerable skill
in garment selection from the abundance of salaula, making discriminating decisions concerning quality, style, and value for money in garment co-ordination to
fit specific occasions and contexts and in the overall presentation and comportment of the dressed body to produce a total look. This clothing sensibility mani-

Figure 3.5. Scrutinizing clothing

quality at a secondhand-clothing
stand in Lusaka, Zambia. 1992.
Photograph by Karen Tranberg
Hansen.

fests itself in a visual aesthetic that is created in context. In short, this meaning,
value, and sensibility do not inhere in the garments themselves but are attributed
to them in social interaction. It is these rapid shifts of evaluation that are the essence of fashion regardless of whether the garments are brand-new or have been
worn previously.
Clothing competence includes knowledge of which garments to wear and how
to wear them in specific contexts. Clothing practices and performance comprise
one juncture where sociocultural norms take on authorship over the Wests used
clothing. Salaula is pulled apart, re-sewn, altered, and put on in ways that physically and culturally fit Zambian bodies. What is being transformed is not necessarily the garment but its meaning. This is to say that the body is the site on which
cultural ideals are constructed through dress. For example, many young adult
men who were close to graduating from secondary school were reluctant to wear
jeans for fear of being mistaken for street vendors. They have higher job aspirations for themselves. This contrasts with the search of young male barbers and
street vendors for oversize jeans from salaula to create the big look they associated with opportunity and daring of a world away from home. And some young
adult women, uneasy about approaching sexual maturity, told me how they hated wearing dresses because this clothing makes them look old, and, worse still,
that dresses make them look like mothers. In short, social and sexual identity is
lodged in the way the body is worn through clothing.

What begins as charity with donations of used clothing in the West becomes
a whole industry that draws in countries like Zambia, not passively receiving the
Wests surplus clothing but actively involved in making it their own. The relationship revolves around a process of recommodification in which the meaning of
secondhand clothing is appropriated on local terms. My emphasis in this chapter has been on how the local value of imported secondhand clothes is created
through a variety of processes that strip this imported commodity of its prior life
and redefines it, readying it to enter new lives and relationships.
Zambias salaula markets appear to the nonlocal observer as a chaotic mass of
secondhand clothing. This deceptive view hides many layers of market segmenta-

50

Kar en Tr anberg Hansen

tion, both in terms of where used clothes are available for sale and of how they are
displayed and sold. A variety of informal rules organize vending space and structure sales practices. Because both vendors and customers know these practices,
they are clothing savvy.
The clothing competence consumers demonstrate when shopping from salaula brings discerning skills to bear on creating a total look with a pleasing visual aesthetic that is culturally acceptable. Shopping from secondhand clothing
markets is not a process of random clothing selection but a strategic exercise that
draws on specialist, practical, and localized knowledge. Retailers and customers who create and share this knowledge operate within a frame of a culturally
accepted dress silhouette. Against this backdrop, secondhand clothing markets
make available an abundance and variety of clothes that allow consumers to add
their individual mark on the culturally accepted clothing profile. Far from being
a passive imitation in which consumers in Zambia dress more like the West, secondhand clothing is a form of cultural improvisation in which the meaning and
value of this clothing is constructed anew on local terms.

Secondhand Clothing and Fashion in Africa

51

Fashion, Not Weather

A Rural Primer
of Style
Elisabeth L. Cameron

In the rural area of Kabompo District in North-Western Province, Zambia, the

catchword is fashion, not weather. I first heard this phrase when I commented
on what I considered the unsuitability of a young womans dress who, in a stifling
hot day, wore a lined, long-sleeved chitengi suit consisting of several layers. My
friend rebuked me and admired the girl who obviously sacrificed her own comfort for her sense of style. She asked if I had heard of the common saying fashion, not weather. A commitment to wearing the latest styles, for many men and
women in Kabompo, comes before comfort and even budget.
Fashion in rural Zambia centers on a tension between farmers and imaginings of town life. I became acutely aware of this tension within my host family.
The younger sister, Martha, a woman who had urban pretensions and lived in
the nearby small town, gave her older sister, a farmer, several pieces of secondhand clothing. Since it is never appropriate to examine a gift in front of the giver,
Maria took the clothing inside her house. She quickly returned and quietly gave
the clothes back to her sister. Martha asked why Maria did not want them, and
Maria, in a very matter-of-fact tone, stated that they were old, stained, and in bad

repair. The younger sister, obviously very disturbed by her older sisters rejection,
began to wail. Maria tried to quietly clarify why she was refusing the clothes by
saying that her younger sister was assuming that, because Maria was a farmer,
she would not know the difference between stylish, well-maintained clothing and
rags. Rather than calming Martha down, she began to cry louder and sob that no
one appreciated her. As the fight escalated, Maria pointed out that although she
was a farmer and wore old tattered clothing in the field, she also visited town and
needed nicer things for those trips. Maria concluded what was by now a tirade by
informing her sister that she had friends who gave her new suits and not faded and
torn secondhand clothing.
Tensions in fashion and style between innovative urban and conservative
rural communities is a story that is as old as the world. Urban areas of Zambia are
innovative; but these new fashions take time to reach rural areas and be accepted
there. Urban areas are a constant stream of new people, ideas, news, materials,
and fashions. Easy availability of materials allows ideas to move quickly from vision to the street. In the press of people, wearing the latest style draws you out of
the crowd, moves you from anonymous city dweller to the center of attention. The
focus in urban areas tends to be on the youth, where progress and innovation are
stressed. In contrast, rural areas move more slowly. New ideas, new fashions, and
especially new materials are expensive and difficult to obtain. Ideas move slowly
to execution. Few people are truly anonymous in rural areas. No matter what you
wear, what singles you out is who you are, your past actions, and what members of
your family have done. Control rests in the hands of the elder generation, who can
demand action from their families. As a result, rural communities like Kabompo
have strong ties to the past and are considered conservative.
This essay looks at how this urban/rural split in Kabompo has manifested itself
in the last century and examines the lengths to which young women and men in
rural areas, who often have few resources, go to wear stylish clothing (Figure 4.1).
The commitment can be financial, it can risk the relationships with elder members of the family and community, and it always ignores the weather.
History of Fashion and the Rural/Urban Split
Residents of Kabompo District, primarily a rural area except for several small
towns and one government center, have a history of movement to and from urban

54

Elisabeth L. Cameron

areas. The Upper Zambezi River area, because of limited mineral and agricultural resources, escaped the attention of colonial governments that, in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focused their attention on the copper
and gemstone-rich areas of what became known as the Copperbelt. Kabompo
District became a refuge area for peoples displaced in inter-ethnic struggles and
escaping the authority and demands of the British, Portuguese, and Belgians. As
a result, the population exploded during the early twentieth century and is currently made up of a mix of ethnicities ranging from Chokwe, Mbunda, Luvale,
Lunda, Luchazi, Nkoya, and several others. As the population increased, Kabompo District and other isolated areas of the Upper Zambezi became targeted as la-

Fashion, Not Weather

Figure 4.1. Nyagiftie, the woman

in charge of the wedding, presents

the stylishly dressed bride and
groom to the local community.
Mafumbwe, Zambia, 2004.
Photograph by Elisabeth L.
Cameron.

55

bor sources for colonial projects and especially for the mines from the Copperbelt
to as far away as South Africa.
When a man went to work in the mines in the early twentieth century, he was
often exposed to urban life for the first time. The mining company provided uniforms for their employees, often the first tailored clothing the men had owned.
Much of a mans salary was spent on stylish leisure clothing and access to the
town culture, including bars and dancing. The British colonial government was
concerned, among other things, about the effect in rural areas of the exodus of
large numbers of men, and as a result, each man was required periodically to visit
his rural home and to eventually retire in his home community.
According to Godfrey Wilson, writing in 1942, people living in Kabwe, a major
mining town, are not a cattle people, nor a goat people, nor a fishing people, nor
a tree cultivating people, they are a dressed people [emphasis added]. Clothing
was one of the key town commodities that miners could afford. Wives and girlfriends began to demand gifts of clothing, and the quality of a marriage began to
be equated with the frequency and quality of these gifts.
This sense of being a dressed people moved into rural areas as people living in
the Upper Zambezi and Kabompo District got glimpses of town life and clothing
as these young urban dwellers visited and finally retired in their home villages.
One study showed that in the 1940s miners spent just over 10 percent of their total wages buying clothing to send or take home as gifts. Soon shirts and trousers
replaced the loin-cloths made of skins and leaves.
In the early 1950s, a study showed that villagers usually owned only one set of
clothing compared to larger urban wardrobes. As the rural dweller wore his or
her one set of clothing on a daily basis, the apparel soon disintegrated into the
rags that became synonymous with villagers. The split between rural and urban
life became a confusing one as men moved into town for various lengths of time,
then retired to rural communities, bringing with them wardrobes of town clothes
and other household items that were displayed as symbols of their urban life and
connections. This reverse migration (from town to village) continues today, especially as the wage earner in the family retires with a small pension that allows a
comfortable rural life but is not enough for an urban existence.
Clothing became associated with the rich, elite, and colonized. From an early
time, the term for Europeans or Americans was chindele, a term that does not refer
to racial characteristics; rather, some suggest it means simply clothed person.

56

Elisabeth L. Cameron

All Europeans and Americans were placed in this category, and soon Zambians
who were able to move into more important positions in government and mines
and who adopted European lifestyles were also called chindele.
As the clothed reputation of people living in town grew, the stigma of rural life
focused on poverty equated with the wearing of rags. The isolation of Kabompo
had once served its people well by allowing them to escape the attention of the colonial authorities. Now it became a hindrance as material expectations changed
and people strived to earn money and consume the West.
Rural Sources for Urban Clothing
The rural/urban fashion dichotomy is more complex than reflected in the stereotype of the poorly dressed ragged rural bumpkin versus the stylish ones who
have urban history or pretensions. The introduction of lengths of cloth into rural
areas and the history of its adoption as conservative or traditional dress, which
then becomes an integral part of urban wear, illustrates the complexities of both
fashion and the rural/urban divide.
Before urban clothing and styles impacted rural dress, Western cloth was introduced and used in simple ways. European travelers, explorers, and colonial
officers used cloth as money, especially as they traveled in caravans. In the nineteenth century before colonial rule took hold, trade cloth was packaged in specially prepared bundles of 5060 pounds, the maximum weight for one porter.
The porters in turn were paid one yard of fabric per day for their services. These
travelers also used cloth to pay for food and other amenities. As a result, cloth
was distributed in the wake of these caravans. In the colonial period, textile factories began to produce cotton fabrics to fill this created demand. Originally woven and printed in Southeast Asia with bright Javanese designs, textile mills in
the country began and continue to produce cotton material called chitengi (pl.
yitengi) for local markets. The material is brightly printed with the design running
horizontally down the length of the fabric so that it shows correctly when the
fabric is wrapped around the body, in contrast to Western fabric where the design
runs vertically to facilitate the cut pieces.
Although cloth reached the Upper Zambezi as early as the late eighteenth century, it was often hoarded as a commodity rather than worn on a daily basis. Gago
Coutinho, a Portuguese officer who traveled throughout the area as late as 1913,

Fashion, Not Weather

57

bemoaned the fact that people were almost naked, and they continued to do so
after we had passed, although we had spent in 1913 more than 100 kilometers [over
62 miles] of cotton cloth in the area. The acceptance of clothing followed the
return of mineworkers with their urban concepts of dress.
Womens style soon combined secondhand clothing with a single two-yard
length of chitengi that was used as a wrapper over the dress. Karen Tranberg Hansen points out that a blouse and chitengi are worn on the Zambian Coat of Arms
and that the chitengi is identified by the national government as the traditional
dress of Zambian women. In the earliest form, women wrapped two lengths of
cloth, one around her waist to form a skirt and the other under the arms to cover
the chest. The upper cloth could also be used to tie a load on the womans back,
whether that be a baby or produce from the field.
As exemplified in the Coat of Arms, the chitengi, a two-yard length of cloth, has
become the clothing item that signifies womanhood in Kabompo District and
North-Western Province (Figure 4.2). Young girls might be given an old chitengi
to help them learn to wear it properly. As the young girls put on and take off the
chitengi, older girls and mature women joke and comment on their skill at wrapping it properly. It is at the end of the girls initiation ceremony that the parents
present the young woman with her own chitengi, symbolic of her new womanhood. Young women often also choose to dress in zambia, combinations of dresses, skirts, shirts, and occasionally trousers. This more modern dress marks them
as longing for a more urban modern life rather than the rural existence of the
rag-wearing farmer, playing into the rural/urban fashion tensions.
Whatever clothes are worn, a chitengi is added in situations where respect and
modesty need to be expressed, whether that is in particular situations or in the
presence of specific people. During ceremonies, whether they are traditional
or in a church, mature women are expected to wear a chitengi over their festive
garb to show respect to the seriousness and solemnity of the situation. I ordered
two-piece chitengi suits as gifts for a recent widow, NyaEunice, and her stepdaughter, Maria, to wear as Maria escorted her stepmother back to her family.
They wanted their picture taken, but as soon as the photograph was taken, they
added a mismatched chitengi wrapper to their outfit and never removed it. When I
asked why, their first response was that the yitengi wrappers kept their new outfits
clean while they traveled. When they later requested that I put on a chitengi over

58

Elisabeth L. Cameron

my own dress in spite of the fact that we had arrived, it became apparent that it
was ceremonial rather than just cleanliness.
In addition to ready-made clothing, tailors will make chitengi suits consisting of a skirt and shirt made from the same cotton chitengi fabric. Chitengi suits
are a pan-African style (see Gott, this volume), introduced and popularized in
Zambia by prominent women such as Mrs. Kaunda, the former presidents wife.
They have, however, become quite popular for mature women in the last fifteen
years in Kabompo District. Part of the appeal of the suit is the ease with which

Fashion, Not Weather

Figure 4.2. A group of women

wearing a variety of fashions
are gathered to train the future
bride. Kabompo, Zambia, 2003.
Photograph by Elisabeth L.
Cameron.

59

they can be made. Cotton materials in different forms, as explained above, have
been available for over one hundred years. Local tailors can make up the latest
local style for a comparatively small pricealthough it is still more economical
to buy a secondhand shirt and use chitengi as a skirt. Locally made chitengi suits,
however, usually follow older outdated styles and, if worn in urban areas, mark
the owner as a country bumpkin.
Successful tailors, in order to promote their skill and encourage women to wear
the latest, obtain printed posters that they display in their shops. These bright
posters show a series of models wearing fashions in bright appealing colors. With
titles like Kaba En-Vogue and Hot Kabba Bonanza, the posters are printed in
Nigeria and shipped internationally. The irony of these posters is that no matter
which model you choose, the tailor makes what he or she wants based on what
you can pay and his or her own skill. Rural tailors without the constant exposure
to the constantly changing fashions of urban areas often produce conservative
suits even when asked for a more risky style.
New styles come into Kabompo through travel, gifts, secondhand clothing,
and now direct TV. Following the colonial tradition of urban miners bringing
clothing as gifts to their rural relatives, travelers bring back clothing for their relatives and friends when they return from time spent in the city. The donor displays
the clothing for the community to examine before the receiver is allowed to take
possession. Every detail of the clothingmaterial, construction, and styleis
observed and discussed, and equivalences are drawn with local styles.
Missionaries in the area, primarily from Christian Missions in Many Lands
(commonly called the Brethren), began the flow of secondhand clothing into
the area. Beginning soon after World War II, congregations or assemblies would
send parcels to the missionaries filled with nonperishable items that might then
be used to pay for local products and service. Secondhand clothing also became
available in a limited way in the 1960s after Zambias independence and in the
1990s in a massive volume. (For the best information on secondhand clothing in
Zambia, see the work of Karen Tranberg Hansen.)
As the secondhand clothing trade has developed, rural residents have gained
more control over the items that find their way to Kabompo. At the beginning
of the trade, the merchants in Lusaka sorted bales of clothing, sending unpopular colors, styles, or designs to rural areas. Currently, successful local merchants
travel to Lusaka or to the Congo border and carefully select the clothing that they

60

Elisabeth L. Cameron

feel will sell in rural areas. They have a choice of secondhand clothing that arrives
in bales or ready-made clothing produced in Southeast Asia. Because these merchants usually operate on a small scale, they make these trips several times a year
and buy relatively small quantities of stock. As a result, the styles found in rural
markets frequently change to reflect, in a small way, urban fashions.
Even with some local control in merchandise, often the ready-made clothing
are items that dont sell in other areas or are the result of overstock. This is especially apparent with mens shirts where the designs are based on American and
European popular culture (Figure 4.3). In 2003 to 2004, I observed several different David Beckham shirts and several advertising the American film The Matrix.
Shirts celebrating Saddam Hussein standing beside an Iraqi flag were also widely
available. When I asked Benfry, Marias son, why he was wearing such a shirt,
asking if he wore it to show approval of Hussein, his reply was that he chose it
because of the bright blue color and not because of the image. The shirts to which
people could relate, such as the Beckham shirts, sold better than those with more
obscure references like The Matrix.
Trousers for women have become the symbol of urban fashion in rural areas
such as Kabompo. Conservative older women view trousers in any form as immodest and disrespectful. Younger women see trousers as a desirable fashion
that marks them as women with a broader view of lifeone that includes urban
life and ultimately shows connections to Europe and America. Young prepubescent women frequently wear pants (often pajama bottoms) purchased from a pile
of secondhand clothinga cheap and modest solution for a young girls active
movements. Mature women who want to adopt the latest styles, however, face
an uphill battle to wear pants. Although many feel that trousers for women can
be quite stylish, it disturbs older and conservative people to see the pubic y exposed for public view. In their minds, only prostitutes have so little shame, and
trousers, usually skin tight and preferably blue jeans, have indeed been a local
symbol for prostitutes. Some stylish women who choose to wear trousers in the
small town will carry a chitengi to throw on when they go to the village or meet
someone on the path toward whom they feel insonyi (often translated as shyness, insonyi is the respect a person feels when in the presence of someone who
has authority over them).
Clothing and style equal wealth; for women this means a well-executed urban
style and for men a business suit. Stress is put on a well-maintained and pressed

Fashion, Not Weather

61

presentation. One day Marias cousin, who was a local judge, came to visit. He
told the story of a divorce case brought by a young womans family because, they
claimed, the marriage had been arranged based on fraud. It seems that in one rural family there were a group of marriageable young men but few resources. They
carefully obtained one fashionable outfit highlighted by an expensive suit jacket.
Each son in turn wore this outfit as he went to court his future wife. The young
womans family was delighted with this stylishly dressed young man and agreed
to the marriage. Unfortunately, when the bride was taken to the grooms family,
she found a crafty but poverty-stricken family. The judge never said what the final
judgment of the court was because he and Marias entire family were too busy
laughing at the ludicrous situation of the borrowed jacket.
Soon after, a young man in our family went courting, and I was amused when
he went from family member to family member borrowing key family possessions such as a bicycle and a large radio. When I asked other family members if
this was not the same as the shared coat, they said no. Assets could be shared but
not clothing.
I wondered further about this when I found out that young women in the small
town often exchanged clothing to share the expense of new styles. Because each
woman had a different sense of style and of carrying themselves, occasionally the
circulating clothing would go unnoticed. Otherwise the townsfolk would admire
the ingenuity and frugality of the young women who stretched their clothing
budgets in this manner.

Figure 4.3. facing. Man wearing

shirt titled Beautiful Girl

showing a brunette woman in
front of the White House. The
woman, despite her dark hair,
might refer to Hillary Clinton
or Marilyn Monroe. Kabompo,
Zambia, 2004. Photograph by
Elisabeth L. Cameron.

I was given a tour of all these fashion choices when I announced to my host
family that I would take portraits and get them developed in the capital during my upcoming trip. Flora, Marias daughter, asked if she could have multiple
snaps. For the first, she donned a secondhand shirt and paired it with a chitengi
and head tie. She then put on a chitengi suit that a friend had brought her from
the Copperbelt in a style called donafish, a local term for mermaids and Mami
Wata (Figure 4.4). Finally, with great daring and laughter, after carefully checking to make sure there were no men present before exiting her house, she donned
her husbands best clothes and shoes so she could appear in the latest urban
style (Figure 4.5).

Fashion, Not Weather

63

Figure 4.4. Right. Flora wearing

a chitengi suit in donafish

style. Chitofu, Zambia, 2004.
Photograph by Elisabeth L.
Cameron.
Figure 4.5. facing. Flora wearing

her husbands clothes. Chitofu,

Zambia, 2004. Photograph by
Elisabeth L. Cameron.

Contemporary
Wedding Fashions in
Lagos, Nigeria

E l i s h a P. R e n n e

The move of Kleinfeld Bridal, the largest designer wedding-dress outlet in the
US, from Brooklyn to a larger building in Manhattan was front-page news in the
May 26, 2005, edition of the New York Times. The idea of bridal stores, like Kleinfeld
Bridal, selling gowns as well as a range of wedding-related accessories and services
is one that has taken off in Lagos, the fashion-conscious commercial center of Nigeria. Rather than being located in a single store, however, shops with names such as
Chinnys Bride and Groom, Satin & Lace, Angelic Bridal Palace, and The Wedding
Centre have opened in one upscale area of Lagos, known as Ikeja, specifically on
Allen Avenue and Opebi Road. Wide display windows feature manikins dressed in
white wedding gowns, racks of hats, decorated boxes, baskets, and bags, all made to
go together (Figure 5.1). As one store owner-decorator, Mrs. Maggie Oviosun of The
Wedding Shop, put it, We do complete decoration. . . . I decorate cars . . . the whole
package, [including] the cakes and the outfits (Figure 5.2).
This proliferation of shops in Lagos specializing in bridal gowns, hats, and associated wedding items and services began in the mid-1990s and was fostered by another
development, namely fashion shows that specialized in bridal fashions. One of the
first of these exhibitions was known as Montaque Wedding Showcase 99, which
was organized by Foster John International in 1999 and was held in the Lagos Airport

MO: My jobs [dresses] are not imported, none.

Owner and Designer

The Wedding Shop
68 Opebi Rd.
Ikeja, Lagos *

Mrs. Maggie Oviosun

EPR: Do you use aso oke or any other type of handwoven [cloth]?
MO: Handmade things, natives? The ones I did, Ive done two
before, they were sent out to America. Somebody was getting
married in the U.S. and she wanted something African.
EPR: That is interesting, but the Africans, the Nigerian
women, want the white [wedding dresses] . . .
MO: The Africans dont want African [things], I dont know why. . . .
That is why sometimes when I travel out, what I take is African
because youll be appreciated by those out there and they
want more of that. But us . . . no way! So the one that Ive done
for somebody, thats in the U.S. . . . for somebody in New York
and somebody in Chicago. Two of them and its complete
Africanwe used aso oke, coral bead, cowrie shells. . . .

EPR: If you do that here, people will be saying you are a Sango
[devotee of the Yoruba traditional deity Sango, God of Thunder]. . . .

gg

MO: Ah, ah! Orisa express! [Orisa are Yoruba traditional deities]

Figure 5.1. top. Mrs. Maggie Oviosun

with a wedding dress she designed, in

her shop in Ikeja. Lagos, Nigeria, June 21,
2004. Photograph by Elisha P. Renne.
Figure 5.2. bottom. Wedding party, bride

s .

and groom, with bridesmaids. Womens

dresses and accessories designed by
Maggie Oviosun, The Wedding Shop,
Ikeja. Lagos, Nigeria. Photograph
courtesy of Maggie Oviosun.

* Excerpts in this and other sidebars throughout this

chapter are from interviews conducted in June 2004.

68

Elisha P. R enne

Contemporary Wedding Fashions in Lagos, Nigeria

69

We have a culture
here that believes that
good things come
from far away.
Maria Ogunsi, Mya

Hotel, Ikeja. It included booths featuring gowns, accessories, reception decor, and
engagement letters, all important ingredients of a unique marriage event for Lagos
high-society women and men, anxious to have the most sumptuous and up-to-date
marriages possible. Subsequent shows, known as Wedding Fairs, have been held
at the Lagos Sheraton Hotel, Ikeja, in 2002, 2003, and 2004, and have spawned the
magazine called Wedding Fair.
This preoccupation with fashion, however, is hardly new in Lagos, a major metropolitan and cosmopolitan center during the colonial and postcolonial periods, the
past capital of Nigeria, and the site of the international festival FESTAC, celebrating the arts of Africa and its diaspora, in 1977. In the early twentieth century, it was
the Lagos elite who introduced Christian marriage practices, including the use of
tailored, white wedding gowns, to Nigeria. Nonetheless, certain traditional practices, such as engagement ceremonies with specific events attended to by a range of
extended family members, were retained. This chapter examines wedding fashions
in Lagos one hundred years later, focusing on some of the shop owners, designers,
and marriage specialists who provide the means for the contemporary Lagos elite to
maintain their trend-setting position while retaining certain aspects of the past
such as engagement letter exchangesthrough the production of and attendance
at wedding fashion fairs and by wearing the latest in wedding gowns and accoutrements.
Like the early twentieth-century Lagos elite, many contemporary fashionable Lagosian brides obtain their gowns from overseas. Unlike the past these overseas places
are not restricted to Europesome wedding dresses now come from the U.S., Japan,
and China. The idea of objects accruing value from their foreign origins is actually of
some antiquity in Yoruba culture. For example, the deity Olokun, the God of the Sea,
is associated with wealth from the sea and, by extension, overseas. Similarly, objects
acquired from other foreign kingdoms were used by Yoruba kings to distinguish
themselves from ordinary commoners without access to such goods.
This idea of value has consequences for local shop owners and designers in that
the demand for bridal gowns is restricted to dresses which either are imported or
look as though they came from abroad. Maria Ogunsi, a couturier-designer who
works under the label Mya, explained:
Now [that] I started doing wedding gowns . . . that got such a good response,
we realized that were really battling with the market. Because the kind of
person who can afford my dresses wants [a European style dress]. [There is]

70

Elisha P. R enne

What we are finding out is that a lot of grooms are

buying [the magazine] so thats why we refuse to call

it a bridal magazine. Because we provide for both the

is, its not so straightforward because you have a color

scheme for all your groomsmen, and no one bridal
shop or mens shop will be able to provide suits for,
say, ten men in the same color scheme, say, for shirts,
for ties. A lot of them suddenly realize that we need at
least three months. . . . Its actually a well-thought out
magazine providing for the groom. So we have a countdown for the groomproviding for the bride, providing
for the motherso its like a guidebook for everybody.
So you find out that mothers are buying [it], sisters,

k
i
o

to get my suit and my shirt, but what they dont realize

Editor, Wedding Fair,

and Convener,
Wedding Fair 2003
Ikeja, Lagos

They have this idea that its all about a suit. I just have

Mrs. Bawo Ikomi

men seem to have more problems getting organized.

conducting the [Wedding Fair] exhibition was that the

men and women and because my observation from

aunties, and family members. . . . [After] the second

r
M

or taken to South Africa. I said it was all done here.

s .

[issue], people were asking if it was done in Nigeria

the culture of going to London or to America to buy dressesit doesnt even

matter if you buy the cheapest or the most horrible dress. You just want to
be able to tell everybody that you bought it here, that you bought it there.
In addition to bridal gown styles being imported, several people involved in wedding fashions in Lagos have been influenced by overseas training or experiences.
Maria Ogunsi, for example, who won first prize in the 2003 Nigerian Fashion Show,
graduated with honors from the London College of Fashion, while the owner of The
Wedding Shop, Maggie Oviosun, attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in
New York City. Bawo Ikomi, the convener of the 2003 Wedding Fair in Lagos and
the editor of the magazine Wedding Fair, got the idea for wedding exhibitions while
attending one in London. Likewise, the founder of The Wedding Centre got the idea
of one-stop shopping for wedding gowns and accessories at a store specializing in
household goods in the UK.
Yet the value placed on foreign ideas, training, and objects is tempered by local
cultural preferences and tastes. For example, wealth is expressed not only through
owning foreign things but also through the use of expensive materials displayed in
abundance. Hence, bridal gowns and accessories are embroidered with gold thread
or silver beads, brides wear necklaces and tiaras of gold, pearls, and coral, and hats
festooned with feathers, bows, and ribbon are considered a necessary part of dressing well. While buying a dress in London adds to its prestige, some styles associated
with contemporary Western fashion may not be acceptable. Thus Maria Ogunsi,
who prefers more simply styled wedding gowns with a minimum of embellishment,
is sometimes accused of being too Western (Figure 5.3).
As a result, she consciously makes an effort to accommodate local tastes:
Generally, everything that weve made . . . its been European style bridal gowns. Ill
say that the difference is that . . . in Europe, at the moment, people prefer things that
are simpler . . . but here, it cant be too extravagant, the more the better. Some brides
come in and they chose a dress, saying, I want something simple. And I then say,
Im not going to do that because your mother is going to come and break my door
down. So lets try this. Lets put a little bit of sparkle somewhere. Everyone uses
the word simple, but what simple means here, is not what it means everywhere.
This ideal of displays of abundance carries over into body shape preferences,
specifically, for women with well-endowed figures. Until recently, when some

72

Elisha P. R enne

younger Lagosian women have become concerned with being thin, women aspired to having large hips and full breasts. Maria Ogunsi explained how this body
shape affects what designers do:
We have to dress around our African figure, especially when we are wearing European clothesso you dont get many very sheer, slim-fitting dresses. Because
here people care about . . . all their bulges are going to stick out, its going to look
vulgar. However, I was reading an article in a European magazine about one of
our local brides in UKthey did a feature on five top designers in UK and asked
them to talk about the next collection and to use one of the brides who is going
to wear one of the dresses as a model. Bruce Oldfield, a quite well-known British designer, used a local Nigerian girl as his model. She spent about 50,000
on her dressshe spent a fortune! And he said, she was very slender . . . and for
the first time ever, a bride asked for a dress that made her look like she had bigger hips. She said her husbands family will not want her to look like she doesnt
have child-bearing hips: They wont want me to look too slender or too slight.
Thus, Nigerian designers who have learned styles and practices overseas have had
to transform them in various ways, as Maria Ogunsis comments suggest. Furthermore, as Bawo Ikomi noted, with the many different ethnic groups in Nigeria, there is
a range of local marriage fashions as well. She uses her magazine not only to promote
the latest wedding trends in Lagos but also to celebrate the different cultural backgrounds of Nigerian brides and grooms:
I felt . . . we are a unique nation. We have different tribal marriages, we have different religions, and no foreign magazine caters for those aspects of our weddings. So
if youre going to [compare, you] find out that it wont take care of the traditional
wedding plan. . . . It makes sense to have something that incorporates both African,
our culture, as well as the foreign aspects of our wedding all in one magazine.
Intending couples and their families from Lagos high society (and those aspiring
to it) have distinctive wedding needs. Some have church and registry weddings, some
have Muslim weddings, some have two- or three-part marriages, which include traditional marriage ceremonies and Christian church services. Most of these marriage
practices involve using different types of dress to represent particular social identities
and group affiliations. It is these different needs that have led to the establishment of
a range of shops and businesses in Lagos with particular wedding specialties.

Contemporary Wedding Fashions in Lagos, Nigeria

73

I realized that America is a huge market as well, and its impor-

tant. Its not actually going to be dresses geared towards African

Americans or even Africans. Its going to be quite general. What

it is, we are using European fabrics and were using some of our

( Mya)

Og

Ms. Maria Ogunsi

Fashion Designer
Femi Ayatuga Crescent
Surulere, Lagos

local fabrics, too. For example, there are ways you can weave aso
oke to get very different effects, similar to some fabrics that are
already on the bridal market at the moment. And what were
doing is trying to use [them] in hand detailing, thats what were
sending over there. Ive never been interested in this African
couturebecause it doesnt really represent [how Africans dress].
You and I know that no Nigerian will ever wear that dress [see
fig. 5.3], but if they see that, they will assume thats what we all wear.

I actually designed that dress about two years before I actually

made it. Because I was driving in the Benin Republic, my mothers

when I was a kid, I had a birthday cake that was a cake

from Benin, and they had huts with straw roofs. I remembered
[shaped like a] dome . . . and they stuck a Barbie Doll body on

top of the cake-dome. And some of these huts were [domeshaped], like the Barbie Doll birthday cake. So what I could

do was just stick a body on top of that and now make a dress
thats like the hut. . . . But I [thought to myself], Im not going
to have the chance to do that but its a great idea. . . .

M s.

So when they said All African [materials], I said, This is

my opportunity, but I didnt know how to make it at the
time, so we were just experimenting with the stuff.

Figure 5.3. Facing. Bridal gown of

raffia, damask, and beads, designed by

Maria Ogunsi (Mya) for the 2003
Nigerian Fashion Show. Photograph
courtesy of Maria Ogunsi.

A lot of other shops

sell wedding dresses,
they dont really deal
with accessories.
Bolarinwa Oyewole,
The Wedding Centre

Many of the bridal shops in Ikeja sell imported, ready-made gowns, which come
from China and also from Japan, the seventh largest secondhand clothing exporter in the world. These secondhand dresses are relatively cheap, selling for between
40,000 and 65,000 naira (N135=US$1.00). Some shops, including Dannies Bridal
on Victoria Island, Lagos, have racks of imported bridal gowns from the U.S., which
range from 50,000 naira to over 100,000 naira in price. Other shops specialize in local
custom-made white bridal gowns, such as The Wedding Shop in Ikeja, where dresses
sell for 40,000 naira and up, while some shops, such as The Wedding Centre, sell
both imported and custom-made gowns.
These outfits generally consist of the dress, a detachable train, and a veil. The Wedding Centre also makes two piece dresses that may be worn separately at a later date,
as the proprietor, Bolarinwa Oyewole, explained:
We make them ourselves, and we give our clients a lot of variety, so we are able to
work with different budgets. Because one of the main reasons why people cant buy
imported dresses is because of the cost. But when you make [dresses here], most
of the time, its cheaper. . . . Nigerians are very economical people. They dont
like the idea of spending so much on a wedding dress that you cant wear again.
So [one woman] said she doesnt even want a dress, she wants a skirt and top.
Wedding dresses are further embellished through the wearing of color-coordinated accoutrements including various sorts of head decorations, including tiaras
with faux pearls and diamonds, as well as a range of hairpins and hats decorated with
feathers and ribbons. These items, along with matching shoes and bags, may be worn
or used by bridesmaids as well.
Along with the dresses for the bride, bridesmaids, and family members, which
may match in some way, the car that carries the bride and groom away to their honeymoon destination may also be dressed in matching colored ribbon and bows. Likewise, the hall in which the marriage is performed islike the bride herselfalso
decorated. The color scheme of the dress may be picked up in hall decorations, such
as the covering of chairs and tables, as well as in the decoration of the wedding cakes,
which may replicate elements of the bridal parties clothing, such as hats. Bits of the
cake may be given to departing guests in specially made tiny paper cake boxes, decorated with ribbon and with gold lettering commemorating the date and event.
Special paper is also used in the invitation cards that are sent out to guests. Many
of the cards are imported and shown to potential customers in large catalog albums,

76

Elisha P. R enne

We dont really attend fashion shows because, over

fashionthey really dont have anything to do with
[selling] wedding dresses . . . so at the end of the day,

particular target.
For all the other services that we dont render
[such as organizing engagement ceremonies], we
refer our clients. I will say that apart from the dresses,
accessories such as tiaras and hairpieces [are what

Because in the Wedding Fair, we actually have a

Mrs. Bolarinwa Oyewole

Manager and Designer

The Wedding Centre
8B Toyin St.
Ikeja, Lagos

[attended] the Wedding Fair once every year.

o y

its just like pure entertainment. But like I said . . . we

time, weve noticed that most fashion shows are just

we are known for]. There are very few people who

make these hairpieces. The hairpieces sell from as

w a

low as N550 for the tiny pins. Most of the tiaras sell
on average for N3,000, but then it depends on what
we use to finish it. Sometimes we use plastic beads
plastic beads are cheaper. Then we have some that

we use, we call them crystals; it actually depends

on the materials.

I think we excel because of our creativity. There

are some things that we do here, you dont get elsewhere and when people try to copy us, its not the

same. Its never the same because the [engagement letter] baskets, we bring them from the United

Arab Emirates, or we bring them from Dubai and

sometimes from Hong Kong. [When] you go back,

you may not find the same thing, when you come
back with another basket, you have to think of an-

s .

other design, so its never the same all year around.

77

What is really important for us is the letter

something in writing.
Aina Esho, Sugar Honey

78

although some cards are embossed and printed locally by Bridal House, a store on
Opebi Rd. in Ikeja.
However, one of the most distinctive aspects of Yoruba marriage practice in Lagos
is the exchange of elaborately decorated engagement letters (Figure 5.4). These letters range from large mass-produced paper booklets, which have a padded cloth front
cover which is decorated with lace and ribbons, to the current fashion for gold scrolls.
Inside the booklets and scrolls are the printed lettersone form for the grooms family which is sent to the brides family and a response letter which is sent from the
brides family if they accept the applicants suit.
The creation and exchange of elaborately decorated Yoruba engagement letters is
a practice which has developed since the mid-1980s. While an exchange of engagement letters between the families of the groom and bride had taken place in Lagos
since the beginning of the twentieth century, these letters consisted of handwritten
and typewritten texts which emphasized the literacy of their bearers. During the
early 1900s, Christian, educated elite families in Lagos exchanged handwritten engagement letters as a way of documenting these relations and distinguishing them-

Elisha P. R enne

I have been doing work as an alaaga [go-between]

and selling engagement letters for the last eight

years. For the first meeting, there will be an introduc-

letter along with many other things (I give them a

Sugar Honey
Organisation
Alade Market
Allen Ave.
Ikeja, Lagos

list of things to buy and bring). The grooms family

gives the engagement letter request [which is blue]
to the brides family; then the family of the bride gives
an acceptance letter [which is pink]. These letters
are often presented in decorated baskets. Before
people were using book-like engagement letters,
but the latest fashion is the scroll type or the wood
or marble plaque with a gold-plate panel on which

(Sugar Honey)

of the groom will bring a decorated engagement

Evangelist Aina Esho

At the ceremony for the engagement, the family

The families will decide on a date for the wedding.

tion between the families of the bride and the groom.

is the lettersomething in writing. And for the letter

e
g
n
v a
e

Figure 5.4. facing. Mrs. Aina Esho,

Sugar Honey, at stall in Alade
Market, with presentation baskets
for marriage letters. Ikeja, Lagos,
Nigeria, June 23, 2004. Photograph
by Elisha P. Renne.

exchange, money is also needed, owo ika letter.

the letter is engraved. What is really important for us

Natives provides high

fashion aso oke designs
for women doing traditional marriage.
Sola Arowolo, Natives

80

selves from those who did not attend schools and who also continued earlier Yoruba
marriage practices. This trend continued with the typing of these letters, using writing and technology as an expression of fashionable distinction. As is often the case
with fashion, however, there are leaders, and then there are followers. As more people
attended school and acquired literacy, the writing of engagement letters became de
rigueur for those wanting to have up-to-date marriages. In more recent versions of
these exchanges, letters include computer-generated texts which are embedded in a
range of textile and paper covering and presented in baskets decorated with feathers,
beads, and ribbons. More recently, scrolls and engraved stone plaques are also being used, although the latter are infrequently exchanged because of their high price
(10,000 naira) compared with scrolls, which cost around 2,500 naira. By using engagement letters, their bearers maintain the ideal that Yoruba marriage is between
two families rather than simply two individuals, while simultaneously highlighting
the distinctive qualities of the bride and groom, as educated, wealthy, and fashionable individuals.
Marriage practices in Lagos and elsewhere in Nigeria emphasize the continued
importance of extended families in social life. While families no longer arrange
the marriages of their children as was done in the past, there are many formal
practices that mark the different stages of a marriage and of the wider families
participation in it. Thus, a man and a woman may meet, fall in love, and decide to
marry, but the mans family will need to approach the family of the woman for her
hand. This procedure is often carried out by women hired for the occasion known
as an alaaga (go-between). The alaaga for the grooms family organizes the presentation of the engagement letter at a ceremony known as the introduction. At
the idano (or engagement ceremony) which follows, the two families meet, and an
acceptance letter is presented by the alaaga for the brides family, although there
is considerable variation in the practice and timing of these prenuptial events.
The two families decide on the date of marriage and celebrate this phase of the
marriage at an engagement party.
The form of the marriage depends on family background as well as the wishes of
the wedding couple. For Christian families, the marriage may consist of stages, with
a traditional marriage performed at the city, town, or village of the bride and with a
Christian marriage performed in a large town or city. At the traditional marriage, the
groom and his men, dressed in traditional Yoruba dressoften made of expensive

Elisha P. R enne

handwoven, narrow-strip aso oke clothmust beg the brides family for her hand.
The bride and groom also wear matching outfits, while family members may wear
caps or head ties made of identical aso oke strips. For those performing traditional
marriage rituals in Lagos, shops such as Natives cater to the desire for sophisticated
and fashionable aso oke outfits, which distinguish their wearers from ordinary aso oke
garments associated with village ceremonies (Figure 5.5).
On the day following the performance of traditional marriage, a Christian marriage is performed in church. The bride and groom, along with their bridesmaids and
groomsmen, wear Western-style dress of the type purchased in Ikeja, commissioned
from designers in Lagos, or obtained overseas.
In most cases, elite Christian families in Lagos who want to celebrate their multiple identitiesas educated, cosmopolitan world citizens and as Yoruba people who
respect their culture perform both Christian and traditional marriages. However,
some Christian families with strict Pentecostal Christian beliefs may omit the traditional marriage, using engagement letters alone as a reference to the past. Nonetheless, all these married couples will obtain marriage certificates. Alternately, some
couples may prefer to perform just a traditional marriage alone, while also signing a
marriage certificate, referred to as a registry marriage. For these people, Yoruba traditions are seen as preferable to Western marriage practice, although this is certainly
a minority view.
The continued importance of white wedding gowns as a symbol of enlightened
modernity has undermined attempts by designers to incorporate elements of local textile materials into bridal dress. Bolarinwa Oyewole of The Wedding Centre
described one bride who used white narrow-strip aso oke cloth with woven holes
(known as aso eleya) as a detachable train, but this request was unusual. More often,
it is women living in the U.S. or Europe who commission wedding gowns that make
reference to Africa in their styling. Bawo Ikomi mentioned two such designers, Maria Ogunsi (Mya) and Deola Sagoe (Odua Originals):

Ironically, its mostly

people who have lived
abroad, and have a bit
more Westernized sensibilities, who want that
slightly African element
in what were making.
Maria Ogunsi, Mya

B. Yes, we do have [designers who are trying to do both styles]. In fact we have
quite a number of them. There is one particular one, shes Mya, and she trained
in England. . . . She was even at the Nigerian Fashion Exhibition and she used
for instance . . . raffia, to make a wedding dress. . . . So you can get that fusion
from people like Mya. . . . She can do anything you want with fabric. . . . But

Contemporary Wedding Fashions in Lagos, Nigeria

81

People only use native dress for traditional marriage,

the white dress is for church weddings. Natives [the shop]

then I put the cloths together as up and down pieces.

I did a registry marriage myself and my husband and
I wore an aso oke outfit which I designed. I didnt wear
a white dress as I dont like them.
EPR: Didnt your husband or his family pressure you to

Managing Designer
Natives
63 Opebi Rd.
Ikeja, Lagos

I give materials to weavers who are told what to weave;

Mrs. Sola Arowolo

gown obtained elsewhere).

wedding where they will be wearing a white marriage

traditional marriage (or who may also be having a church

provides high fashion aso oke designs for women doing

wear one?

magazine.

of these outfits, which were featured in Wedding Fair

There was a person who liked my outfit and wanted a

copy of it for herself. I also hired a model to take pictures

SA: No one can force me to wear anything.

r
M

their wedding, wearing matching marriage

outfits of custom-made aso oke designed by
Sola Arowolo, owner of the Lagos shop
Natives. Lagos, Nigeria, December 1, 2002.
Photograph courtesy of Sola Arowolo.

s .

Figure 5.5. facing. Bayo and Sola Arowolo at

theres another person who also is very good at thisshes Deola Sagoe. . . .
Even if its aso oke, shell start . . . her design from the [cloth] production level.
E. Does she actually make bridal gowns?
B. She does. . . . It was a full aso oke bridal dress . . . it was in plain white aso oke and
it was beautifully done.
E. Thats what I was thinking, that people will maybe use that [aso oke] a bit . . .
[but] most . . . people are doing European styles, they dont mix them at all.
B. . . . the problem is you find out that a lot of people want to be Westernized, so
its hard, you cant force them.

They dont want more

than four people to
own it and theyd
rather no one else
had it either.
Maria Ogunsi, Mya

Deola Sagoe is an internationally renowned couturier who has shown her work at
the 2004 Rome Haute Couture Fashion Week. Her fame gives her a certain freedom
in accepting customers and in what she is willing to design. Maria Ogunsi is relatively young and hence needs to be more flexible. Nonetheless, the wedding dresses
she has designed to be worn (as opposed to those entered in fashion competitions)
are often simple and dramatic and may at times incorporate locally woven materials
that visually approximate imported white materials. This flexibility of incorporating
locally produced fabrics, which are specifically commissioned, may actually contribute to the fashionable up-to-date-ness of her wedding gowns.
We did a show in Milan last year, and I was walking around to see things on
fashion, and everything seemed really simple, really basic, and really old [fashioned]. Whereas here, the fashion seems so curtailed because . . . normally your
clients wantand this is not only in bridal, this is also in everyday clothing
what do they want? What they consider the latest things. . . . It must be totally
[new] and totally changing. So we really have to keep on our toes here because
you know, the idea of an item lasting for an entire season, it doesnt really
work here. Within a week, its over. So you just have to move quite quickly.
Maria Ogunsis comment about fashion in Lagoscharacterized by its lightening-speed change and the demand for individual distinctionprovides an interesting contrast between the latest in high-fashion wedding gowns and the use of handwoven marriage cloths used in some traditional marriage rituals, which may have
been passed down for generations. Similarly, the desire for dresses that only four
people own, or better no one else owns, contrasts with the wearing of aso ebi, identi-

84

Elisha P. R enne

cal family cloths that every family member wears at special events. The oscillation
between an individual modern identityrepresented by wearing the latest bridal
fashionsand the identification with a social group, the extended family, or hometown or ethnic grouprepresented by traditional marriage cloths and practicesis
clearly expressed in fashionable Lagos weddings. This oscillation may also be seen
in the tensions describedbetween designers and consumers of wedding fashions;
between a taste for abundance in design styles and a taste for form-fitting simplicity; and between a cultural pride associated with Yoruba traditions and modernity
associated with the West. Thus, fashion may be used as a way of expressing ambivalence about ones distinctive identities, and to a certain extent this is the case with
Lagos wedding fashions. Some people are ambivalent about wearing old-fashioned
marriage clothing (aso iyawo) made of handwoven aso oke, cloth which is associated
with backward village life, with traditional Yoruba religious practice and with the
past, in general. Alternately, others are ambivalent about ceding cultural authority to
the West through the privileging of white bridal gowns. However, it would be more
appropriate to say that the majority of elite Lagos families use wedding fashions as a
means for representing their different identitiesas members of prosperous, extended families; as people with a unique cultural heritage; and as educated individuals
with worldly and modern tastes, despite the tensions which these different identities sometimes entail.

Contemporary Wedding Fashions in Lagos, Nigeria

85

Kouyat, Ben Nonterah, Ziemek Pater and

Carlo Gibson of Strangelove Fashion,
Kandioura Coulibaly, Oumou Sy, Nanou
Ravelo, Suzanne Ramananantoandro,
Mirana Abraham Andriamanantena,
and Jol Andrianomearisoa. By addressing individual designers histories, training,
and creative goals, the authors reveal
the important factors which shape
fashion innovations in various
contemporary African contexts.

d e s i g n e r s
f a s h i o n

designers such as Chris Seydou, Lamine

a f r i c a n

the continents leading and most creative

Part two

The chapters in this section present some of

African Fashion

Design, Identity,
and History
Victoria L. Rovine

Clothing styles move swiftly, traveling between individuals and along media networks, traversing cultural and chronological divides. Innovations may emerge
from the pages of fashion magazines or from tailors shops, from movie screens or
museum galleries, from ordinary consumers creative combinations of garments
or from the studios of haute couture designers. These changing styles, which
transform clothing into fashion, often provide insights into history and attitudes
toward history. Fashion has a reputation for rejecting the past in its focus on the
perpetually new. Even as it changes, however, fashion preserves the past. Styles
that emerged out of specific histories may be maintained long after the sources of
influence have faded from visibility, the wearers themselves no longer remembering their original associations. As their pasts are obscured by new contexts, such
garments may even become icons of new identities. Dress is, in short, mobile and
malleable in both form and meaningan ideal medium for exploring changing
identities at the intersection of cultures.
Wherever they originate, dress innovations often incorporate elements drawn
from outside the immediate orbit of the innovator, borrowing from distant times
and places, different social classes, age levels, and genders. Through the work of
several designers and fashion innovators, past and present, I explore Africas pres-

ence in global markets for fashion, investigating what we can learn from historical
and contemporary fashion innovations in Africa and the appearance of African
forms outside African contexts.
Africas Global Fashions: The Early Twentieth Century
Though the history of innovation and change in African dress practices is not as
thoroughly documented as in other parts of the worldmuch research remains
to be donewhat we do know indicates that African clothing has long expressed
complex identities and creative responses to a world of changing possibilities.
Some of the most vivid historical information comes from European sources
which unintentionally document the African penchant for innovation in clothing styles. The records of traders, who were in the vanguard of the European presence in Africa, indicate that from their earliest encounters with African markets
for cloth, beads, and other items of personal adornment, extending back as far as
the sixteenth century, demand was far from stable and tradition bound. African
consumers expected changing merchandise and were quite discerning in their
tastes. As Europeans began to settle along the West and Central African coast,
they found that African fashion innovators quickly adapted and transformed
Western styles and media, absorbing these imported garments and media into
local fashions (Figure 6.1). In some parts of Africa, elements of dress that were
adapted from Europe during the late nineteenth century (or even earlier) are still
worn today, long after they ceased to be used in Europe. These include hatstop
hats and bowlersworn by chiefs and other men of high status in coastal West
Africa and southern Nigeria and the long, layered skirts worn by Herero woman
in Namibia and Botswana, borrowed from German missionaries. While these
garments have European histories, they are today completely African, made in
new styles and bearing new meanings. In short, records of early trade and other
interactions between Europeans and Africans indicate that African consumers
were thoroughly cosmopolitan in their receptiveness to the new possibilities presented by imported goods.
Printed cotton textiles provide an excellent case study in the long history of Africas shifting dress markets, and they continue to feature prominently in African
clothing and fashion today. Records of the manufacture and sale of these textiles

90

Victoria L. Rovine

Figure 6.1. Postcard, inauguration

of Liberian president Daniel

Edward Howard, 1912. The
attendees at this celebration
wear a wide range of indigenous
and Western styles of clothing,
providing a vivid example of
flexibility and adaptability in
historical African dress practices.
Photograph courtesy of the
Museum der Kulturen, Basel,
image (F) III 26000.

hint at the degree to which African taste shaped this important market. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, European textile manufacturers, primarily
in Holland and Britain, sought access to potentially lucrative African markets by
creating cloth in patterns and colors aimed at local African tastes. In his analysis
of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century trade in textiles between European producers and West African consumers, Christopher Steiner noted that
African consumers created trends with such speed and regional variation that
merchants struggled to keep up: Indeed, fashions in cloth varied from place to
place and from time to time, so that producers and merchants who were unsympathetic to African desires, or unwilling to adapt to African style, were all too
likely to manufacture inappropriate textiles. The unpredictability of changing
tastes in African markets likely left many a trader with bales of unsold cloth.
Like these textiles, many of the dress practices that appear to represent the
supposedly unchanging stability of tradition in fact emerge out of histories of
change, illustrating the speed with which imported forms and media have been
incorporated into local practices. Before they gained official status as tradi-

African Fashion

91

tions, many African styles emerged out of cross-cultural contacts; these borrowed forms inspired new styles, serving as engines for changing styles of dress.
For example, beaded ornaments, which are closely associated with traditional,
indigenous cultures in South Africa, are the products of a long history of trade
and adaptation. From the early nineteenth century to the present, glass and, later,
plastic beads have been important trade goods for Europeans and others seeking
markets in southern Africa. In fact, the bead trade has a much longer history in
the region, beginning with sixth-century Arab traders who brought beads across
the Indian Ocean, though we have little specific information about the nature
of this exchange. Dutch, British, French, and other Europeans who traded with
various local communities left accounts that provide evidence of the strong, and
fast-changing, tastes of local consumers. J. W. Colenso, mid-nineteenth-century
visitor to the Natal region in South Africa, compared local taste for beads to the
changing fashions in British womens hats, an icon of fashions capriciousness:
the Natives . . . are as capricious in their taste for beads, as any English lady in
the choice of her bonnet. The same pattern will suit them for only a season or two;
and they are at all times difficult to please. Color, size, shape, surface texture, and
other factors all came into play as consumers selected or rejected beads for use
in their jewelry and other adornments. The preferences of individuals in particular regions or communities changed over time, making the market still less predictable.
Global Fashion: Evading Classification
Nearly a century after these markets were shaped by the negotiations between
merchants and consumers, Africa continues to produce and inspire fashion,
though much has changed. Clothing that has roots in Western styles has become
virtually omnipresent in Africa. Walking down a street in a city, town, or village
almost anywhere in Africa, jeans and T-shirts are as much in evidence as clothing
in distinctively local styles. People make decisions about what to wear depending
on context, convention, and personal taste. One might wear a three-piece suit
to the office and a locally woven and embroidered robe to a wedding. Instead of
African or Western, most attire is better classified on a continuum from indigenous to imported, and the two cross-fertilize each other to create new, cosmopolitan styles.

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As tastes have changed, so too have international markets, so that some African fashion designers now produce work for European and other international
markets. Global media outlets make information about changing fashion trends
readily accessiblepeople in Dakar can quickly learn about clothing styles in
Paris or New York, and people in rural Kenya can learn about fashion trends in
Nairobi, London, or Johannesburg. Thus, Africans may participate directly in the
production of African style for global markets, drawing inspiration from clothing produced all over the world. Some African fashion designers make use of
distinctively African forms, while others create clothing that is not recognizably
African. As we might expect, African designers employ a wide array of styles and
approaches.
Transforming Traditional Forms: Chris Seydou and Ben Nonterah
Two West African designers, one from Mali, the other from Ghana, illustrate one
important trend in contemporary African fashion design: the adaptation of textiles, garment styles, and iconography associated with indigenous culture. These
designers, and many others whose work incorporates distinctively indigenous
elements, may aim to gain local or global markets for their designs. For some designers, adaptation of styles associated with local cultures offers a means of attracting international consumers who value the African-ness of their work. For
others, clothing that incorporates indigenous forms is marketed to local consumers, intended to appeal to their pride in their own identity. These two approaches
are not mutually exclusive; some designers have succeeded in appealing to both
local and international fashion consumers.
Chris Seydou (19491994) was one such designer, successful in his home country of Mali as well as in Europe and elsewhere in Africa. He was a pioneer in the
field of fashion design; he was the first African designer to successfully bring together European training and technique with self-consciously African identity.
His work demonstrated the compatibility of indigenous forms and international
fashion. The cross-fertilization of the local and the international is particularly
vivid in Seydous work and career, for it was his ability to view textiles and other
elements of dress from the perspectives of both the European and the Malian
markets that enabled him to see potential in these forms.

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Figure 6.2. facing. Chris Seydou

ensemble, Dakar, Senegal, 1994.
Chris Seydou made innovative
use of bogolanfini, adapting it
to garments like miniskirts and
motorcycle jackets, international
rather than indigenous in style.
Photograph by Victoria L. Rovine.

Seydous earliest experience with fashion brought together the local and the
global. His mother was a seamstress in a small Malian city. Seydou acquired his
taste for fashion watching her work for local clients and perusing the international fashion magazines from which she and her clients drew inspiration. He worked
and studied fashion design in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and in Abidjan, Cte
dIvoire, before moving to Paris in 1972. He was based in that international fashion center for seven years before returning to Mali at the end of his career. In
Bamako, he was a celebrity, designing clothing for the political and social elite.
Although he worked in a variety of styles, Seydou was most closely associated
with his use of bogolanfini, a textile also known as mudcloth. In Mali, bogolanfini
has deep roots in local, rural cultures. The women who make it employ a complicated technique that is unique to this type of cloth, creating distinctive brown and
white geometric patterns. These patterns have symbolic meanings that refer to local history, mythology, and moral lessons. Bogolanfini has important ritual uses,
for it is believed to have protective powers when worn. Girls who are undergoing
initiation into womanhood wear the cloth, as do male huntersboth take risks
by temporarily leaving the safety of the community, so both need protection.
Although he had been familiar with the cloth since childhood, Seydou recognized bogolanfinis potential for fashion only after he left Mali for France in the
early 1970s. In Paris, he began to work with bogolanfini he brought from Mali; he
had never been interested in using the cloth before he left Mali. Viewing it from a
different perspective, no longer in the context of initiations and symbolic meanings, he was led by the cloths strong visual appeal to adapt it to his designs He
intended to use it to create tailored garments, a new use for this textile which had
long been worn as a wrapper or a tunic, garments that are not fitted to the body.
Seydou used the cloth to create miniskirts, bell-bottom pants, and bustiers
dramatic departures from its past uses (Figure 6.2). Though he was adapting it
to completely new contexts, bogolanfinis original meanings and functions still
influenced Seydous work; he didnt want to use cloth that had originally been
intended for use in girls initiations or as hunting attire, because of its symbolic
associations with spiritual power and private rituals. Seydou didnt feel comfortable cutting the deeply symbolic cloth, so instead he commissioned bogolanfini
for his own use, with patterns he carefully selected so that they worked well when
cut and sewn, and so that they wouldnt carry the same symbolic meanings as

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Figure 6.3. facing. Dress by Ben

Nonterah for the Nonterah brand,

2009. Ghanaian designer Ben
Nonterah makes understated use
of textiles associated with local or
regional cultures, including kente,
bogolan, and wax prints. Here,
these textiles appear in layers,
with no single pattern or color
dominating. Photograph by
Bill Akwa Btot.

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the cloth made for local use. He also designed bogolanfini-patterned cloth to be
printed in a Malian textile factory, further removing the textile from its original
function, yet preserving the patterns that are an important aspect of its identity.
By designing the cloth for a local company, Seydou was also working to ensure
that Malians benefited from the industrialization of bogolanfini.
His use of the cloth exemplifies Seydous ability to meld elements drawn from
diverse sources into styles that had broad appeal. His selective adaptation of bogolanfini, carefully adjusting the cloth to suit his needs, provides insights into
Seydous balance of indigenous meanings and international markets. Consumers
neednt know anything of the cloths history and significance in order to appreciate its style, yet for those who do know of its cultural importance, wearing bogolanfini may be meaningful in ways far beyond the visual impact of the patterns.
When he died in 1994, Seydou was working to create an organization dedicated
to the teaching and production of bogolan and other Malian textiles, as part of his
effort to preserve longstanding practices by building new audiences for them in
contemporary markets.
Another example of the adaptation and transformation of indigenous forms is
provided by Ghanaian designer Ben Nonterah. Along with accessories designer
Beatrice Anna Arthur, he created the brand BExotiq in the mid-1990s. He now
designs and produces clothing for his own brand, called Nonterah. Like Seydou,
Nonterah looks to local textiles for inspiration, using these fabrics as a starting
point for innovations that also draw on international styles. Ghana is renowned
for its textiles, including, most notably, intricately woven kente cloth, which is
among the most famous African textiles. Kente is associated with royalty and high
status in Ghana, and it has become an icon of African identity all over the world.
Nonterah, along with many other contemporary African designers, has made use
of kente-patterned factory cloth as well as factory printed textiles adorned with
a variety of other motifs. Rather than making these textiles the primary visual
focus of the garments, however, he folds them into narrow vents on sleeves and
seams, or layers in strips along the body of a dress, so that they appear as hints,
subtle glimpses rather than obvious references (Figure 6.3).
Nonterah has also made use of another Ghanaian textile, adinkra, to create
womens pants and jackets, as well as hats and other accessories. Adinkra cloth
is adorned with stamped, rather than woven, patterns. It is historically associated with funerals in the Akan region, which encompasses much of central and

Victoria L. Rovine

southern Ghana. Like the patterns painted onto bogolanfini, each of the stamped
adinkra motifs has a symbolic meaning, often referring to proverbs and to local
history. Like kente, adinkra is customarily worn as a wrapper, one large piece of
cloth wrapped around the body and draped over a single shoulder. Nonterahs
adaptation of adinkra focused on the cloths patterns, its most important characteristic. Instead of using pieces of the cloth itself, he used patches of fabric as
accents, each adorned with a single adinkra motif.
Preserving some elements of local sources of inspiration while producing clothing for international markets, Nonterah has created styles that are distinctively
Ghanaian, yet thoroughly international. He has himself characterized his designs
as Afro-cosmopolitan fashion, a term that elegantly describes the work of many
African designers, past and present. Seydou, Nonterah, and other designers who
make use of indigenous forms create garments that are far from traditional.
Conceptualizing Tradition: Lamine Kouyat and Strangelove
References to local, African cultures take a more abstract form in the work of
some designers. Their garments may not be recognizably African at all, yet a
closer look reveals references to local histories and cultural practices. Like much
of the contemporary African art that has begun to find global audiences, these
designers create clothing that challenges preconceptions about African cultures.
Malian-Senegalese designer Lamine Kouyat and South African designers Ziemek Pater and Carlo Gibson, whose company is called Strangelove, exemplify
this tendency.
Kouyat, who is based in Paris, creates clothing under the brand name Xuly
Bt. His work has been sold and shown throughout Europe, in both fashion boutiques and museum exhibitions. Kouyat is one of a handful of African designers
with an international reputation; his work has appeared in major European and
American fashion magazines, including French and American editions of Vogue
and Elle. Kouyat gained recognition in the mid-1990s, after leaving his study of
architecture to enter the world of fashion design in Paris. His work owes much
to global styles, like hip-hop and grunge. Kouyats creative expression is also
manifested in the realm of musiche has long performed in bands that take part
in the Parisian alternative music and theater scene.

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Kouyat is best known for his recycled clothing, which

he began producing in 1992. While the notion of used
clothing as fashion is not a new onevintage clothing
has been popular for decadesthe Xuly Bt line takes
the idea in a new direction. Kouyat buys used clothing
at flea markets and reworks them to create entirely new
garments; the clothes he purchases are not reused but
rather recreated (Figure 6.4). The seams of shirts or pants
are cut open and stitched together in new configurations
to create dresses and coats; sweaters are transformed into
scarves and bags; and new configurations are produced in
response to the diverse used garments that are Kouyats
raw materials. Instead of disguising the past uses of these
garments, Xuly Bt designs emphasize their histories.
Severed seams are re-stitched together using bright red
thread, and clothes are often turned inside-out when reworked, so the fact that these garments have had another
life is immediately evident.
Although they have no direct stylistic precedents in
African dress, these garments offer fascinating insights
into contemporary Africa, and specifically the Malian and
Senegalese urban cultures in which Kouyat was raised.
There, recycling clothing is a practical adaptation to economic challenges as well as a vibrant form of creativity. Senegal and Mali are both
famed for their textiles and their tailoringin towns and cities of any size, one
finds tailors, cloth dyers, and embroiderers ready to take commissions for custommade clothing. One can also buy clothing off the rack, but for any important
event people wear clothing that they have commissioned from tailors. Clothing
of Western origin has long been integrated into this system, so that consumers
may use copies of Elle or other fashion magazines, asking their tailor to recreate
a garment in the cloth of their choice. Imported used clothing from Europe and
North America is another important source of clothing in many parts of Africa,
including Senegal and Mali.

African Fashion

Figure 6.4. Xuly Bt, recycled

garment, 2002. Lamine Kouyat,

founder and designer of the Xuly
Bt brand, assembles garments
out of discarded clothing. A dress,
created of sweaters and shirts,
is silkscreened with the brands
motto: Funkin Fashion Factory.
Photograph courtesy of Benedict
Fr.-C. Hellwig.

99

Kouyat has spoken of this creativity as a source of inspiration for his own
work. In interviews, he described memories of friends and family members who
commissioned Chanel-style suits in vibrant printed fabrics. He remembers purchasing used clothing, imported from afar, which needed to be adapted; cutting
sleeves off sweaters or transforming pants into skirts were simply ways to make
clothing created for cold climates into practical warm weather attire. In Paris,
where Kouyat works, such adaptations arent necessary. Instead, his cutting and
reworking of used clothing there may be viewed as a commentary on the history
of Africas interactions with the West. Africa, long treated as an outpost of unchanging tradition, was excluded from the Western-dominated realm of international fashion production. Kouyat purchases garments that have been discarded
by their original owners, transforms them from refuse into fashion, and re-sells
themat much higher pricesback into the system that discarded them. An
ironic twist on a long history of Western misunderstanding of Africa dress and
creativity!
Although much of Kouyats work makes indirect rather than explicit reference to Africa, the name of his company, Xuly Bt, clearly alludes to his Senegalese identity. The name is in Wolof, the major language of Senegal, and it is a slang
term meaning watch me or take a close look. Looking beneath the surface of
his recycled clothes reveals complex histories and responses to African cultures,
without making direct reference to the continents indigenous arts.
The South African designers Carlo Gibson and Ziemek Pater, who together
design clothing for their brand Strangelove, make references to historical and
contemporary South African cultures through clothing that makes few direct visual references to traditional styles. They have created garments in a number of
different series, each related to a broad thematic concern. One such theme, which
runs through a great deal of their work, is the challenge people face in South
Africas cities, where unemployment, violence, and the scourge of AIDS have
forced so many people into a struggle to simply survive from one day to the next.
Gibson and Pater live in Johannesburg, the countrys largest city. Here, extreme
wealthmanifested in shining glass office towers and ornate shopping malls
coexists with grinding povertymuch of the citys population lives in informal
settlements, shacks made of scraps without electricity or water. The economic
inequality is striking, as is the ingenuity and determination with which people
strive to improve their lot.

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In one series of clothes, Strangelove commented on the urban industry of recycling. They created a series of garments inspired by corrugated cardboard, which
they saw stacked in the pushcarts of recyclers who plied the citys downtown
streets. These people were part of an informal industryalong with cardboard,
some specialized in glass bottles, plastic bags, and other products. Gibson and Pater used the idea of corrugated cardboards edges, where one can see the distinctive construction of the material, as a starting point for clothing. Their designs
highlight the edges of fabric rather than its facean unusual shift in focus. Using
thin slices of fabric stitched together so that their edges face outward, Strangelove
has created a limited series of coats and vests that transform the body into an accordion-like form that focuses attention on linear edges of cloth rather than color
or pattern. Like Lamine Kouyat, Gibson and Pater find the reuse of discarded
objectswhether clothing or cardboardto be a powerful visual symbol of the
energy and the often unintended aesthetic statements that emerge out of urban
South Africa.
Another series of Strangelove designs was inspired by a specific historical
figure whose life has become a symbol of the terrible history of white prejudice
against South Africas indigenous cultures. Strangelove created a line of womens
clothing that made reference to the tragic story of Saartje Baartman, also known
as Sara Bartman. Baartman, an indigenous womana member of the Khoisan
culturewas brought to Europe in 1810 by a Dutch entrepreneur, who featured
her in sideshows until her death in 1815. Baartmans remains were held for more
than a century in the Muse de lHomme in Paris, where they were the subject of
study by scientists and displayed in the galleries as exotica. In 2002, her remains
were finally returned to South Africa at the insistence of former president Nelson
Mandela and others. That year, Strangelove presented dresses that incorporated
bustle-like attachments, references to the Western obsession with Baartmans
supposed Hottentot physiognomy (Figure 6.5). Strangeloves recreation, highly
conceptual rather than literal, evokes the tragedy of this storybeautiful forms
with an underlying sense of foreboding and discomfort.
Strangelove, Kouyat, Nonterah, and Seydou, like countless other African
fashion innovators past and present, illustrate that styles associated with local
cultures and traditional practices are not frozen in an imagined pure state.
Clothing that blends forms drawn from diverse sources of inspiration indicates the arbitrary nature of customary divisions between traditional and

African Fashion

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Victoria L. Rovine

modern styles of dress. These realms are cultural

constructions from which designers in African and
Western markets draw in order to satisfy both local
and international expectations and preferences. These
designers may make subtle readjustments to indigenous forms, or they may create entirely new styles that
are inspired by aspects of local cultures. Whatever
their approach, African fashion designers create new
styles to suit changing identities and markets, adding
fresh layers to the legacies of traditional forms.

Figure 6.5. Strangelove (Ziemek Pater and Carlo Gibson),

They Look at Me and Thats All They Think, 20072008,

a performance created in collaboration with dancer/
choreographer Nelisiwe Xaba. This garment, made for
a performance context, evokes the distinctive body
and the tragic story of Saartje Baartman. The same
shape, characterized by its bustle-like extension,
appeared in Strangeloves runway fashions.
Photograph courtesy of Strangelove.

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Using the Past to Sculpt the

Costume of the Future
An Interview with
Kandioura Coulibaly
Janet Goldner

Kandioura Coulibaly is an exceptional artist who makes jewelry and costumes

for Malian cinema, and theater, as well as for festivals and exhibitions in Mali
and internationally. He is a founder of the Groupe Bogolan Kasobane, a pioneer
collective of six contemporary artists who have been working together for thirty
years. They are largely responsible for having elevated bogolan, a traditional textile technique used to decorate garments, to an important artistic symbol of national and even pan-national identity.
The Groupe Bogolan Kasobane has been collecting beads, textiles, costumes,
and other cultural objects for many years as a way of preserving the symbols and
signs of beauty of the Malian peoples. Their passion is the preservation and perpetuation of the cultural heritage of Mali by researching the past and bringing the
findings into the present and the future as saved artifacts and concepts, ways of
thinking and being, and as contemporary works of art. Many aspects of Malian
culture are in danger of being lost due to the cultural disruption and erasure that
resulted from colonialism.

Kandiouras ambition is to open a museum in Bamako. He wants the objects in

the collection to be of service to people, to help educate people, especially Malian
youth, about their past. The costumes Kandioura produces, which are inspired by
the collection, are not for sale but become part of the collection.
What we know as the history of Africa has largely been written by outsiders
who explored, exploited, colonized her. At best, they misunderstood. At worst,
they simply lied to further their own interests. Kandioura is one of many African
intellectuals who are actively reconstructing, uncovering, researching the hidden
history that is under the history as it has been written. Kandioura draws heavily
on his own Sarakole (Soninke) heritage as well as the other ethnicities of Mali.
His contribution is his ability to interpret the stories that are told by the material
culture that remains.
Kandioura and I have been working together for fifteen years in a collaboration that began during my Fulbright Senior Research grant in Mali in 1995. Our
collaboration is a friendship based on mutual respect and admiration. It helps
that we are about the same age.
In 2002, I published an article about Kandioura in Beadwork Magazine. I curated the first exhibition of the work of the Groupe Bogolan Kasobane in the U.S.
in 1998. In 2003, we spent a week in Karenguimbe, the village where Kandioura
was born in Mali near the Mauritanian border.
I am an artist. My inspiration comes from the observation of and participation
in diverse cultures both in the United States and abroad. My interest has included
West Africa as well as my own layered American background. I first traveled to
West Africa in 1973. Since 1995, my involvement with Mali has been one of bridge
building with many projects both in the United States and in Mali.
This article results from conversations that took place at Kandiouras home
in Bamako in November 2004. The conversations were recorded in French. The
transcription and translation are mine.
What Is Fashion and Why Is It Important?
Janet: There are many objects here in your Museum of Life: beads, fabric, bogolan, teapots, wood from the well. With these objects we can learn the history of people, of culture: how they lived, what was important for them, how
they made up their lives. In our discussions over the years, Ive understood
that fashion, how people dress, is an important part of life.

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Kandioura: When I talk of fashion, I think of the fashion of life and the fashion of dress. The fashion of life obligates people to adapt their fashion of
dress. The objects that surround people permit them to make their way of
life. A farmer needs a life that facilitates the raising of crops. A herder needs
to conform to his herd. People need ways of life that conform their thoughts
with their environment.
Clothes are a second skin between the body and the regard of others.
Clothes are also a defense of the body, of all the systems of organization
inside the body. Clothes are an exterior protection that inhibits the cold, the
rays of the sun to impact the body. Just as the body is constituted of skin, of
nerves, of cells, of hemoglobin, clothes also need accessories to survive.
Clothes can be the cause of seduction, cause of protection, and at the
same time clothes symbolize the class and the function, the situation of
man himself. Clothes offer a first image of the person. Fashion is constituted in thought, and later it rejoins the body. It is an organization of life.
J: How did you start to think about fashion?
K: In the morning, when I was a child, I was awakened by the sound of my
mothers spindle. When she lit the fire to prepare breakfast, she had her cotton beside her, and she spun while the water was heating. The water made
the sound of boiling. The sound of spinning went clacka, clacka. She said
when you help make the warp, Ill make a beautiful grand boubou for you
when cloth is woven. The thread forged my thoughts. That small sound,
rhythm of the spinning, influenced me deeply.
I helped my mother spin cotton. You had to make the number of threads
that were needed for mounting the warp on the loom. The warp is the result
of all the efforts of all the people who worked to make the cloth. It is in the
ensemble of all the efforts that our society finds its base, its protection.
My mother also had a vase of indigo in the house. My father had a small
field of cotton, not for sale but for the clothes of the family. When the first
rain fell, we planted the field of cotton that was uniquely for clothing for the
family. It was my first understanding that it was as important as the fields
of millet.
The spindle and the needle were as important as the little hoe used to
cultivate the millet. When people came back to the village from the foreign

Using the Past to Sculpt the Costume of the Future

107

Figure 7.1. Facing. Kandioura

Coulibaly. Bamako, Mali, 2005.
Photograph by Janet Goldner.

countries where they were working, they distributed needles to the old people. When we were very young, the adults didnt let us work with needles
because we would either stick ourselves or break the needles. We took the
feathers of birds and learned to sew with them. With them, I tried to sew between the threads of the weaving. That was my first way of making fashion.
This is how I started to do my research. We forged our life with this action of making our needs, finding what we wanted to do. We looked for everything that was necessary to do it. Im still in this action of finding ways
to reconstitute my thoughts.
J: You just made me think about Karenguimbe [Kandiouras natal village].
K: In Karenguimbe, my studio was the field. When the millet started to produce heads of grain, we were sent to the fields to chase the birds away from
the crops. The grain was higher than I was. In this forest of millet was a birdwatch, where I was alone. When the birds were gone, I had to stay there in
case they came again, thus I had a time of rest and creation. This period of
solitude in the fields permitted me to think and reflect and to do silly things.
And these silly things permitted me to continue to create, alone.
There was a problem of cloth. The old mosquito net was cotton. I cut it and
made a shirt. I compared my thoughts to the object with which I worked. I
liked the shorts my friend wore. The shorts could have been denim, sewn by
machine. I took bands of handspun, handwoven cotton, and I made a pair
of shorts by hand. That was very important for my personal initiation where
I was my own teacher.
I needed to have things I made myself, to fabricate my playthings myself.
I made a lot of strange recuperated things, from my fathers old boubou or
my mothers mosquito net. When I had a scrap of someones old headscarf,
I cut it, transformed it into something I wore. That was my strong interior
inspiration of fashion, what drove me not to be a stylist, because I didnt
consider myself a stylist. The word stylist is not part of my culture. It is too
modern and too commercial.
My fashion beginnings were under a tree in the village that is almost
dead now and in a bird-watch in the fields that doesnt exist anymore. The
old clothes that I recuperated to create pushed me to enter another mode
that they told me was fashion. For me, it wasnt fashion. It was a need to

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compare my intelligence and my knowledge to others. In comparing myself

to others, I saw what I could do conformed to what is called fashion.
I forged my life by following the symbols of African life and pushing the
signs and the forms of Africa toward the signs of the larger world. I continue.
Im not the only one. There are many others like me. We try to push toward
this modernism that is not in our favor, that wants to direct our thoughts
toward another thought that is not in our favortoward this modernism
where, again, Africa may lose its frame of reference, because the frame of
reference of Africa is slow and humane and is not industrial.
J: At what age did you leave the village? [Kandioura left his natal village to live
with his uncle so he could go to school.]
K: I was in the fifth grade, around eleven years old, only a little fatter than a
grain. In Macina, I always wore a grand boubou in indigo that my mother
made when I was leaving the village. Indigo was too important for children,
so they put our clothes in red dye. If we wanted to give a really big present, it
was dyed in indigo. Blue-indigo is for me the Soninke, Sarakole culture.
J: You began making bogolan in Koro when you were twelve years old. [Bogolan is a Malian technique of applying vegetal pigments such as clay and
plant dyes to decorate locally grown, handwoven cotton cloth. Although
usually translated as mudcloth, bogolan actually refers to a clay slip with a
high iron content that produces a black pigment when applied to handspun
and handwoven cotton textiles. Koro is a town in Dogon.]
K: In Dogon, I lived with my uncle who was the commandant. I was in a family of civil servants, and I went to school with the children of farmers. They
came simply dressed in clothes of handmade cotton. The cotton was spun,
woven, sewn by the parents, decorated by their parents or by the children
themselves. You saw the thoughts of the parents engraved on the bodies of
the children. I found that very, very beautiful. If our clothes were different,
our thoughts were the same.
That pushed me to work on clothes and to learn this technique as a child
to look like the other children and to come sit with them. My clothes that
came from abroad changed nothing in my reflection, my thoughts. It wasnt
good for me that my body didnt resemble the thoughts of my parents but

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reflected the thoughts of administrators who were foreign to our culture.

When I saw an administrator, he had come to collect taxes, to exploit the
peasants. I found that this wasnt good for me, the child of a farmer, who
looked too much like a little administrator.
Out behind my uncles house, I formed a little laboratory, a place to hide.
It was there that I tried to draw on cloth to make bogolan. At first I didnt
succeed. As I was doing it, one of the workers said, First you have to dye the
cloth in the yellow-ochre to be able to fix it. I brought the dye and dyed the
cloth. I tried again, and little by little, as I continued to draw on the cloth,
it started to work. I continued to dye, and all of a sudden I pulled out a first
work in that laboratory that impressed even my teacher. Bogolan is added to
the form. Bogolan is color. Bogolan is writing.
J: Then you lived in Djenne?
K: I began bogolan in Dogon, and my uncle was transferred to Djenne. This life
always drives me. I helped my mother make the warp threads. The gesture
of spinning was the conducting thread for me. It led me to the technique
of bogolan.
In Djenne, there was another form of bogolan that was different from the
bogolan of Koro. In Koro, there is yellow, brown, and black. In Djenne, it
was black and white. Djenne was a town that was intellectual and artisanal
at the same time. That was very important for me. During school vacation,
I worked with the hand embroiderers and sometimes in the tailors workshops. I saw those who embroidered by hand, those who made fashion by
machine. I had been working with nothing at all. When you have a lot more,
I found you can do much better.
J: Then you came to Bamako?
K: After Djenne, I passed my exam from primary school, which allowed me to
choose lINA, the Beaux Arts. I did four years of training that made concrete the forms that I was looking for. I studied the anatomy of the body.
Every day I saw my body that I should dress. It is nature that created the
body. What we add should not resemble the body. Thats why I like clothes
that are ample, African, and mystify the interior.

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I always wanted to work for the body, to make it magnetic, to give it a vibration and, following my thoughts, rejoin life and give power to this body.
Because clothing can be a symbol of a question, it can open a discussion
between people. Clothing can provoke.
Clothes can be a defense and at the same time, an unlocking of dialogue
between the spirits of people. Clothes permit people to be a cultural center
for others, to enter their life and attain the body and the heart of the other.
Fashion poses the questions: What is that? Do you know him? No. You
enter into a vehicle of thought and this vehicle transports you to the depths.
You listen to the voice of the other person. Through the clothes, you find the
sound, and you advance into the heart of the other. It is the clothing that
provoked that.
Fashion is a vehicle of thought, of ideology, of research, of love. This is
the depth of what I can give for the cause that is not simply a piece of clothing because the most simple clothing is to take a handkerchief from the
head and wrap it around the body. The most beautiful clothing is the naked
body.
Before clothes, there were tattoos. We engraved our thoughts, our signs
of protection. Then the signs left the body and came out on clothes. The vision was directed toward the body, but now clothing is an intermediary between the body and vision. It is necessary that the same symbols and signs
that were on the body come out on the clothing and on the decoration.
The window and the door of the body is the face, this seduction to the interior. We all have the same organs. Men resemble each other. Women also
resemble each other. The spirit and the thoughts are different. Each person
is wrapped, like a gift, awaiting the day we unwrap it and find whats inside.
Clothing is a wrapping of the body, the divine gift, the gift of nature.
African fashion is far from the body because the body should float in
the shade of the garment. It is important that the air moves because we live
in a hot climate. To expose too much of the body, it is better to take off
the clothes and walk around naked. There is the seduction, the sexy, but it
brings the thoughts too close and people lose love.
It is important not to be influenced by Europe and adapt our fashion to
Europe. If we do that, well become a copy and a photocopy. The original

Using the Past to Sculpt the Costume of the Future

Figure 7.2. Facing. Blue-indigo

Kandioura: Blue-indigo is for

me the Soninke, Sarakole culture.
When I was a child, I participated
in the work of dyeing and the
culture of the fields of indigo of
my mother. I participated in all
the ceremonies. To always have
indigo clothes near is good for
me. When I was a child, indigo
was too important for children
[to wear]. If we wanted to give
a really big present, it was dyed
in indigo. Farafina Tigne
Independence Day Celebration.
Mopti, Mali, 2002. Photograph
by Janet Goldner.

113

will always dominate. We want to remain ourselves. It is very important.

We shouldnt all look alike. There is a huge variety of fashion that you see in
nature, in the variety of animals and the robes of the animals. People dont
have the same form, the same way of dressing. They dont have the same
gestures. This obligates the designer to adapt their fashion to the needs of
action and the energy that people furnish to cross this bridge of life.
The bands of woven cotton were our system of organization. When you
see the weaving of cloth, the weaving of thoughts, the weaving of efforts,
you see the symbolism of the loom. The woven bands clothe us, guide our
society.
The shuttle is the thought that connects people. This union captures the
heat of the suns rays. Cotton is the fiber of the sun. It is twisted because of
the efforts of people; twisted by the spindle that resembles the earth turning around the sun, to make a solid thread. This thought, twisted in this
fiber, charged with the heat of the sun, protects people and the relations
between them, protects the society, protects the human race itself.
Fashion should address the needs of the body, even of the soul of man.
The seed of the body is the soul which needs to be at ease and protected. We
resemble animals. We resemble the grasses, the herbs, all the plants, trees.
We resemble the insects. These are our models. We all share this need.
We are pulled between our back and our front, between what is behind
us and what is to come. That is fashion.
Our loom is our speech. The thread is speech. The thread is the outpouring of our thoughts. We are attached by an invisible thread. With cotton, we
have made the thread visible. When we make the weft, we attach the thread
to a stick that represents a man, and you pass the stick through the warp (to
connect the threads, to make the cloth). It is a grand labyrinth of life.
In each part of the world, there is a way of life, a way of dressing, a body
of life. This gives force and meaning to life. When there is diversity, you can
adapt yourself to another life. In adapting, you are initiated. You listen attentively to the others. We weave again. Weaving cultures gives us a patchwork of life that corresponds to the thoughts of each individual who can
find their form and their color in the exchange of cultures.

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I am a student of life. I listen to nature. I observe nature. I observe the

needs of people. These needs give me thoughts. I add these thoughts to the
thoughts of people to help them do what they want. If what they want is
spiritual, thats fine. If it is for seduction, thats fine. If it is for love, thats
fine.
Even the dead are dressed. There is the fashion of the dead. They go with
clothes because clothes are always the gift, the wrapping of the body. We
are wrapped perhaps even to seduce the angels so they have pity on us. The
spirit is dressed. It is very important in the thoughts.
J: We talked last night about the elegance of Malians. People are surprised
that this elegance exists amidst the poverty. Walking around Bamako is a
feast for the eyes. It is very elegant.
K: Yes Janet, Malians had their way of ironing, by tapping the cloth. They had
indigo dye. Bogolan was here. There was weaving. We had our way to embroider. We were independent. We didnt need anyone else. We had an elegance. I dont know where it came from. It was in the origins. We had the
wealth of the earth. In history the horses during the empire of Ghana, the
Wagadu, had bridles of gold and silk for the ropes. That shows a civilization
that was in advance of the world civilization today, even if the world takes us
for impoverished people after having enriched Europe with gold from West
Africa. It is that gold that garnished all the banks in Europe.
The Ghana empire, the Wagadu, was one of the oldest empires of West
Africa. [Kandioura was born close to Kumbi Salah, the capital of the Wagadu.] The empire was founded on gold. Women were so concerned with
their bodies that they worked on them from childhood. You see the torso
well-sculpted, the elegance of the head and the big bracelets. A woman
would leave her village and travel twenty or thirty kilometers to spend three
days in another village to have her hair braided for a holiday. She would
leave her village for another village to clean her gold at the jewelers for her
elegance.
It wasnt like weve been portrayed in the world, the savage African, naked, crazy, alone in the forest. It wasnt like that. I would say to those who

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use us as savages today, that we saw the light and the richness before them.
This richness was buried by the force of colonization.
Each skull is a planet. Each planet has its richness even if others explore
it badly [poorly], give the thoughts, the image they want of us. In looking at
a flower for a long time, you find its characteristics. But when you look very
rapidly, you dont see it well and when you approach it, you learn with errors. Those who have come to Africa and know this continent badlywho
know badly the men, the culture, and who want to talk about usare obligated to lie. These lies, with the influence of colonization, become significant because the strongest always want their lies to become truth.
I had the chance not to begin my life only with school. I started my life
with the school of the family, with the school of an old culture. What I say to
you today are not things I learned in books, but things I lived. I saw things
far from me that were in the process of dying out at that time because history is always progressing. As we advance, there are aspects of the culture
that become too heavy. You have to let go of them. There was a period of
my life when I didnt have the strength to pick them up because I was very
young. Today, I can take these things that fall behind, and I bring them to
the front.
African fashion, the clothes of Africans, has been a significant artwork.
We made an exhibition of thought on clothing. That is why we have embroidered grand boubous, embroidery that could take two years by hand. Each
time someone passes with a boubou that is unique, it is like a work of art in a
museum in Europe. The body is a gallery transporting the work of art. There
werent exhibition spaces, but when we assembled in an open space, it was
important that each person bring what they had that was beautiful on the
body, on the clothes. In our history, museums and galleries were those who
were in front of you. We looked at each others eyes, at the body of the others. We didnt have the fashion of museums.

Figure 7.3. Facing. Horses

Kandioura: Historically, people
showed their power by their
clothing, by their horses, by all their
accessories, their habitation. The
power of the king and the force of a
culture were seen in this way. The
horses that were there during the
empire of Ghana were attached with
bridles of gold and silk thread for
the ropes. We saw the grandeur and
wealth of people by their beautifully
embroidered indigo boubous. It
took a long time to embroider a
boubou; one year, two years. Silk for
embroidery came from Asia, from
Algeria. Raw silk is found in West
Africa, also, but always, since the
dawn of time, these were exchanges
between West Africa and Asia.
There was trade. The thread came.
The clothes in silk came. And our
cotton cloth went also. There was
an exchange of customs. Festival
sur le Niger. Segou, Mali, 2007.
Photograph by Janet Goldner.

J: How is what you do different from other Africans who make fashion?
K: I have my head bowed. What we have in common is that we all work for
people. The difference is perhaps that I dont pay too much attention to our
epoch. I pay attention to the past. And maybe there werent too many people
who reflect on the past.

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You know that I dont make fashion for money. I make fashion because I
think. I continue to create everyday as if I were going to do a huge fashion
show, have an exhibition in the biggest gallery in the world. I work on fashion as if I should clothe the entire world. But I dont do it for money.
Everyone is a stylist because everyone has a taste for clothes, for colors.
When there isnt a stylist, you take cloth and unroll it on yourself because
man is a gift that is in need of wrapping. The role of a stylist is to be able to
do a good job of wrapping. If the stylist doesnt do it, the ones who wear it
will do it themselves to hide their nakedness and guard their color.
J: Do you want to talk about the museum you want to create?
K: Ive talked a lot about the museum, and Ill continue to talk about it until
it becomes a reality. How to realize the museum of the accessories of Man?
Today I am initiated in fashion. I am initiated in the finding of the accessories. I understand the speech of all the objects today. I understand the
speech of my past. I know what to do with them. It is important that all that
be safeguarded and shown in a museum.
I work for my thoughts, and these thoughts are not for me. It is for humanity itself. It is something that passes through me. I am only a pipe, a
microphone, an action to pass this culture that is behind me. It is heavy. I

Figure 7.4. Facing. HuntersKandioura: Hunters are our force, our protection,

our wise men. They are the connection between humans and the natural world.
I am interested in these clothes because they are a collection of knowledge and
thoughts found in the garment, like all African clothes done with hand-spinning
and weaving, charged with good intentions. They are the witness of the activities
of the hunter. Their protection is the clothes that are very charged with the spirit of
all the beings in nature. They arent simply clothes, but a system of protection for
the society. Amulets protect hunters from the physical and spiritual hazards they
encounter in cutting trees, killing animals, and are added throughout the life of
the hunter. Hunters interest me because the boubou becomes a pharmacy, security,
insurance. I am interested in these costumes and their know-how. Smithsonian
Folklife Festival, Washington, D.C., 2003. Photograph by Janet Goldner.

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want to create a museum for humanity. Now it is personal play. It should be

communal. We should play all together. We need the museum to share the
collection of objects, knowledge, thoughts from the past and the works they
have inspired with researchers, artists, historians and most importantly,
Malian youth.

Figure 7.5. Facing. Ghana BoyKandioura: The Bamana immigrated from

Djenne and went to Ghana to work as night watchmen, and they embroidered so
as not to fall asleep. By the light of the lamps in front of the stores in Ghana, they
adapted bogolan designs to the materials at hand: modern, industrial cloth with
the kente thread. They created an art that doesnt exist in Ghana and that also
didnt exist in Mali. You see the passage of culture in the Ghana Boy. They didnt
have photos. The cloths are like a letter, a travel log. When they came back, they
showed what they had seen in Ghana to their fiancs: the people, the figures, the
fashion in Ghana. This was between the 1950s and 1970. Bamako, Mali, 2004.
Photograph by Janet Goldner.

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121

Intersecting Creativities

Oumou Sys
Costumes in the
Dakar Landscape
Hudita Nura Mustafa

It might not look like African dress to you (Figure 8.1). You may be expecting
to see a richly embroidered Senegalese boubou, not a heap of gift wrap and a garbage pile of compact discs on a smiling model. But if you look closely you will
see that this costume is indeed inspired by the aesthetic values of the boubou, the
traditional dress of Islamic Africans. The multicolored taffeta in pinks, yellow,
and white lends volume, motion, and shimmer like billowing damask robes. Like
embroidery, the CD decoration follows the contours of embroidery around the
neckline, down the gowns center and also provides a headdress. This is Cyberfemme (Cyberwoman, 1996), the work of internationally acclaimed Senegalese
costume and fashion designer Oumou Sy. Sy combines a reclamation of African
heritage with a parodic rendition of modernity as Euro-African encounters, accommodations, and blunders. The photo presents Cyberfemme posing next to a
car-rapide, the transport for popular sectors which is cheap, reckless, and crisscrosses throughout the city streets and neighborhoods. In the decaying cityscape
of Dakar, she is a utopian figure of light, speed, and beauty, a kind of cyber-angel.
In Senegambia, the moment of pageantry crystallizes a societys political, aesthetic, and social values and hierarchies. Cyberfemmes pageant through the Medina

navigates the unpredictability of social life and values. It is a part of a moment of

instability and despair which generates utopias and reinventions through popular
culture all over Africa. This is one example of how Sys partial narratives, aesthetic seduction, humor, and popular cultural references invite viewers to imagine
Africa unbound from oppositions of Africa and the West, savage and civilized.
At the intersection of art, spectacle, and social space, Sy crafts Africa through
multiple senses, images, textures, light, and shapes that clearly invoke and imagine past and future in a fraught dialogue. Elegance is a traditional Senegalese
quality and expresses personal and familial dignity. Sy has said that Youth now
dont know where they are from or where they are going. Her aim is that Women of the future will be completeoutfit, accessories, everything. Knowledge of
ones origins and personal beautynot only exterior but, more importantly, interioris key to this completion of the self. So, if Sy wishes to make a polished self,
why is the decaying city the context, not only by necessity, but also chosen for her
fashion photography, parades, and institution building? It is, I suggest, her masterful negotiation of the concrete artistic legacies of her Senegambian heritage
and the more universal thematics in her work about the ironies and double-edged
swords of civilized modernity, that make her appealing to numerous audiences,
from European art audiences to young people throughout Dakar. She presents
past and future, national hopes and failures, and Dakars urban image and reality. Costumes present past glories as well as subversive, mocking femininity such
as Cyberfemme, in which icons used to polarize Africa and the West are used as
decoration.
A Unique Agenda
Always pushing the limits of creative and institutional forms, Sy is an exemplar
of the Senegalese fusion of, or simultaneous valorization of, authenticity and cosmopolitanism. A central, if heterodox, figure in Dakars elite cultural world, Sy
remains rooted in her conservative background as a Muslim, Toucouleur woman
from Northern Senegal. Her biography, accompanying all her shows and on her
website, states that she is an autodidact in tailoring and was born in Podor, a town
on the banks of the River Senegal. She openly declares her illiteracy in French,
even as she eloquently comments upon her work in the colonial language. Hav-

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Hudita Nura Mustafa

Figure 8.1. Cyberfemme (Cyber-

woman). Dakar, Senegal, 1997.

Photograph by Mamadou Tour
Bhan/tourebehan.unblog.fr.

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ing begun in the Medina, her institutional projects and events bridge Plateau and
Medina. These contemporary districts are legacies, respectively, of the French
and African neighborhoods of colonial Dakar, and symbols of French and Lebou
(Wolof) Dakar. In the last fifteen years she has collaborated with others in cinema and theater, and with musicians. In the mid-1990s, she founded schools of
tailoring and modeling and an international African fashion week and popular
carnivalboth held several times in Dakar during the last decade. From a base in
dyeing and tailoring for theater as well as for clients, Sy moved in the mid-1990s
into more theatrical and experimental work. Now she produces costumes as well
as haute couture in both clothing and jewelry. She continues to experiment with
textile dyeing techniques and new industrial textiles. She is also a pioneer of Internet culture in Senegal with her founding of Metissacana, a cyber caf, website,
and marketing site for Senegalese fashion and arts.
Sy has won prestigious prizes such as the Prince Claus Funds 1998 prize, given
to African fashion and shared with Alphadi of Niger and Adzedou of Ghana; the
special prize of the City of Rome (2003); and Woman of the Millennium (Guinea,
2003). Additionally, her costumes have won prizes at the Pan-African Film festival (1993) and those of Milan (1993) and Johannesburg (1995). She was commissioned by the French government to design costumes for the Dakar celebration of
the French revolutions bicentennial. Her work has also been exhibited at several
museums in Germany and is sold in boutiques in Paris and New York. In Europe
she is exoticized, often called the queen of couture, pioneer, pinnacle of African
fashion. Take one zealous author, writing in 2002 for an international nonprofit
organizations website:
The queen is enthroned on a small metal chair amidst a whirlwind of black and
white, coming and going, pearl beads, dusty hairpieces, velvet thread . . . ringing
mobile phones. She has at her disposal five tailors, four bead makers, two weavers, one embroiderer, and others, but in fact she rules an empire where the sun
never setsthe realm of the imagination.

Sys current fame and success belie many years of dedication and struggle as
a woman textile and costume artist in Dakar. In her own life, she speaks of her
mothers loyalty as she used profits from weaving commissions to buy her talented teenage daughter a sewing machine. With the help of Dakar artists like Ka-

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Hudita Nura Mustafa

lidou Sy, director of the School of Fine Arts, she launched her career in Dakar. We
will see that the complex place of gender in Sys personal and creative narratives
involves self-affirmation, transgression, and play. Before exploring the costumes
we must consider Dakar as a historical and imagined site.
Beauty in the Ruins
It is not in stunning fashion shows and museums in Germany, Italy, and Senegal,
but in Dakars postcolonial, globalized public spaces that the costumes spectacle
magnifies. With ritual and sociality, even commodified as it is now, Dakaroises
have always disrupted colonial frames for the city. The recuperation of the colonial city can be traced through the built environment of streets, houses, and
walls made into a stage for spectacles of beauty as well as desperation. The ruined
city paradoxically and endlessly generates incredible institutions and practices of
creativity in fashion and image production. Designers look to streets, ceremonial
events, television, and the designs of others in fashion magazines, photos, and, of
course, cloth itself. If the ruins of colonial projects are evidenced in the unemployed, unstable middle class, the ruins of the colonial city are concretized in the
deteriorating houses, broken pavements overrun with sandy soil, and the markets
overrun by wooden extensions.
Having been nurtured by this adoptive city, Sy gives back. The archive of fashion events and photography which Sy has built with collaborating artists plays
with this dynamic of ruins and spectacles. Photography documents her costumes
in streets, next to old cars, and on the historic Ile de Gore off the coast of Dakar (Figure 8.2). The Carnaval de Dakar festival, held several times in the last decade, is a gift to the people of Medina, where she has worked for decades. Medina
was born of the forced removal of Lebou villages from the breezy, ocean cliffs of
the Plateau district in order to establish colonial settlers. As the capital of French
West Africa from 1902 until independence in 1960, Dakar was the principal African site of French investment and planning. Administration, railroads, universities, museums, and commerce were centered in this city, and they still are. In
the late 1940s, efforts to produce modern workers, classes and cities converged
in Dakar. Today, the segregated colonial city is displaced by a city saturated by
transnational connections and strategiesa station for migrants to the United

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127

States, a regional trade center, and a center of global African music and fashion
and Pan-African tourism. Images are part of Dakars success and of its entanglement in global commodity and cultural hegemonies. It is simply not possible to
walk in a street for ten minutes without encountering a tailors shop, a photograph
or videotaped image, or a family ceremony in progress, filled with amateur cameramen looking for quick clients. Dakars specificity is its extraordinary human
display of elegance and fashion, performed for the gaze of both other persons and
of cameras.
Cutur (Wolof for the field of tailoring as well as tailored clothing) expanded,
I argue, due to a conjuncture of crisis and transnationalism. With the 1980s financial and social crisis of neocolonial modernist institutionsschools, state
bureaucraciesthe white-collar labor market collapsed and so disempowered
middle-class men. As patronage networks and strategies connected to state power have contracted, the Mouride Islamic brotherhood expanded from its rural
base and has filled the vacuum. Its networks became the foundation of new urban
classes based on transnational commerce and the informal sector. These classes
are composed of migrants, so to speak, from former bureaucratic classes as well
as smaller towns. In this context, urban middle-class women intervened in the
informal sector to defend deteriorating class positions.
Fashion, with its mobile, versatile, and resonant materials and images, allows
diverse designers and consumers to explore large, threatening issues of the devaluation of Africa in the colonial and global order of economic and cultural power.
West Africa has a long heritage of cloth as currency, gift, artisanal tradition, symbol of power, medium of beauty and value. It is no wonder then that popular and
elite fashion thrives despite economic and political crises throughout Africa. In
fact, cloth and dress mediate crisis as sites of strategies for financial survival or
social networking. Dress also serves to build public images of well-being amidst
personal instability.

Figure 8.2. Perfume Woman.

Dakar, Senegal, 1997. Photograph
by Mamadou Tour Bhan/
tourebehan.unblog.fr.

Crafting Africa
A nexus for multiple institutions and practices, cloth is a practical medium and
metaphor for the making of modern Africa through colonial and global encounters of tradition and modernity. It creates alliances and bonds as a ritual gift.

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129

In political life, dress displayed the charisma of kings, and now of presidents and
marabouts (religious leaders). The production of cloth was at the heart of the
social fabric: the service of weaving links noble and casted families of weavers.
Cloth was key to undermining African economies and building European industries. It has always been a key trade item, and strips of cloth were used as money
and could buy even slaves. Imperial spheres of circulation carried textiles and
styles between Asia and Africa, as with Dutch wax. Cloth even figures a great
deal in contemporary art with Yinka Shonibare, El Anatsui, Ghada Amer, Rachid
Koraichi, Ike Ude, and others. Many people, even fashion scholars, believe that
Africa has no fashion, only traditional dress. During the last decade, prizes and
shows in Europe and Africa and attention by scholars, critics, artists, and designers make it impossible to relegate African fashion to the domains of traditional
dress, custom, or material culture.
Sys pantheon of reckless goddesses delight, commemorate, and extend this
history of dress as symbol of beauty, power, dignity, wealth, and history. They
embody and provoke the senses and in so doing provoke an Idea of Africa
which is grounded in material practices of creativity, not just elite discourses. Cy-

Figure 8.3. Oumou Sy arranging

the Envelope of the Desert costume on Gore Island, Senegal,

2000. The contrast between the
ndockette dress in damask and
the Tuareg-inspired hard tin vest
over skin is a reminder of the fivecentury history of Gore as a site
of encounter and center of trade,
slavery, and creole culture.
Photograph Christophe LEPETIT/
www.christophelepetit.com.

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Hudita Nura Mustafa

berfemme, with her consorts Perfume Woman (1997), Kora Woman, Calabash
Woman, and Envelope of the Desert (1998, Figure 8.3), is unbound from oppositions of tradition and modernity, savagery and civility. These figures of femininity (mostly created between 1996 and 1998), use excessive decoration of iconic
objects to create human hybrids. They are made of diverse kinds of cloth, mostly
industrially produced, European and Asian fabricsuch as jerseys, taffeta, and
silk. The objects include urban garbage of perfume bottles on Perfume Woman,
a headdress of bouncing gourds on Calabash Woman, or even CDs, baskets, and
feathersadorning evening gowns (Figure 8.4).

Intersecting Creativities

Figure 8.4. Oumou Sy with a

collection of her costumes on

Gore Island, Senegal, 2000.
Photograph Christophe
LEPETIT/www.christophe
lepetit.com.

131

Colonial discourses of ethnology, among others, produced Africa as a unified

geographical space occupied by a series of isolated, static, and timeless societies.
This idea undergirds a series of Western cultural and intellectual categories and
binariescold/hot, simple/complex, custom/civilization, tradition/modernity.
Oumou Sys sensuous figures challenge such binaries.
Made into costumes and photographed in the city streets amidst garbage,
wrecked cars, minivans, cracked walls, or crowds of curious children, icons of Africa and the WestCDs, calabashes, perfumesbecome signposts in the urban
landscape for the tragicomedy of modernity, again invoking a historical epoch
through a series of spectacles of dress, body, and spatial setting. Together with
Sys historical costumes, these figures present a palimpsest of Senegambian civilizations.
Pageantry Remembered: Historical Costumes
Oumou Sy designed the historically inspired costumes Roi et Reines (Kings and
Queens) in the mid-1990s. Refined artisanship provides the foundation of these
costumes primary elements of cloth and jewelry. These are not reproductions,
Oumou insists, but inspirations based upon Senegambian, especially Wolof and
Toucouleur, regal traditions of dress. She is inspired by African as well as Islamic
forms such as the mbubb (Wolof; French, boubou; English, robe). Garment forms
throughout her workcostume, couture, and prt--porter (ready-made)are
characterized by simple stitching of long swathes of cloth that are layered and
wrapped. Highly ornate decoration of cloth and bodywith embroidery and
jewelrycomplete the sumptuous effect. Like all African designers, she innovates cloth traditions: first by using African cloth with Western styles; and second
by working with master artisans to innovate (broadloom) weaving styles with
mixtures of thread (such as silk, cotton, raffia, or linen). She also experiments
with hand-dyeing of colors and motifs. Heavy woven wrappers made of strips
of cloth are worn with simple tunics of the same or similar cloth. Stoles, heavy
amber jewelry, hair jewelry, woolen wigs, and makeup complete the adornment.
Dark hues define the natural cloth dyes and the black facial makeup on face, lips,
and lined eyes.

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Hudita Nura Mustafa

Sy produces historical costumes for music and cinema as well. Diop Mambetys film Hyenas (1991) is a story of vengeance and the burden of the past. An old
woman returns to her hometown to punish those who had cast her out when she
was a pregnant young woman. Sy designed the costumes, which invoke cultural
memory, reclamations of personal dignity, displays of poverty and wealth. Yet this
exterior beauty and wealth cannot render the protagonist whole. Finally, all players in the game of reckoning are destroyed. In this film we see how Sy works with
setswhich she also designs; her neutral tones of garments fuse with the desert
scenery to create visual effects of severity. Silhouettes of power build through
volume and density with layering, wrapping, and veiling. Besides regal gravitas,
her oeuvre also relies upon parody and surprise, humor and excess. For her closing fashion show at the internationally renowned Documenta art exhibit (2007),
Sy presented both historical figures and fantastic costumes to great acclaim. In
the St. Louis Fanal parade (2008), she participated in this commemoration of St.
Louis history as the first Senegalese city of both French colonialism and creole
culture. Sy presented historical figures of French generals and signares, EuroAfrican women of coastal Senegal, that are icons of beauty that inspire Sy.
The Sahel Opera
Sys sartorial rendering of historical imagination reached new heights in the
oeuvre which she produced for the Sahel Opera (2006). The opera engaged this
classical form of Western culture to present the continuing Odyssey of Africa
in world history. The narrative centers on the dilemma of a young mother to be.
She is unmarried and takes the dangerous journey across the Sahara to Spain
to seek a better life for her baby. Several men claim to be the father to benefit
from the childs European citizenship. Still, under the irrevocable hold of home,
she throws the baby back over the border fence. This gesture both enacts and is
metaphor for the return to home and the necessity of Africa, as place of hope, not
territory of siege.
The creative process of the Opera itself was a form of institution building
amidst the culturally rich but deeply impoverished Sahelian region of West Africa. The 85 performers came from across the Sahel and spoke their own languages

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and performed in their own traditions of music. The 150 costumes fuse traditions
and were made in Dakar by Oumou Sy at a cost of US$30,000. The project was
sponsored by the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development (Netherlands)
and produced by the late Michel Mavros. Mavros was also Sys manager. The project and its process present the particularities of cultural difference within the Sahel, and the global inequalities between Africa and Europe while presenting the
universal story of the quest for a just, secure future.
The costumes also play with history, culture, and fantasy in new registers from
earlier work. While languages and music remain distinct, costumes fuse traditions, often displaying dress forms in exaggerated size and density. The griot,
iconic of Sahelian society, wears a brown bogolan robe, a woolen wig with pompoms, a large metal belt and a wisk, symbol of authority. He carries an unusually long kora (a twenty-one-string harp-lute) as tall as a man. While the female
protagonist, Bintou Were, is dressed quite simply in a hand-dyed wrapper with a
tunic and un-scarved, un-coiffed hair, the female chorus of three young women
is dressed sumptuously. They wear wrappers of Fulani strip cloth with geometric
designs in ochre, rust, and black. This West African textile is supplemented by
headdresses that resemble Southern African styles with kente bands. Images of
adorned femininity, they hold raffia fans, heavy amber beads decorate their necks,
and they sport heavy plastic beads around their wrists. In another scene, these
panWest African objects cede to specifically Senegambian references. They wear
indigo wrappers, but their headdresses are inspired mid-century hairstyles of the
signares. But these scarves, more like sculptures in their height and volume, are
decorated with small African masks. Other costumes include Tuareg-style indigo
boubous and veils wrapped in Tuareg style, and gold and black Manjak wide-loom
cloth boubous. In sum, the Sahel Operas costumes synthesize Sahelian textile traditions and ornamentation to accompany a narrative that presents both everyday
poverty and extraordinary personal struggle.
Figures of Femininity and Modernity
Sy is inspired by Senegalese images and objects of femininity for her elaboration
upon the experience of modernity and cultural encounter. One of Sys designs,

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Robe Kora, requires holding the kora, and so fusing body and dress to create
one image, even performance. This is also transgressive because kora playing is a
highly esteemed traditional male profession.
Calabash Woman sports a tight evening dress with a high slit and a crop of
bouncing calabashes (gourds) as her headdress (see Figure 8.4). Calabashes are
part of womens daily kitchen life, as containers for rice to be cleaned or used to
hold various condiments. They also represent rural Africa, simplicity, and poverty. Sy plays with this, saying, Europeans think Africa is just too much, excess,
and thats what Calabash Woman is about: the simple deployed in excess, a counterpoint to Cyberfemme.
The female version of Envelope of the Desert wears a sexy, split gown with warrior shields and make-up. She is a warrior-seductress, facing the urban jungle, a
shield between the desert and city. There is also a male counterpart for Envelope
of the Desert. Photographs of these figures, along with Cyberfemme, are set in
dilapidated, if sensuous, urban spaces.
Cyberfemme is an image of subversive, mocking femininitya taffeta pastel
ball gown with CDs adorning the gowns neck and front line as if they are embroidering on a boubou. A goddess of modernity, barefoot and surefooted, she is far
from the colonial ideal of the modern, civilized African. That was the male, suited
bureaucrat, francophone and francophilic. Does she even need to speak French if
she speaks Microsoft Word? She can access Paris, New York, and Abidjan via the
Net, so does she need to go there? Does she need to be married? Who would dare
marry her?
The figure of Perfume Woman wears a slinky purple silk wrap skirt and halter
top with small perfume bottles sewn on as if beadwork. Glass wands frame her
bodice and face. Any Senegalese will tell you that scent is more important than
anything else in matters of seduction. Women burn incense to cleanse the home
and make it pleasurable, especially the bedroom. The final touch in fancy dress
(sanse) is standing over an incense pot so that the fumes infuse the robes. The
aroma of a passing dirriankhe (Senegalese, elegant woman) is one of the unforgettable experiences of Senegalese daily life. Perfume, of course, is also a symbol
of Parisian refinement and distinction, and so a symbol of French femininity. It
is a valued gift from abroad, and counterfeits are sold in markets. Small, cheap,

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very sweet perfumes from Meccabought on pilgrimages or trade tripsare

also important to this sensory aspect of beauty in Dakar. Perfume Woman coolly
catalogues all of this.

Ideas of Africa are made and remade, fashion suggests, in material and immaterial ways. African scholars have deconstructed the Idea of Africa as a flawed
invention of essentializing discourses of authenticity. These emerged from colonial discourses such as ethnology and religion, which undergird the fundamental
hierarchical opposition of civilized Europe and the primitive. As mentioned earlier, this opposition in turn supports a series of Western cultural and intellectual
categories and binariescold/hot, simple/complex, custom/civilization, tradition/modernity. Even simple distinctions like dress/fashion correlated with Africa and Europe are embedded in such a history. Nationalist and Pan-Africanist
thought is also influenced by these flawed constructions of Africa. But identifications of themselvesand of certain objects or practicesas African holds great
salience for African and diasporic peoples. Creative artists illuminate the compelling desires for necessary, ongoing practices of self-representation, of which a
designation as African is part.
In conclusion, Sy is part of the continued, if changing, battles to redefine postcolonial African history and identity in local terms, as well as in a Pan-African
context. Sys costumes, her tableaux of past and presentthe Kings and Queens
series or the series of Calabash Woman, Cyberfemme, and so onlay out the
palimpsest of Senegambian civilizations. They recall past glories, nostalgias perhaps, for kingdoms as well as the actual, ironic fruits of modern civilization. Sy is
an artist, whose work brings the arts of cloth, clothing, and body adornment to
parity with the fine arts, literature, and cinema in which the Senegalese excel. In
effect, she places the rich and cherished Senegambian heritage of artisanship and
body adornment into dialogue with the transnational terrain of the contemporary arts.
Her spectacular fashion shows are therefore not only visual and sensory feasts,
but also a platform for the articulation of an Africanity which mines the past and
present to produce a future that is in constant dialogue with origins. She exca-

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vates traditions of bodily beauty that predate and survive colonial, capitalist modernity. Her work also blurs the boundaries between diverse artistic forms such
as visual art, cinema, theater, and costume. In sum, while Sys partial narratives,
aesthetic seduction, and irreverent humor provoke re-imagining of oppositions
of Africa and the West, savage and civilized, they also insist upon the materiality of origins and the necessity of the remaking of the African palimpsest once
more.

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From Cemetery to Runway

Dress and Identity in

Highland Madagascar
R e b e cc a L . G r e e n

Fashion in highland Madagascar is intimately linked with the dead. Identity is

based not only on ones ancestry and lineage but also on the continual interaction with, help from, and manipulation of ones ancestors. One of the most powerful, and thus dangerous, points of interaction with the dead is through burial
shrouds, especially those made of indigenous, spiritually powerful materials. Arguably, the most meaningful mode of expressing identity, therefore, is attained
by tapping into this medium, and clothing created by manipulating this textile
forms one of the most important visual indexes to ones heritage, ones ancestry,
ones place of origin, ones memberships and associations, ones beliefs, and ones
morals.
Malagasy ancestry is a complex integration of cultures, traditions, languages,
and influences from countries and cultures bordering the Indian OceanAfrica,
Indonesia, South and Southeast Asiaand Europe. Yet, as Jean-Aim Rakotoarisoa emphasizes:
The Malagasy are from Madagascar. . . . The unique culture of the Malagasy . . . has developed in place, on the island, during the nearly two thousand years since the first settlers arrived from those distant points. It is an

Figure 9.1. facing. Martine

Razanamanana, a Merina weaver,
wearing a silk lamba fitafy over a
suit of landikely and landibe silk.
Arivonimamo, Madagascar, 2003.
Photograph by Rebecca L. Green.

140

autochthonous culture that has selectively appropriated and recombined

elementslinguistic, material, and culturalfrom sources scattered
across the vast Indian Ocean and turned them into something new.
Madagascar boasts eighteen officially recognized ethnic groups, each having
its own traditions, cultures, arts, and fashions. To celebrate these variations, the
government sponsors a periodic Dialogue des Cultures, at which the various ethnicities and regions display their particular traditions and cultures. In 2003, the
theme was cloth, lamba, and provided an opportunity to exhibit textiles, clothing, and ensembles.
Celebrities often establish a standard of fashion to which the rest of the population aspires. Madagascar is no different. The Merina and the Betsileo peoples
politically dominate Madagascars central high plateau and figure prominently in
Madagascars fashion world. The king who founded the powerful Merina empire,
Andrianampoinimerina (d. 1810), wore large pagnes, untailored textiles of raffia,
cotton, or silk, silk being reserved for royalty. His son, Radama I (r. 18101828),
however, adopted European dress and may have introduced mulberry silk cultivation and instituted artisanal family-based weaving cooperatives. Although
Radamas cousin Ranavalona I (r. 18281861) abolished many of the previously
adapted European practices, she wore European regalia throughout her reign.
Fashion, it seems, is difficult to reverse. Subsequently, Malagasy identity was visually established not through a specifically Malagasy costume, but through
an indigenous shoulder-wrap worn over adopted European garb. Silk, however,
remained a fashion essential.
From early on, this wrap or shawl, called lamba fitafy (Figure 9.1), has been recognized in the central highlands and internationally as representing Malagasy
clothing, even though it is a distinctly high plateau mode of dress. It entered
the fashion repertoire because beautiful wraps of silk and cotton were considered
suitable wear for Malagasy dignitaries abroad as well as appropriately respectable
gifts for Merina sovereigns to bestow upon international leaders and, therefore,
as Mary Jo Arnoldi has noted, were presented to Englands Queen Adelaide and
to U.S. presidents Andrew Johnson and Grover Cleveland.
Following the ruling elites lead, highland peoples also adopted European
styles while retaining the Malagasy shoulder wrap, creating a classic formalwear still worn today. Even poor individuals may wear a white lamba fitafy

R ebecca L. Gr een

Figure 9.2. facing. Enshrouding

Jakoba Razaka, the patriarch of

a Betsileo family, in the first of
four burial shrouds during a
famadihana reburial ceremony.
Ambatolahy Fandriana, Madagascar, 2003. Photograph by
Rebecca L. Green.

142

shoulder wrap of the highest affordable quality with confidence, knowing they
are dressed appropriately for any formal or ancestral event.
The significance of lamba fitafy stems from the importance of cloth in relation
to highland Malagasy ancestors and historical practices. Cloth, particularly burial shrouds (Figure 9.2), plays a pivotal role in creating and maintaining ones ancestors, who control and manipulate most aspects of ones life and culture. While
shrouds may be of various materials (including cotton, polyester, or rayon), the
most important and powerful fabric is silk. Although initial burials may be small
affairs due to time limitations and resources, periodically recurring reburials are
another matter. They establish identityof the family, the deceased, the participantsas highland Malagasy, as Merina or Betsileo, and as humans rather than
animals.
One source for the reburial tradition may be the Merina royal bath (fandroana), an annual ceremony of purification. According to John Mack, during this
ceremony the sovereign symbolically removed old clothing before entering sacred water mixed with earth from the royal tombs, after which the ruler emerged,
in new clothing and newly blessed by the ancestors. When the royal bath was
abolished in 1885, Louis Molet suggests that the highland populace took ancestor worship upon itself, causing many scholars to equate the ceremony with the
development of famadihana reburials, during which ancestors are renewed, purified, and reclothed, blessings are extended through splashing or spritzing water,
and, in some cases, the ancestors bones are washed, perhaps a fairly explicit association with the bath.
Yet historian Pier Larson has convincingly placed the origin of famadihana
farther south, within rural northern Betsileo, as early as 1777. He proposes that
Betsileo challenged the authority of foreign Merina kings, who had no right to
control ancestral blessings and fertility, as this was the purview of the rural
communities. In response, Andrianampoinimerina proclaimed that no Merina
nobles (andriana) were to perform famadihana for their ancestors, suggesting
why famadihana are not performed by Merina royalty and may ultimately have
disassociated the silk from its ancestral connections and accompanying restrictions, thereby allowing upper-class Merina to wear this material as a fashionable
statement of identity.

R ebecca L. Gr een

Today, famadihana are a series of ceremonies during which ones ancestors

are periodically removed from temporary graves or familial tombs, given new
shrouds, feted, entertained, touched and caressed, danced with, given gifts,
clothed, fed and spoken to, discussed, remembered, touched and held, then reinstalled within the tomb (Figure 9.3). The primary reason highland Malagasy
perform reburials is to ensure ones ancestors are properly cared for, honored,
and commemorated by tending to their continuing needs. Upon death, highland
Malagasy become ancestors, individuals the living still remember as distinct
and knowable with mortal needs. Through activities, interactions, and gifts, famadihana meet these needs, allowing ancestors to evolve into Ancestors, omnipotent beings who are no longer distinct and knowable individual ancestors,
and who no longer have a mortals needs.

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Figure 9.3.

Family members re-interring their

newly re-enshrouded ancestors
during a Betsileo famadihana
reburial sponsored by RaLouis.
Sandrandahy, Madagascar, 2003.
Photograph by Rebecca L. Green.

144

The most powerful means of achieving this transition is through burial shrouds,
lambamena. Without shrouds, ones remains will not be enveloped and protected, nor properly clothed and honored, and therefore cannot be installed within
the family tomb, cannot receive successive reburials, cannot be re-enshrouded
within a multiple-ancestral bundle, and cannot, therefore, attain Ancestor status. Many highland Malagasy believe that without this shroud, an ancestor feels
neglected, ignored, misused, and dishonored and will not use his or her influence
within the ancestral world to benefit his or her descendants.
The living may also touch, wear, hold, or carry shrouds, or speak with, pray to,
or otherwise interact with new shrouds intended for an ancestor or shroud fragments surreptitiously removed from an ancestors previously enshrouded body

R ebecca L. Gr een

to communicate with their ancestors and request specific benedictions. Because

these powerful textiles are imbued with ancestral power, they also play an important role within a diviners tool kit as curative and protective devices and are considered extremely dangerous if misused. In fact, an ancestor who feels neglected
or dishonored (through shroud misuse) may cause misfortune, even death. Thus,
wearing shawls of ancestral silk is considered either an acceptable tradition
passed down from high-ranking predecessors, or unacceptable blasphemy, with
the ultimate penalty for misinterpretation being death.
Due to their strong ancestral associations, lamba fitafy (shawls) visually establish Malagasy identity, nuanced by context. Within Madagascar, wearing this
cloth makes a political statementit indicates an affiliation with the Merina or
Betsileo. For men, this textile signals that one is a poor rural farmer rather than
an upwardly mobile globalized urbanite. However, rural and urban women alike
may wear shawls on important occasions, ancestral or not. In fact, lamba fitafy
figured prominently in the 2003 Miss Madagascar beauty contest. Contestants
representing each major city, and therefore each region and ethnic background,
wore identical classic Western fitted short dresses accompanied by lamba fitafy as
they performed a carefully choreographed dance during the events first segment.
Not only was this costume worn by all contestants and broadcast on national
television to promote Malagasy fashion and identity, but it was purportedly worn
by the pageants winner as she competed in the subsequent Miss Africa contest.
Whether or not she actually wore the outfit is almost unimportantthe fact
that she did substantiated a relatively uniform notion of visual identity that has
taken hold in Madagascars urban fashion centers.
Individuals, primarily urbanites, who follow high fashion while maintaining
a Malagasy identity often combine global trends with indigenous traditions or
materials. Yet, because the local high-fashion industry is located primarily in the
capital, Antananarivo, indigenous traditions adopted for this industry tend to
originate in the high plateau. Therefore, the material of choice for making elite
indigenous fashion is silk, a material that not only resonates globally as appropriate for high-end fashion but, as we have seen, is also closely linked to historical
and ancestral practices on the high plateau. Designers often choose the mulberrybased landikely, often accompanied by intricate warp or weft float embellishment
called akotofahana, or, more recently, indigenous and heavier landibe, which more
closely resembles burlap (see Figure 9.2). While these materials are consistent

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145

with expectations for apparel suited for upper-echelon clientele, because landibe
has traditionally been associated with the dead in highland Madagascar, it has
taken some time for many Malagasy to accept the fabric as appropriate apparel
for the living as well.
Local fashion designers creating for a global aesthetic-driven market have been
experimenting with local materials, with varying success. One of the earliest, Noelisoa Ravelonjanahary (Nanou Ravelo), has spent years designing clothes in materials that are zavatra tena gasy (truly Malagasy) by using indigenous landibe
and landikely silks, and local crystal buttons. When we first met in 1993, Mme
Nanou was working out of her home, making luxurious clothing for the wealthy
in noble landikely and ancestral landibe silks. In fact, as the first to use this indigenous and controversial material in contemporary high fashion, she had to
confront many negative reactions. Everyone was very surprised. It was difficult,
although Malagasy who lived abroad were very happy, because it allowed them
to express their Malagasy identity.
In 1995, Nanou studied fashion and design in Paris at the cole Syndicale de la
Couture Parisienne. Upon returning to Madagascar in 1997, she participated in
the first exhibition at CITE (Centre dInformation Technique et conomique).
Although she alone exhibited silk pieces, she experienced great success, and the
following year noticed two others following her example. Mme Nanou received
more widespread recognition after participating in Manja (Figure 9.4), an annual
(now biennial) fashion show in the capital, winning the Best Creator award
when she first competed in 2001, followed by Best Utilization of Material in
2002. She has now established a name for herself and specializes in high-end oneof-a-kind fashion for very wealthy clientele, including the presidents wife, who
commissions Nanou to create outfits for specific events, such as Madagascars
independence day celebrations, and for Malagasy living abroad, some of whom
return to Madagascar specifically to buy or commission formal wear, especially
wedding garments so that they may visually reaffirm their Malagasy identity.
Mme Nanou not only selects materials that are essentially Malagasy, but she
also manipulates the cut of her fashions to create variations on the traditional
highland clothing. People are really getting back into lamba fitafy. But now there
are too many people wearing it. If you go to a wedding or a lanonana [ancestral
ceremony], everyone is wearing lamba fitafy. I am looking for something new.
Malagasy fitafy hasnt changed, so I want to change it a bit. She recently experi-

146

R ebecca L. Gr een

Figure 9.4. Model wearing a

wedding gown designed in

landikely (mulberry silk) by Mme
Nanou Ravelo during the Manja
fashion show. Antananarivo,
Madagascar, 2002. Photograph
courtesy of Mme Ravelo.

mented by enlarging the shawl and adding a button to the front and designs on
the bottom and two ends so that it will hang and close more like a cape. It is still
a lamba fitafy, still in landikely and landibe, but it is quite different.
Mme Nanou is making other subtle, yet significant, changes in her designs.
Her cloth is now relatively thin and light because she is using a technique that she
says was once practiced near the Betsileo city of Antsirabe, of pulling a continuous thread from the cocoon. Unraveling an unbroken thread is normally impossible because silk cultivators traditionally sliced the silk cocoon to remove the
pupa, causing the thread to be cut into many small segments that must then be
felted together, resulting in a much thicker, textured thread.
Suzanne Ramananantoandro also developed a deep interest in indigenous
silk, although in response to the material itself, rather than to fashion designs. A
retired biology teacher, Ramananantoandro became interested in silk in the early
1990s when she enrolled in art courses at the local Alliance Franaise and learned
to paint on silk. When I was in front of the silk, I forgot everything, my job, my
husband, my illness. Although no longer painting on silk, she attended a silk exhibit at the National Library, where she met a woman who put a silkworm on her
hand. Ramananantoandro asked the woman to remove it, but the woman refused,
telling Ramananantoandro she couldnt raise silkworms if she was afraid of them.
One week later the woman telephoned and offered to teach Ramananantoandro
how to raise silkworms if there were at least five students interested. Ramananantoandro gathered five additional people and began her training. In 1995 the group
created the association Kooperatif Manjakalandy, which had ten members. They
bought two hectares of land and worked each weekend digging, clearing, planting, and tending mulberry trees to raise silkworms. However, one by one, the
members dropped out since the financial return was so long in coming. By 1998,
Ramananantoandro was the only one left of the original ten, so she created her
own company and began weaving and sewing indigenous landibe silk.
Dealing with landibe was no simple matter. When Ramananantoandro wore
shawls in indigenous silk in 1997, people told her ianao mahasahy (you are
bold!). At the time, only foreigners, who did not have the same cultural investment or background, bought landibe fabric. However, as president of the Association Professionelle de la Soie Madagascar (APSM), Ramananantoandro
worked hard to convince people that wearing lamba in indigenous silk was safe.
She appeared on radio and television, telling people that nothing bad would

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happen, that they would not die. Slowly, others began to wear this material
Malagasy and foreigners, nobles and non-nobles, young and old. Commissions for
indigenous silk started coming in from Malagasy who had seen her thrive while
wearing it. Now, everyone wears silk, although many people claim it reminds
them of death, especially the young, who associate this material with ancestors
and elders, who in turn associate it with their own mortality. A general belief is
that only nobles and elders with white hair can wear indigenous silk (although as
Ramananantoandro points out, many elders now dye their hair), and to go against
these ancestral traditions means death. However, Ramananantoandro found that
by mixing indigenous landibe with landikely (mulberry silk), the strong ancestral
associations dissipated, and the resulting material was suddenly quite popular.
Although she periodically makes clothing on commission, Ramananantoandros main focus is selling large silk cloths and shawls. Her business, Manjakalandy, employs eight women to help her keep up with the demand and with
the commissions she now receives from individuals and big hotels. She also works
with students from the university who are interested in studying silk, taking on
interns and periodically serving as a juror on students masters degree defense
committees. Ramananantoandro works hard to promote silk and educate both
locals and foreigners, especially about indigenous landibe. As her recent catalogue
states, si lor est roi, reine est la soie (if gold is king, the queen is silk).
Other artists/designers are increasingly entering global markets. Mirana
Abraham Andriamanantena founded Mirado in 1995 to design fashion accessories and household items using local materials, particularly cotton and raffia.
She began using silk in 1996 and studied at the Centre Sricicole du Ministre de
lAgriculture in 1997. According to Andriamanantena:
We tried to create new designs and new uses of silk. Before, it was just for the dead
and also for fitafy [shawls] and for clothes. By 19901991, people were already
weaving clothes in landikely [mulberry silk]. I decided to use silk for household
items. I first exhibited at CITE [Ambatojatanga office] in 1997. I had bed throws
with pillows and tablecloths with napkins and pillows, all in landikely.
In fact, because Mme Nanou and Suzanne Ramananantoandro of Manjakalandy
were already making clothing in landibe, Andriamanantena decided to concentrate elsewhere, creating instead candleholders, lamps and shades, and boxes in
precious wood with their sides covered in landibe.

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Andriamanantena also exhibited at the Hilton hotel, where she won the award
for Best Design in 1997, and in Manja, where Andriamanantena states she was the
first to combine indigenous landibe with wood, causing others to consider what
materials one can combine with landibe. She experimented with various combinations, creating chairs, cushions, lamps, boxes, and shawls ( fitafy), and received
positive reactions. Building upon critical feedback from Malagasy and foreigners
alike, Andriamanantena undertook additional innovations. The French liked indigenous landibe but did not know how to wear it or what to do with it since it was
so stiff. These critiques helped me to create something new, to correspond to foreigners needs. Thats why I created loose-weave shawls at the end of 1997. I tried
to figure out how to get it softer. Rather than keep it a secret, I shared my ideas
and how I made it soft. At Manja, I exhibited all my goods, and people bought
them. Now soft, loose-weave indigenous silk shawls are available in boutiques
throughout the capital.
In 1998, Andriamanantena exhibited at the Malagasy embassy in Paris:
I decorated the embassy with all of this. The journalists discovered us and
this new fiber. Some people in fashion society appreciated the silk and the
natural fibers. This was the beginning of our export business. These people
introduced me to known fashion designers. I am proud that my first foreign
client was Yves St. Laurent. Unfortunately, it was for only one collection [one
year]. However, I also attracted a buyer with many stores across Europe. The
buyer said, we are not Yves St. Laurent, but we do classical designs and can
work together for a long time. So, we are still working together today.
Mirado has a small shop in Antananarivo to service her local clientele but focuses
on exports, especially of household goods and shawls, with periodic experiments
with clothing. Andriamanantena, therefore, also travels to New York to exhibit in
international fashion fairs, hoping to find additional clients.
Jol Andrianomearisoa, who Hudita Mustafa describes as a rebel in his use of
very modern plastic-looking fabrics and body-baring styles in simple cuts, is a
young designer who enrolled in the fashion academy in Antananarivo at the age
of twelve and won many first prizes before moving on to study at Antananarivos
Institut des Mtiers dArts Plastiques. He began competing in fashion shows in
1995 and almost immediately won the Jeune Talent 96 trophy in Antananarivo.

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Jean Loup Pivin writes that this talented young designer also acted and created
costumes and sets in Christian Ramanantsoas acting troupe and participated in
Adeva, a European Union project on design and craftwork, run by two French
expatriates, Nadine and Pierre Paris, where he [was] a permanent consultant. In
1998 he began studying architecture in Paris; he now lives and works as an architect in Paris but maintains a fashion studio/workshop in Madagascar.
In his work, Andrianomearisoa combines two seemingly disparate interests,
high fashion and architectural design, to explore a common threadspace. Although these interests are seemingly dissimilar, they both address issues of the
body interacting with the space immediately surrounding it, whether on a close
and intimate scale or a grand and extended one. He is interested in not only how
a body moves through space, but how a body moves within it. Andrianomearisoa
designs based on the premise that one moves through space by virtue of ones interactive relationship with ones external environment, which is dependent upon
the look and feel of the space, the layout and resulting flow of traffic through it,
and the overall experience as one moves and interacts with the various created
and constructed spaces. The way one moves within it depends upon the internal
or personal aesthetic of the individual and how one conceives of oneself, how
one moves, adorns oneself, or projects oneself into the space provided. Andrianomearisoa moves quite easily between these two worlds, whether in his guise
as architect or fashion designer, both of his offices being located within the same
Paris office building.
Andrianomearisoas interest in the mix of volume and space is evident through
many of his installations, whether physical, as in his 2003 installation in Antananarivos train station, virtual, as evidenced in his fashion layouts, or ephemeral,
as occurs in his runway events. Andrianomearisoa approaches installations and
fashion designs similarly. For example, in conceiving fashion layouts, he creates
tableaux that integrate models bodies with the immediate environment, thereby
extending his design beyond the boundaries of the bodies and into the surrounding space. In a special issue of the magazine Afrique Noire, black and white models
wear blocks and patches of black cloth upon a white background. Yet rather than
simply standing in typical runway poses, his models lay down and wear squares
of black tissue that blanket the scene, creating a horizontal canvas upon which he
manipulates his positive and negative space-based designs. This use of trompe

From Cemetery to Runway

151

loeil (blurring the boundaries of model and fashion, foreground and background)
is reminiscent of the work of Malian photographer Seydou Keita, whose models
often wear busy textile patterns that disappear or pulsate into the equally busy
studio backdrop, similarly blurring the foreground and background delineations
to create a pulsing and vibrant surface pattern, and that of print-maker M. Escher,
whose black-and-white two-dimensional patterns slowly and surprisingly morph
into three-dimensional designs, again playing with foreground and background
and positive/negative space. Andrianomearisoa, however, is not interested in motifs but in the overall form, in the relationships of volume and space.
Another point of interest for Andrianomearisoa is the creative and surprising
combination of textures; his works often integrate materials with rough, sharp,
angular surfaces and textures. His heavily made-up models may well wear sticks,
tape, plastic, wire, and other materials that leave one wondering at their combinations, at the textures created, and about the resulting ability for one to wear his
creations (Figure 9.5).
While Andrianomearisoa is interested in expressing identity through his creations, he is not interested in symbolic references that are too evident. He dislikes,
therefore, those designs that scream Malagasiness based on obvious imagery, as
when designers use images of aloalo funeral sculptures or zebu cattle. Andrianomearisoa maintains a workshop/studio in Madagascar and has explored using
indigenous Malagasy raw materials in his designs, although he has thus far decided they are too expensive to incorporate into large-scale fashion production.
Yet, he certainly creates based on his own identity as a Malagasy man, whether
consciously or not. His interest in the body extends to an interest in how it is protected; the body must be protected, and he wants to make this protection interesting. So while his designs may at first appear to be far removed from traditional
Malagasy clothing and fashion, his desire to wrap and protect is directly related
to ancestral Malagasy textile art forms, the most obvious being the lambamena
burial shroud that is wrapped around an ancestral body, an Ancestral bundle,
a descendants waist during reburial ceremonies in the hopes of conveying her
desire for the blessing of fertility, and a diviners medicinal bundles to empower
them. Wrapping to protect is quintessentially Malagasy. In response to this tendency in his art, Andrianomearisoa states, I dont try to make Malagasy art, but
unconsciously I do.

From Cemetery to Runway

Figure 9.5. facing. Installation/

performance by designer Jol
Andrianomearisoa, modeled by
Ousmane, from Niger. Courtesy
of Revue Noire.

153

section, authors analyze the construction

of identities in different diasporic contexts
and investigate how both distance and
proximity shape individuals approaches
to identity, to authenticity, and to fashion.

i n

Africa, Europe, and North America. In this

f a s h i o n

of individuals, ideas, and needs between

a f r i c a n

rary African fashion involves the movement

t h e

d i a s p o r a

Part three

Another important dimension of contempo-

10

La Sape Exposed! High

Fashion among Lower-Class
Congolese Youth
From Colonial
Modernity to Global
Cosmopolitanism
Didier Gondola

In a 1989 interview published in the French magazine Afrique lite, Congolese

dandy Djo Balard candidly expounded his view that fashion matters: If you are
well dressed, all doors are open to you. . . . Africans who live here [in Europe] pay
attention to what they wear. If they dont have anything to wear, they prefer not
to return home for vacation. There are people who havent gone back for fifteen
years! In 1982, I had a friend who spent two months down there; he couldnt go out
during the day because he only had imitation clothes and shoes, not griffes [designer labels]. Djo Balard, who lived in Paris as an immigrant of modest means,
was famous for his elaborate wardrobe that was said to be replete with the most
expensive designer suits and for a collection of stylish shoes that could be rivaled
only by that of Imelda Marcos! His search for refinement, elegance, and carefully
matched apparel was reminiscent of George (Beau) Brummell, the famous nineteenth-century English dandy and socialite. It also stood out against the lackluster dressing habits of the French lower and middle classes.
In the late 1970s, as unprecedented numbers of young African immigrants
flocked to France, dandies from the central African nation of Congo became a

fixture on the Parisian scene. One could easily spot them strolling down the boulevards of the famed metropolis or seated at cafs decked out in expensive and
flamboyant attire. This fashion phenomenon has been labeled La SAPE, which
first stood for Socit des Ambianceurs et des Personnes lgantes (Society for
Ambiancers and Persons of Elegance) and is now commonly used without reference to this fictitious society. The word sape (dress) and its corresponding intransitive verb se saper (to dress fashionably) first appeared in the French vocabulary
in 1926 to capture the fashion energy that characterized the Parisian socialites of
the Roaring Twenties. It may have derived from the word sapa, which is commonly used in Provenal (a southern French dialect) for adornment or to adorn.
Although the word sape is still used exclusively to refer to the fashion exuberance
of this section of Congolese youth, other trendy terms have labeled its adepts.
They were first known as sapeurs, then Parisiens, and most recently they have
dubbed themselves cracks or playboys. However, for the purpose of this chapter, I
use sapeurs to refer to these youths, as this remains the common epithet that has
historically defined them.
Fashion and Colonial Modernity
La sape dates back to the first years of the colonial encounter as incipient stereotypes depicting Africans as uncivilized and uncouth gained currency in Europe.
To the French, their mission civilisatrice (civilizing mission) was predicated on
redeeming not only the primitive minds but also the primitive bodies of the
naked people. Early accounts of the first missionary travels made by French explorers invariably mention the use of European secondhand clothes as a bargaining item in the hands of zealous missionaries and explorers as they strove to cajole
African chiefs and secure their loyalty.
In 1885, for instance, Frances trailblazing explorer Savorgnan de Brazza laid
out his general rule concerning gifts to African chiefs, observing that it was necessary to give chiefs rare items that few people could procure themselves. It is imperative, he wrote, to lavish them always with novelties: old clothes, especially
with bright colors, [military] garments with stripes, hats, helmets, long cavalry sabers. . . . [Congolese] chiefs rarely venture outside of their compounds but they
witness the parade of [Black] troops in European attire. It is exceedingly humiliat-

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Didier Gondola

ing to them not to be able to sport a hat, a shirt and a frock coat. Evidence suggests
that in the early colonial period of the French Congo, as Brazzaville emerged as
the most favored residential area for whites and the seat of colonial government,
secondhand clothes rather than monetary wages were routinely used by European colonists to compensate their houseboys, who by the end of the nineteenth
century were the first Africans to embrace European modernity.
As early as 1910, la sape was in full bloom in Brazzaville as several observers
have complainingly noted. In 1913, French Baron Johan De Witte demurs at what
he thought was overdressing among the Brazzaville locals: on Sunday, those
that have several pairs of pants, several cardigans, put these clothes on one layer
over the other, to flaunt their wealth. Many pride themselves on following Parisian fashion. In her book on leisure in colonial Brazzaville, Phyllis Martin argues
that colonial subjects encountered European modernity first through fashion.
She notes that in 1920s Brazzaville men wore suits and used accessories such
as canes, monocles, gloves and pocket-watches on chains. They formed clubs
around their interest in fashion, gathering to drink aperitifs and dance to Cuban
and European music played on the phonograph.
During the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Congolese elitewhich by then comprised not only houseboys in European homes
but also clerks holding lower positions in colonial offices, male nurses, and a
handful of small-scale entrepreneurswere exposed to another influence that
would leave an indelible mark on their social landscape. As the ebb and flow of
migrants poured in and out of Brazzaville and Kinshasa, West African white-collar workers gained an enviable foothold within the emerging colonial economy.
Hired by several private companies to fill auxiliary positions for which untrained
Congolese could not jockey, the Bapopo (or Coastmen), as they became known,
served as models to the Congolese elite to combat ingrained charges of inferiority
leveled at them by the French and the Belgians.
The Bapopo not only brought with them clerical qualifications that were sorely
needed, especially in the offices of Unilevers main extension in Central Africa,
Huileries du Congo Belge (HCB). They also brought their music and their fashion. They naturally positioned themselves as trendsetters whom aspiring Congolese dandies looked up to as they wrestled with notions of modernity and cosmopolitanism. So Westernized was the Bapopos dazzling and daring fashion that it

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159

earned them the epithet of mundele ndombe (literally, white with black skins),
a familiar moniker that was usually accompanied with nearly the same deference
to which most Europeans were entitled. Captivated by the snobbery and refined
elegance of the Coastmens attire, Congolese houseboys spurned their masters
secondhand clothes and became unremitting consumers and fervent connoisseurs, spending their meager wages extravagantly to acquire the latest fashions
from Paris. They relied on friends and acquaintances who lived in France to buy
and ship fashion items to them, or they just purchased their clothes via mail order.
One European colonist deplored these minor failings of her houseboys in Brazzaville who might be half-starved, yet once they receive their monthly wages,
there they are donning expensive clothes.
Andr Matswa, Sapeur and Activist
By the early 1930s, despite the recession that had dampened the exuberance of
the previous decade and put many Africans out of work, Congolese youths fervently competed to recreate identities for themselves through European clothing.
Writing about the elite of Brazzaville in 1930, lieutenant-governor Marchessou
lauded these young urbanites for dress[ing] sumptuously and even with a certain elegance. That same year, one of these earlier sapeurs, Camille Diata, wrote
a missive to a friend who was employed in the countryside, updating him on the
latest fashion vogue in Brazzaville and Kinshasa and touting Bapopo style, including poplin suits, silk shirts, and elegant helmets, as the must have.
In addition to being at the forefront of the sape movement in Brazzaville, Diata
was also one of the leaders of LAmicale, an emerging, loosely organized anticolonial movement founded in France in 1926 by Congolese visionary Andr
Matswa. In the 1920s cosmopolitan Parisian scene, Matswa mingled with Black
activists from the Caribbean and the United States, with French colonial citizens
from Senegal, and with some white liberal-minded French who championed a
colonial reformist path and advocated for the rights of Africans in the colonies.
The early activities of LAmicale initially included helping newly arrived Africans
in France to find work, lodging, and legal and psychological counseling, as many
of these individuals were not welcomed by the French and had to face deportation or arrest. This was at a time when disingenuous perceptions and attitudes

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vis--vis Blacks in France and in many other European countries framed colonial subjects not only as primitive creatures that could be displayed in human
zoos next to monkeys, giraffes, and camels but also as inferior races, who could
nonetheless ascend to European modernity and civilization through the tutelage
of benevolent white patrons.
In 1929, responding to the heightened colonial oppression unleashed by the
economic recession and spurred by the French refusal to extend to their central
African colonial subjects the same rights they had granted to a few French West
African residents, Matswa decided to undertake a massive membership campaign in French Equatorial Africa. The fees that were raised, as was discovered
at his trial proceedings in Brazzaville following his arrest, were intended for a
variety of purposes, including creating local chapters of LAmicale throughout
French Equatorial Africa, establishing a trust fund to help members in times of
need, and, above all, lobbying in Paris for equal rights and citizenship status.
Matswas anti-colonial struggle, not unlike W. E. B. Du Bois or even Marcus
Garveys Pan-African ideology, did not necessarily repudiate all aspects of European-dominant modernity but made a sharp distinction between politics and
culture. In Matswas eyes, emancipation was by and large a political struggle that
had no bearing on whether Africans should embrace or reject European culture.
Members of LAmicale residing in Paris and those, like Camille Diata, who lived
in Brazzaville, relentlessly petitioned for the right to become French citizens by
virtue of their assimilation into the French culture.
Not surprisingly, the use of high fashion as a positive identity marker, which
is quintessentially what la sape is all about, epitomized their quest for modernity
and emancipation. They prided themselves on keeping abreast of Parisian fashion
trends and spent lavishly on stylish wardrobes, even though many of them held
menial jobs. Matswa himself worked as a part-time bookkeeper in several Parisian hospitals and resorted to selling fruits and vegetables at the Halles market
in Paris to make ends meet. As some of his letters show, he occasionally traded
with trend-conscious friends in Brazzaville via parcel post. Parisian fashion articles were traded for exotic commodities such as elephant tails and wild animal
hides, which Matswa would later retail to his European clientele. His last abode,
before his arrest and deportation on December 17, 1929, consisted of a simple garret of modest size located in the third district of Paris, at 79, rue Notre-Dame de

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161

Nazareth, where he lived with his pregnant French concubine, Julie Plevert. The
room also served as headquarters to LAmicale and a convenient meeting place
that often substituted for the boisterous ambiance of a caf located at rue Bouloi,
where some of the organizations meetings were held.
These early sapeurs favored the fashion of the Parisian upper class with whom
they had few, if any, encounters (Figure 10.1). The white woman by the sapeurs
side, either as wife or mistress, was as much a part of the aesthetics of la sape. She
seems to have vindicated the sapeurs quest for modernity and conferred to their
fashion statement a cosmopolitan cachet that distanced them from their counterparts who were left behind in Congo. However, the reverse holds equally true,
as some of these avant-garde French women used their African male partners to
exhibit a vicarious relationship with all things African, as well as to flaunt their
negrophilia.
Matswa may not be the first of a long line of Congolese sapeurs, contrary to
what Congolese musician Rapha Boundzeki, a sapeur in his own right, has purported in his latest release, Sapologie. But he certainly contributed to the political
lexicon of la sape, transforming what appeared to have been initially a desire to
appropriate the fashion system of the French colonizers into a broader discourse
in which fashion, and high fashion at that, became a banner for social and political change. Originally shaped by Pan-African ideals, LAmicale did not long remain impervious to the ethnic sentiments that have divided postwar Congo into
a motley society of ethnic groups, each with its own constituency and political
platform.
Upon Matswas death in 1942, his political project was immediately hijacked
by the Congolese intellectual elite which, until the 1950s, were predominantly
made up of ethnic Bakongo and Balari youths. By espousing Matswas anti-colonial views, they also adopted the fashion lexicon that went along with them,
making la sape a predominantly Bakongo/Balari movement laden with powerful political symbolisms and ideologies that would play out dramatically in the
postcolonial era. In essence, dressing well became a revolutionary act, seemingly
compliant at timesbecause it borrowed its paraphernalia and lexicon from the
colonizers and because of its proclivity for aesthetical displaybut nonetheless
inherently subversive.
Todays sapeurs claim to belong to the fourth or perhaps the fifth generation
of Congolese dandyism. They are eager to connect themselves to their illustrious

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Didier Gondola

predecessors, and, indeed, they define la sape as a legacy and the result of proper
education. To be a sapeur is not only a matter of panache, but also pedigree. According to Lasconi, a longtime sapeur whom I met in Paris in 1996, la sape has as
much to do with genes as it has with designer jeans. In his own words, la sape
comes from our fathers and our grandfathers who were servants in whites homes

La Sape Exposed!

Figure 10.1. Maurice Loubaki,

member of LAmicale and sapeur,

with his companion in Paris,
circa 1931.

163

and were often paid with clothing. My father was an elegant man . . . the kind of
person to put a breast pocket on his pajamas.
The Cosmopolitan Self
The 1950s witnessed the creation of several associations of urban youth, whose
main interests seemed to have revolved around fashion display. Nightclubs and
beer halls sprouted in every corner of the Congolese twin capitals, owing to the
emergence, in the 1940s, of the so-called Congolese rumba. These venues provided a natural platform for popular bands such as OK Jazz and African Jazz in Kinshasa and Les Bantous de la Capitale in Brazzaville, all led by young and talented
musicians who were as much interested in entertaining their fans with their latest hits as they were in setting fashion trends for would-be sapeurs. According to
Vincent Luttman, a Congolese music specialist of the London-based cultural and
arts project Nostalgie Ya Mboka, Kinshasas musical culture played a critical role
in marketing la sape among the youth. Most recording studio owners also owned
local clothing boutiques and gave clothes to popular musicians in lieu of royalty
payments for their compositions. Needless to say, this form of free advertisement brought scores of music fans and aspiring dandies to these boutiques.
In the 1950s, Congolese rumba was on the cusp of its worldwide expansion,
and its popularity remained such in both Congos that one can hardly separate
la sape from the musical culture that was teeming in Kinshasa and Brazzavilles
townships. Popular music and the culture associated with it served as platforms
for discourses, manifestos, and fads that embodied la sape. For example, Congolese musician Papa Wemba, who has made Paris his permanent home since 1987,
was notorious for interspersing designers brand names in some of his lyrics and
is credited by many, including Rapha Boundzeki and Vincent Luttman, for popularizing la sape among Congolese (from what was formerly Zaire) youth living
in European metropolises. In a 1979 interview, Papa Wemba noted, The sapeur
cult promotes high standards of personal cleanliness, hygiene and smart dress,
to a whole generation of youth across Zaire . . . well groomed, well shaven, well
perfumed. Another musician, Stervos Niarkos, may as well have started a new
cult by releasing in 1989 Religion ya Kitendi, a song that vaulted la sape to yet
another level. It was no longer just a fashion craze and a political statement, but
also an esoteric society based on the fetishization of kitendi (Kikongo for cloth),
a belief that dressing well superseded all other concerns of life.

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Didier Gondola

To understand how la sape reached such mystical proportions, one needs to

look at the changes the movement went through in the postcolonial years. In
1960, both Congos were granted independence against the backdrop of social and
ethnic tensions. This was followed immediately by a topsy-turvy descent into the
doldrums of economic chaos. The lack of job opportunities, coupled with a palpable urban malaise, drove scores of young Congolese to Paris, Brussels, London,
and other Western European cities. In Europe, these young people faced discrimination and could hardly eke out the life they had dreamed of. As a result, la sape
became a refuge that enabled them to forge new identities away from home and
to withstand the vagaries of European life. Following their colonial predecessors,
they patronize Parisian cafs where they can be seen flaunting their new clothes.
This is true only for Congolese sapeurs from Brazzaville. Their counterparts from
the former Zaire performed their fashion at makeshift soccer games in suburban
stadiums around Paris and London.
The choice of venue is not the only feature that differentiates the two groups
of sapeurs. While sapeurs from Brazzaville go to great lengths to adopt classic elements of European haute couture, including tailored business suits, classy English
shoes (Figure 10.2), fine Oxford cotton shirts, and expensive silk ties, sapeurs who
hail from Kinshasa have treaded more eccentric paths. In defiance of President
Mobutus 1974 decree banning most Western-styled clothing (including business
suits, shirts, ties, and womens trousers) in favor of a more authentic fashion
(abacost for men and wraparound skirts, or maputa, for women), they rejected all
sorts of dress strictures. Seldom has a decree produced such unexpected results.

La Sape Exposed!

Figure 10.2. In this close-up taken

in Brazzaville, sapeurs display

their shoes. From left to right: J. M.
Weston gold crocodile penny
loafers worth $1,750; a burgundy
tassel loafer; two black derbies
with buckle; and a classic black
cap-toe Oxford. Brazzaville,
Republic of the Congo, 2001.
Photograph by Agns Rodier.

165

Kinshasas sapeurs have experimented with virtually all fashion styles, from Kenzo leather suits to Versace silk shirts, from J. M. Weston shoes to the less pricey
Dr. Martens heavy-sole shoes.
Notwithstanding these differences, both groups share many of la sapes salient
features. No matter where they are from, most sapeurs find themselves confined
to the bottom rung of European society. Many reside in Europe without lawful
immigrant documents. Often living in squalid housing as squatters or in far-flung
suburban ghettos, they accept the most unwanted jobs and adopt deviant, if not
delinquent, attitudes ranging from loud talking in public places to cheating public transportation. Espousing the murky concept of colonial debt, some have a
sense of entitlement and believe the French and the Belgians should make amends
for colonization. Yet, they are the loyal customers of the most prestigious fashion
designers of Paris, London, and Brussels and sport Cerruti, Kenzo, or Versace
suits that can cost no less than $1,000 apiece. Every single item that makes up
their elaborate wardrobe has to bear a designer label, for which sapeurs use the
French slang griffe (Figure 10.3).
From head to toe, sapeurs sport only griffes, or so they claim. Those who, for
lack of money, violate this fashion etiquette and are caught wearing imitations
can have their reputations tarnished and lose the recognition of their peers. Better to lend and swap items between friends than to bring shame on oneself on
account of a pair of shoes or a suit that looked authentic to a neophyte but could
hardly fool another sapeurs expert eye. This obsession with kitendi (cloth) partly
explains why sapeurs are generally strapped for cash and are unable (and unwilling) to support their relatives in Congo. While sending remittances back home
has become a defining, albeit cumbersome, ritual for most immigrants in Europe,
sapeurs dodge such expenditures. They would rather squander their meager wages
on griffes in some famous Parisian fashion boutique than venture inside a Western
Union branch to wire money to despondent relatives.

Before the mid-1990s, Congolese dandies living in Paris or elsewhere in Europe were conferred the status of sapeur only by returning to Kinshasa or Brazzaville during summer vacation, to flaunt their wardrobes. With both Congos in
the throes of civil war, and given the unprecedented economic chaos that has re-

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Figure 10.3. Three sapeurs dressed in impeccable classic suits parade

before a crowd of onlookers in one of Brazzavilles busiest squares. The

exaggerated slew-footed swagger (note the toes turned outward) is a
trademark that distinguishes sapeurs from other dandies. Brazzaville,
Republic of the Congo, 2001. Photograph by Agns Rodier.

Figure 10.4. Facing. Using high

fashion to conjure up fraudulent

identities is one of the sapeurs
most remarkable feats. This sapeur
sports a stylish double-breasted
suit with a bow tie and a hat. The
unlit cigar, the salt and pepper
goatee, the eyeglasses, the pinned
button on his lapel, and the
dignified demeanor all add the
final touch to his claim of being
a VIP. Brazzaville, Republic of
the Congo, 2001. Photograph by
Agns Rodier.

168

sulted from the political mayhem and the high demand for cash back home, the
Congolese sapeurs are more reticent to return home than has been their custom
in the past.
The high tide of devastation visited the two countries in 1997, when civil war
erupted in Congo-Kinshasa. The violence unleashed in Rwandas genocide then
spilled over into eastern Congo and spurred Laurent Kabilas Rwandan-backed
ragtag army to overthrow Mobutu. That same year, Congo-Brazzaville also became a cauldron of ethnic violence, a situation that most observers blame on
Frances neocolonial ambition to unseat the democratically elected president
Pascal Lissouba in favor of former dictator and protg Denis Sassou Nguesso.
The war was marked by the use of heavy artillery that wreaked havoc in the city of
Brazzaville. Over ten thousand people, mostly Bakongo and Balari civilians, were
reported dead, and hundreds of thousands fled Brazzaville to seek refuge in the
forest or across the river in neighboring Congo-Kinshasa.
As paradoxical as it may seem, there recently has been a resurgence of la sape,
especially in Brazzaville, where sapeurs have resumed their public performances
and ostentatious gatherings in several locales of the city (see Figures 10.46). Before the war, Brazzavilles sapeurs (predominantly southern Balari and Bakongo)
used la sape to oppose the Northerners who had been in power since 1969. The
Northerners were accused of squandering the countrys oil revenues by building
lavish mansions and buying expensive cars though they lacked elegance.
In a country where freedom of speech and a free press were, and still are,
considered luxuries, and where popular musicians, for example, could incur the
ire of the government for a slight political commentary, sapeurs were never in
the regimes good graces but were frowned upon and even routinely harassed.
In the early 1980s, for instance, prompted by a high-level political campaign to
bar them from public spaces, several of Brazzavilles cafs and nightclubs posted no sapeurs signs, which resulted in occasional brawls between disgruntled
sapeurs and shop owners. As of late, however, Brazzaville dandies have become
the darlings of the regime.
In an attempt to restore a semblance of normalcy and buoy his military regime,
Sassou Nguesso has hoisted la sape to a status of cultural heritage. This official
recognition has allowed sapeurs to participate in cultural events, such as the Salon africain de la mode et de lartisanat (African Exhibit of Fashion and Crafts)

Didier Gondola

Figure 10.5. A sapeur dressed in a

three-piece suit with a pair of black

buckled derbys in crocodile leather.
The bow tie matches perfectly
both the suit and the green plaid
waistcoat. Once more, both the
cigar and the bottle of beer are
intended to convey a sense of ease
and opulencenever mind that
he is seated in a rather beaten-up
plastic chair in the middle of
the dirt floor of an outdoor caf.
Brazzaville, Republic of the
Congo, 2001. Photograph by
Agns Rodier.

Figure 10.6. Although most sapeurs

from Brazzaville tend to conform to

the basic tenets of European classic
fashion, there are some who dare
to jettison conventions for the sake
of sheer egotism and hedonism.
During fashion contests, sapeurs
vie for success and prizes; and to
impress judges one has to dare
to stick out, especially by boldly
matching flashy colors. Brazzaville,
Republic of the Congo, 2001.
Photograph by Agns Rodier.

Figure 10.7. Facing. La sape has

long remained a male preserve and
only recently are we witnessing
the presence of a few sapeuses,
albeit in supporting roles only and
not as full-fledged members of
this exclusive coterie. Brazzaville,
Republic of the Congo, 2001.
Photograph by Agns Rodier.

held in Brazzaville in December 2002 under the aegis of the Ministry of Tourism. Winners of such fashion contests receive hefty monetary prizes donated by
the regimes dignitaries, including the president, who often solicit their advice for
weddings or birthday parties. Sapeurs have embraced a nonviolent ethos to stave
off comparisons between themselves and the young Balari firebrands (known as
Ninja militiamen) who have unsuccessfully attempted to thwart Sassou Nguessos return to power.
La sape figures prominently among the fashion crazes that have baffled scholars
with their panoply of paradoxes and ambiguities. From postwar Americas Zoot
Suiters to the Teddy Boys of 1950s London, high fashion and the lower class often
have conflated, dispelling the spurious myth that dressing well only suits the upper class. While among the elite fashion serves a myriad of social and psychological functions, among the masses it is often used as a political statement intended
to symbolically, and performatively, challenge the social status quo. There is little
doubt that la sape is at the core of the cultural vortex that draws in all the contradictions of the postcolonial Congos and continues to shape Congolese society
at home and abroad. Caught between their hedonistic penchant for high fashion
and the desire to articulate counterdiscourses, sapeurs have had to walk the tightrope between Matswas militant quest for modernity and Wembas aesthetics of
la griffe, between defiance and compliance, activism and escapism. Today, with
both countries in turmoil, la sape, with its exuberant flamboyance (Figure 10.7),
may well serve as a lightning rod for the Congolese disenfranchised youth to map
out their itinerary from Third World status to modern cosmopolitanism and to
cope with their social dereliction.

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11

Have ClothWill Travel

K r i s t y n e L o u gh r a n

African women living in Europe today negotiate myriad relationships between

their personal tastes and identities, their attachment and loyalty to fashions from
home, as well as their enthusiasm and desire for European fashions and their
curiosity about global fashions. This chapter is based on a conversation with
Haliatou Traor Kand, who has lived and worked in Florence, Italy, for the past
eighteen years. As a stylish woman, Kands exuberant yet practical approach to
fashion has her sending Vlisco textiles to her seamstresses in Togo for the latest trends in Lom and wearing equally trendy and classical European outfits in
Florence. The choices she makes in terms of what she chooses to wear, when, and
where reveal that she espouses fashions global messages while maintaining her
sense of self and national integrity in both environments. Haliatous response to
both worlds is enlightening in order to understand how African women approach
global markets, negotiate circuits of exchange, and actively participate in the globalized fashion platform.

Early Years and Adolescence

Haliatou was born on May 22, 1969, the third child and only daughter of Alassani
Tairou and Zoubratou Adam Nytch. The name Kand means only daughter
in Kotokoli, the language spoken by the Kotokoli in Sokod, the second largest
town in central Togo. At the age of nine she spent a year in the nearby village
of Passouad, where she became close to her great-grandmother Samanta and
her grandmother Assana. When she returned to Sokod, Haliatou completed
her CES (the eighth grade) in the French school system, while earning money
by selling food goods near her house. Her days were also punctuated with daily
tasks performed at home and outings with her friends. Her father was a central
figure in her life. She expresses respect for his fairness and intelligence and for his
elegance. Laughing, she notes, He was always very well dressed. Haliatous upbringing was unconventional. Her mother was not present in her formative years,
and her father raised her. He was a fair and caring man who instilled a sense of
responsibility, mutual respect, and self-confidence in his children. Haliatou was
allowed more freedom than that accorded to girls in other families, for example,
being permitted to go out dancing in the evenings when she was a teenager. She
notes that her fathers trust encouraged her self-reliance and indirectly influenced
her sense of fashion. As Haliatou worked, she had some financial independence,
which also enabled her to buy her own clothing.
Traditional female dress and fashions in Togo usually include ensembles made
of either handwoven fabrics or the colorful wax textiles made by African manufacturers such as Uniwax and Sonitextile, or foreign producers such as Vlisco, a
Dutch company, that has been a principal supplier of wax print textiles in West
and Central Africa since the early twentieth century. Haliatou considers Vlisco
textiles, which are extremely expensive, to be the highest quality fabrics being
manufactured.
In Togo, women wear sewn or wraparound skirts, matching tops with either
long or short sleeves, and a pagne (or wrap). The pagne is a multipurpose piece
of cloth, usually of wax print fabric, which may be worn over a skirt, wrapped
around the hips (often being used to carry children), or worn as a wraparound
skirt. The pagne can also be used to make the head wrap (Figure 11.1). Older women are known to wear the shorter petit pagne (or small pagne), which is used as an
underskirt.

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Figure 11.1. Haliatou Traor

Kand (left) with her mother

Zoubratou (center) and aunt
Talatou (right). Lom, Togo,
June 2006. Photograph courtesy
of Haliatou Traor Kand.

What distinguishes fashionable complets, or ensembles, from traditional ones

are the new modles, or designs, produced each year with the latest fabrics and
variations in cut and style. Women are attentive to these innovations and changes. When a friend once told Haliatou that her ensemble was beautiful yet out of
date, she gave it to her mother, who is an older person, so she cares more about
quality than about being trendy. Shoes and fashionable accessories, such as jewelry, often complete a womans ensemble.

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According to Haliatou, the Kotokoli know cloth very well. Comparing preferences in Lom with those found in other towns and villages, she considers the
Kotokoli to have an edge on other groups in terms of knowledge and the choices
they make. Going through Ilsemargret Luttmans 2005 edited volume, Mode in
Afrika, an exhibition catalog on fashion from several West African nations, she
recognized fabrics and knew the names they had been given by Togolese women.
Women in Sokod are also known to name cloth when there are neighborhood
dance competitions, in order to send messages to rival groups.
It was between the ages of thirteen and fourteen that Haliatou and her girlfriends started to consider clothing and fashion. At school they wore a uniform
(restrictions were also put on hairstyles), and when not there, their daytime attire
consisted principally of pagne skirts with either matching tops or T-shirts. Haliatous father sometimes gave her money to purchase items for her outings, but
she too bought shoes to complete her ensembles. In the evenings, when they attended friendly gatherings, the young women wore Western-style trousers, which
were considered modern and fashionable. European fashions shown on television
and in fashion magazine spreads were popular and were copied by seamstresses.
Haliatou preferred wide trousers. She rarely wore dresses, and notes: when I was
young, sure, I looked at the new fashions coming out, I was curious and I knew
what I liked so I wasnt really influenced by others. If her friends wore ensembles
or complets she admired, she had them copied as well, and stresses that being la
mode (fashionable) was less important than being herself.
Between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, quantity was more enticing than
quality. Haliatou had her own system, as she calls it. She liked new things and
bought inexpensive cloth in the market to make ensembles. In addition to textiles, her favorite items were shoes, which she still appreciates today. Her shoe
styles ranged from the myriad tapettes (flip-flops, from the French word tapper, to
hit) to the sandals sold in the market. The flip-flops were imported from China,
and because designs and styles changed so quickly they were attractive to young
women. The Bata shoe stores were considered too expensive. Haliatou didnt
wear heels or pumps until she was fourteen years old, which is when she started
going to discos. Haliatou used accessories such as jewelry, especially earrings and
necklaces, to complete her ensembles. Small hoop earrings with designs and neck
chains were fashionable. Since Haliatou didnt like the color of the gold being sold
in Togo, she preferred the gold-plated items, which were also less expensive.

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Perfumes never attracted her until she came to Europe. She used perfumed
creams as a young woman and made herself up with kohl for her eyes, some lipstick and nail polish. Hairdressing was and is something Haliatou spends time
on. Coiffures heighten elegance and style and also create an occasion for social
gatherings between friends and acquaintances. She bursts out laughing when she
remembers the makeup box she kept for her friends filled with mascara, powder,
eye shadow, eyeliner, etc.: I had to have something for them, you know. When
she was young, she kept her hair short, and friends dressed her hair in plaits or
with extensions using threads. Haliatou regrets she herself never learned how to
dress hair: she would have earned high fees in Italy.
Haliatou defines style and elegance as attention to personal grooming: elegant
ensembles, beautiful hairstyles, carefully manicured hands, and perfumed skin.
Her ideals of beauty are both sensible and thoughtful. Physical attributes, for example, arent paramount to her, although she notes that to have a full figure is
considered a sign of beauty and well-being and is especially attractive to men.
Looking at the mirror? Haliatous response is quick: We have so many responsibilities, we dont spend hours staring at our bodies in the mirror, adding that
as a youngster she was happy with the way she looked, felt secure, and rarely discussed the subject with her girlfriends.
When her father died in November 1986, Haliatou was seventeen, and her life
changed drastically. Her work ethic and sense of responsibility made her fairly
independent. At this age she notes that she was already putting her head in place
(mettre la tte sur place) and her attitudes changed. I began to invest in the more
expensive cloth, wax block, and rather than using it for an ensemble, Haliatou
put it away to prepare her dowry. Two years later she moved to Niamey, the capital
of Niger, with her aunt Leila, where she worked as a revendeuse (mobile, independent salesperson) in the market and worked in a restaurant. Her savings allowed
her to purchase Vlisco super wax cloth, and her aunt helped her choose different
designs, encouraging her to buy more in order to add to her dowry. These were
sent to her grandmother Assana for safekeeping.
At this time in her life, she frequently wore trousers. She explains this change
as a reflection of her being away from home and from town gossip, which might
have harmed her reputation. Despite the negative opinions surrounding trousers
in Niamey at the time, Haliatou wore them quite freely. She felt free and independent. As some people nicknamed her Ali (a mans name), she changed her nick-

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name to Aisha. Her social life expanded as well, and she made friends with many
Nigeriens. Haliatou smiles thinking back to her years in Niger: these were happy
times for her. At the same time, she was already thinking of her prospects and
looking ahead.
Europe
Haliatous constancy in her work and her sense of responsibility toward her family were major factors in her decision to move to Europe, with an eye to laying a
foundation for her own future. In 1992, she moved to Florence, Italy, and became
a COLF or collaboratrice familiare (a household employee). In the 1990s Florence
was considered Italys fashion capital (today, Milan has taken this coveted position). Fashionable stores abound there, as do open-air markets selling less expensive copies of designer clothing, and both exhibit the consistency with which
styles and designs are forever changing. The citys multi-ethnic population has
increased in the past fifteen years and has been a driving force in the opening of
ethnic restaurants and food stores, sundries stores, and specialty stores such as 51
Rosso Via Panicale, where African women can now purchase Vlisco fabrics.
It is not surprising that in a city famous for its leather goods, the first items Haliatou looked at were shoes. An analogy she often made with her move to Europe
was going from her tapettes (or flip-flops) to shoes. She did not consider stilettos
because she could not walk in them, but she added pumps, boots, sneakers, and
colorful sandals to her wardrobe. The clothing she purchased in the beginning included sports ensembles, trousers, leather jackets, shirts, and sweaters, fashioned
in many different styles. She notes that with time, she became more discerning:
It is better to buy good quality on sale, which lasts.
Being in Europe did not eclipse Haliatous interest in African fashions. While
visiting an uncle of hers in Verona, she commissioned three ensembles from a
Togolese seamstress living there. The woman was from Lom, and Haliatou was
very interested in the designs shed made. However, when she went to Lom in
1994 and visited her seamstress, the apprentice (apprendiste) said: Tanti [Auntie], wow, look at thisit is badly made! This opinion from an apprentice who
saw the mistakes immediately caused Haliatou some embarrassment. It also led
her to use her seamstresses at home.

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Fashion and Individuality

Haliatous definition of fashion as opposed to dress is very straightforward. She
relates dress to the kinds of clothes her grandmother and great-grandmother wore,
skirts and tops whose styles didnt really change over time. These items, to her, are
stable and classic. Fashion, on the other hand, is a phenomenon which implies
change and which changes all the time. Fashion is important in Togo and, according to Haliatou, is not only dependent on the rural versus urban opposition. She
notes: Everything is modern now, everywhere. When I was small in Passouad
and Sokod, I understood that fashion existed. Togolese fashion is dependent
on designers such as Timothe, but it is really in the hands of seamstresses who
display their creations and drawings in their workshops. This is where women
choose trendy modles, which might include a new cut, different necklines and
sleeves, higher or lower hemlines, and variations on decorations, such as lace,
beads and buttons. You must also look to the seamstresses to predict fashion and
to see what is going to be popular and mark a time. As textile manufacturers produce new designs every year, this is often the way women date the clothing they
see and own. In Europe, Haliatou looks to designers, television, catalogs, and
fashion magazines to see the latest trends. She adds: Fashion is important to me
because I do not want to be seen wearing last years modles (Figure 11.2).
Haliatou believes the approaches and attitudes toward fashion in Europe and
in Africa are simply transplanted from one locus to the other. Citing a friend of
hers in Florence as an example, she explained: You see, she did not live in a city,
in Lom or Sokod. She always lived in the countryside. She came to Lom twice,
once for her passport and the second time to leave Togo. When she arrived here,
she wanted to see everything, she was excited and very curious, but I think she
would have behaved in the same manner in Lom.
While Haliatou believes it is important to be fashionable, she stresses it is more
important to know what you like and not buy for the sake of buying. Discussing
her trips to Togo, she notes: When I get back there and go to the seamstresses, I
see so much and it always looks so beautiful that I get overwhelmed. I try to follow the fashions so that I am not cut out, but I dont get all the modles, I just get
some.

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181

Figure 11.2. Haliatou Traor Kand

in Florence, wearing a fancy wax
ensemble designed by Togolese
seamstress Fiah Clara, acquired
during a February 2008 trip to Togo.
Photograph by Chiara R. Bini.

182

The person who has had the greatest influence on

Haliatous fashion acumen is her mothers cousin, her
aunt Talatou, whose taste she trusts implicitly. She notes:
I follow my own eye, yet my aunt is the one who gives
me advice on fashion. She knows what is coming out and
what looks good. Haliatou considers her a very fashionable woman whose taste ranges from the classical to the
modern. Sometimes she copies a design Talatou has.
Haliatou has been sending her textiles to her two
seamstresses in Lom for fifteen years now. Traor Maimouna (Figure 11.3) is from Mali and knows the Mode
Mali (Malian fashions), and Fiah Clara (Figure 11.4) is
Togolese and knows local fashions. The Malian styles
are more expensive (30,000 CFA, approximately US$65
in 2009) than the Togolese ones (7,500 to 10,000 CFA,
approximately US$16 to US$21 in 2009), and prices depend upon the intricacy of the designs. For example,
one of Haliatous Togolese ensembles was made with
embroidery. The seamstress made the bodice and the
skirt and then had the garment embroidered by a specialist who charged 11,000 CFA (approximately US$24
in 2009) for his work. Haliatou is confident that she gets
fair prices because her aunt Talatou is friendly with both
seamstresses. She notes: In 2008, I got two popular ensembles. The skirt style is the same as some others I have,
but the sleeves are differentthey have lace. It is interesting to note here that while Haliatou has mentioned
not wanting to look like everyone else, she commissions uniforms (ensembles
in the same cloth and style) for festivities such as weddings. Women look upon
these garments as a sign of close bonds and friendship.
Looking at photographs, Haliatou was quick to comment on and differentiate styles from different African countries. Skirts from Ghana, for example (see
chapter 1, Figure 1.1, this volume), are not worn in Togo. Women in Niger have a
preference for boubous (long flowing robes with wide sleeves), known as le modle

Kristyne Loughr an

Figure 11.3. Above. Mrs. Traor Maimouna,

Haliatous Malian seamstress. Lom,

Togo, February 2008. Photograph by
Haliatou Traor Kand.
Figure 11.4. left. Mrs. Fiah Clara,

Haliatous Togolese seamstress. Lom,

Togo, June 2006. Photograph courtesy
of Haliatou Traor Kand.

183

Mali (Malian design) in Togo. She expressed admiration for Senegalese tailors
and especially for the sumptuous embroideries and motifs which embellish some
of their ensembles.
What to wear when? African fashions or European ones? Haliatou often wears
her African ensembles in the summer: I dont want to lose touch with my African identity, and I like to wear them because I have them here. Her choices are
in response to a specific occasion. If she is going to a party or a reception and
knows there will be many people there, she dresses fashionably and elegantly and
receives compliments for her striking ensembles. In her own words, she defines
herself as a classicist who sometimes buys trendy items: I know classical garments are the best. They last over the years, and they always come back. But I like
to follow fashion, too. I am not old, and I like to live today. For household work,
she prefers jeans because they are practical. She notes, however, that if she were
living in Togo and married, it would be inappropriate to wear them. A married
woman wears a skirt and a top. In Europe, she likes to wear trousers. I am not a
skirt lady; trousers are much more comfortable. When Haliatou returns to Togo,
her approach to clothing and fashion parallels the one she espouses in Italy. She
notes: I am myself, I follow my path. Sometimes in Florence I choose to wear an
African ensemble, and sometimes I wear elegant trousers (Figure 11.5), and when
I go home to Lom, I wear a different outfit every day.
Have ClothWill Travel
Cloth remains one of Haliatous favorite and most precious possessions. It is a
tribute to her years of hard work, a prestigious sign of wealth, and a hefty contribution to her dowry. A dowry must include household goods such as pots and
pans, plates, cutlery, linens, bedding, and all of the items necessary for daily life.
Women must also purchase cloth. Haliatou noted: You cannot only bring two
pagnes, this is considered shameful, and you have to get it ready by yourself. The
family gives you some, but the effort has to be yours. If you dont have these things
when you marry, you are considered lazy.
As was mentioned earlier, Haliatou started to purchase Vlisco textiles while
living in Niger. She notes: I bought them because of the quality. She also buys
Vlisco fabrics because they are beautiful. The company has a reputation for excellence, and she likes the new designs, which come out every year. In Togo they are

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Kristyne Loughr an

available in the markets and in specialty stores. They are usually placed on the top
shelves, where the expensive cloth is kept. Haliatou pointed out that generally
merchants put the super wax and wax block cloth on the top, wax cover in the
middle, and wax print (the least expensive) on the bottom. The distinction between the four types is based on production techniques, fabric quality, and color
fastness. Although Vlisco has opened a boutique which sells their own clothing
designs in Lom, Haliatou prefers the styles proposed by her seamstresses.
In her early years in Florence, Vlisco catalogs were a necessity for Haliatou if
she was to keep abreast of new textile designs, order cloth, and have ensembles
fashioned in Lom. These catalogs were essentially a set of samples from which

Have ClothWill Travel

Figure 11.5. Haliatou Traor

Kand wearing an olive green

suit. Florence, Italy, May 2002.
Photograph courtesy of
Haliatou Traor Kand.

185

a woman chose a specific pattern and color. Today, in addition to the previously
mentioned specialty store in Via Panicale in the San Lorenzo neighborhood of
Florence, Haliatou has access to the Internet and can purchase her fabrics at the
e-shop on www.vlisco.com. In certain instances, Vlisco names a print, and in others, women in different African nations name them. Vlisco textiles are expensive
and sold in six-yard lengths. Super Star costs US$69, Wax Block $54, Wax Cover
$49, and Wax Print $39. While many textile manufacturers in African nations
produce the less costly fancy print fabrics with a roller printing technique, they
also copy Vlisco super wax designs, which enables more women to purchase them.
Haliatou also owns ensembles designed by Traor Maimouna in Lom made of
prestigious Malian bazin (imported damask) (Figure 11.6).
Trips home to Lom and Sokod almost always have Haliatou taking suitcases
filled with gifts, household appliances, Vlisco textiles, and other items. Her personal belongings, including clothing, are carefully stored at her mothers house in
Lom. She also brings new ensembles back to Europe.
In Italy, there are Togolese communities in cities such as Verona, Rome, and
Milan, and in her early years she spent time visiting family members in Verona.
She now prefers to spend her vacations either in Lom with her mother or in Munich, Germany, with her brothers. Haliatou notes the Togolese community in
Munich is tightly knit and includes a large group from Sokod. Togolese women
in Munich, according to her, are very fashionable and fashion conscious. Their
information on the latest fashions in Lom comes from Togolese merchants who
travel to Munich on a regular basis with stylish ensembles for sale (Figure 11.7).
In the same vein, Haliatou has commissioned some ensembles in Lom that she
intends to sell in Munich or in Florence.

Figure 11.6. Facing. Haliatou

Traor Kand in Florence,

wearing a modle Mali made
of bazin moyen riche designed
by Malian seamstress Traor
Maimouna, acquired during
a February 2008 trip to Togo.
Photograph by Chiara R. Bini.

As a young woman in Sokod, Haliatou espoused trendy fashionable ensembles, European-style trousers, and colorful flip-flops to make her fashion statement. Today, at the age of forty-one, she is interested in fashionable European
dress, in her African ensembles, and in remaining loyal to her African identity.
She gracefully combines both worlds in an effortless manner which truly reflects
the multiple dimensions of African fashion.

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187

Figure 11.7. Facing. Haliatou

Traor Kand in Florence, wearing
a black velvet ensemble designed
in the modle Mali style, purchased
in Munich, Germany, in 1996.
Photograph by Chiara R. Bini.

When Haliatou returns to Lom or Sokod now, she is considered a wealthy

woman and has earned the respect not only of her family but also of her neighbors
and friends. She and her brothers sent her grandmother Assana, her great-aunt
Maimouna, and her mother Zoubratou on the pilgrimage to Mecca. But the fact
that she owns land and a house in Sokod and a house with her brothers in Lom
is maybe the greatest measure of her accomplishment: My real reputation will
come about when I return home for good. People will look at my house and say,
this is hers. She smiles, and resolutely looks to the future.
I am an African woman, says Haliatou, and yes, I have changed a lot from
those early days in Sokod. If I look back at myself then and now, we are two
different people. I was very stubborn, and it was hard to hold me down. I consider myself a responsible person now, for myself, for my whole family, and for my
mother. This responsibility of mine is not an obligation. It is simply the way it is.
My role is what has changed.

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12

Dressing Somali
(Some Assembly Required)

H e a t h e r M a r i e Ak o u

Parking outside of the Somali malls in MinneapolisSt. Paul is always a challenge.

By the afternoon clusters of men are talking outside on the sidewalks as customers and the people who run the shopsmostly women and their teenage sons and
daughtersfilter in and out of the building. The men are wearing clothes that
would look appropriate on almost any street in Americapants, button-down
shirts, sweaters, and sometimes a heavy coat, depending on how cold it is that day
in Minnesota. A few of the younger men are wearing the kind of baggy pants, athletic shoes, and jerseys that might make you think they were African Americans
if you didnt hear them speaking Somali. Some older men, whose orange beards
have been dyed with henna, are obviously not from here.
Inside the mall, visitors are greeted with a riot of colors. The hallways are nearly
blocked with racks of skirts and scarves, rolled-up rugs, and ready-made clothing
for both children and adults, which hangs from every available wall space (Figure
12.1). The shops are crammed with what seems like random merchandisesets of
tea pots and tiny glasses, bedspreads in plastic bags, prayer clocks in the shape of

Figure 12.1. Interior hallway of a

Somali mall in Minneapolis.
July 2009. Photograph by
Heather Marie Akou.

192

the Kaaba, and rows upon rows of colorful fabrics.

It can be difficult to tell where one shop ends and
the next begins; none of the prices are marked,
so everything is open to negotiation. The teenage boys who work for their mothers are dressed
like the men outside, but the girls and women are
all wearing head scarves. The older women are always dressed very modestly in long, flowing head
scarves and dresses that cover everything but the
hands and faces of their ample bodies. Some of
the younger women wear skirts and denim jackets that fit more closely. Their head scarves match
the colors of their long but fashionable skirts and
are neatly held in place with plastic pins shaped
like hearts and butterflies. Cell phones ring continuously to keep friends and family members in
touch.
If a visitor starts to ask questions, he or she
will find that there is much more merchandise
stacked on the shelves and packed into crevices
shash and khimar (head scarves) in every imaginable color, tubes of henna
paste, bits of frankincense in metal canisters (complete with electric incense
burners), bottles of alcohol-free perfume, and plastic sandals from China. Most of
the products are from somewhere else; places as far away as Indonesia, Japan, and
the United Arab Emirates (Figure 12.2). Scholars in cultural studies often use the
term bricolage to describe how members of subcultures take objects from different times and places and recombine them into new ensembles. This postmodern
concept has actually been part of Somali culture for much longer. Outsiders have
always noted that almost everything Somalis wear comes from someone or somewhere elsethe cloth, the jewelry, even the weapons that nomads carry. Over the
centuries, Somalis have become masters at borrowing ideas and objects. Overflowing merchandise at the Somali malls is not truly random but reflects the array
of times, places, and cultures from which Somalis are drawing as they construct
unique ways of dressing Somali in Minnesota (Figure 12.3). Even so, this bricolage

Heather Marie Akou

Figure 12.2. Rows of knock-

off handbags (imitating

Coach and Fendi) paired
with fancy materials for dirac
and garbasaar. July 2009.
Photograph by Heather
Marie Akou.

Figure 12.3. Interior of a Somali-

owned shop in Minneapolis.

The colorful sets of cloth along
the walls are for dirac, garbasaar,
and gorgorad. Hanging from
the ceiling is a row of colorful,
European-style dresses
(imported from China) to be
worn by little girls at celebrations
such as weddings and Eid. July
2009. Photograph by Heather
Marie Akou.

Figure 12.4. facing. Photograph

of a Somali woman from the 1880s
taken by Prince Roland Napoleon
Bonaparte for the 1891 Worlds
Fair in Paris. Her black head
wrap, called a shash, shows her
status as a married woman and is
still part of Somali dress today.
Also note the womans enormous
necklace, which includes a silver,
crescent-shaped audulli, smaller
silver beads and bells, glass
beads from Europe, and chunks
of amber. Collection of the
Smithsonian National Museum
of Natural History, National
Anthropological Archives.

is not a free-for-all; individual ideas about what is interesting or right to wear are
converging and diverging into a series of different but distinct visions.

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Heather Marie Akou

Vision #1: The Traditional Somali

For Somalis, the late 1800s were a time of unsurpassed cultural and financial
wealth. Somalis traded livestock, leather, and sesame seeds, as well as ostrich
feathers, ivory, frankincense, and even slaves to the outside world. In exchange,
they received cotton and silk cloth from India, Great Britain, and especially the
United States, along with elaborate jewelry made of silver, carnelian, chunks of
amber from the Baltic Sea, coral from the Mediterranean, and glass beads from
Venice and Bohemia. In fact, Somalis made very few of the objects they wore.
With a reputation for being fiercely independent and even dangerous, Somalis
controlled virtually all caravan trade to the interior. Like the Kalabari of Nigeria,
they became masters of cultural authentication, selecting pieces of clothing and
jewelry from exotic placessymbols of their success as tradersand transforming them into a distinctive style of dress. Items such as the shash (a black or indigo head wrap worn by married women) and the guntiino (a dress knotted at one
shoulder and then wrapped around the waist) (Figure 12.4), as well as hersi necklaces containing verses from the Quran, were worn by other groups of people in
the area, but the combination and renaming of these pieces made them integral
and unique to Somali dress.
As British and Italian Somaliland gained their independence and agreed to
merge as Somalia in 1960, new imports of cotton, silk, and polyester cloth from
India and Japan were becoming popular. Yardage in every color of the rainbow
was used for guntiinaha and eventually for a new style of clothinga loose dress
called dirac that was worn with a petticoat (gorgorad) and shoulder cloth (garbasaar). In the early 1980s, Somalia was one of the top three countries in Africa
to import silk fabrics from India (only Kenya and Mauritius imported more). It
was also one of the top ten importers of manufactured and synthetic textiles such
as polyester chiffon and rayon velvet. Western fashionslike the miniskirt and
pixie haircuttrickled in, but those who designed the new nations stamps and
currency depicted women wearing traditional styles of dress. One set showed
women wearing lusciously colored guntiinaha as they hauled bananas and picked

cotton. Politically minded women worked to establish health

care and family planning programs, but they also sponsored
recitals of oral poetry and folk dances, perhaps inspired by
similar movements of cultural preservation and revival in other parts of Africa and the Middle East.
This clothing has become a precious reminder of home for
refugees in Minnesota. At first, the right fabrics were difficult
to get. Women would sometimes pay hundreds of dollars for
nicely matched sets of dirac, garbasaar, and gorgorad that were
sold door-to-door by women who had recently arrived from
East Africa or received packages from relatives who were still
there. The opening of the first Somali mall, Suuqa Karmel, in
2001, made the guntiino and dirac more readily available. In
some cases, older women, who remember these styles from
happier times in Somalia, have begun wearing them again on
a day-to-day basis. Younger women wear them for cultural
events at school and especially for weddings. Since the Somali
malls now have a continuous supply of new colors and designs,
a fashionable woman is careful not wear the same outfit more
than once or twice. To save money (since the clothing is now
less expensive but certainly not cheap) the outfits are passed
around to relatives and friends and eventually to the older
women, who dont really care if their clothing is the latest fashion. Much of the jewelry worn by their grandparents and more
distant ancestors has disappearedsold to make ends meet in
difficult times, lost along the way to the United States, or carefully hidden away to protect what remains. In its place some women wear gold
(or imitation gold) rings, earrings, and pendantssimple, filigreed pieces that
reflect fashions in the Middle East, where silver has been replaced by lighter but
more expensive gold jewelry. For cultural events, such as a folk dance sponsored
by the Somali Students Association, a young woman might wear a guntiino and
garbasaar imported from India. One traditional garment, the shash, is still worn
only by married women but has now taken the form of a large silk handkerchief,
made in India specifically for the Somali market.

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An outsider might think that this kind of traditional dress would never
change, but it actually changes just as quickly as any other kind of Somali dress.
Every season, men with trucks full of imported cloth for dirac, garbasaar, and gorgorad come to the Somali malls. Although the general form stays the same, the
colors are always newin summer in might be hot pink; in winter it could be
periwinkle with crystal sequins that sparkle like snowflakes. Black might be timeless, but one or two seasons later these no-longer-fashionable colors can only be
sold at a deep discount.
Vision #2: The Devoted Muslim
Somalis were early converts to Islam, influenced by Arab and Persian settlers who
were living along the coast by the eighth century. When Ibn Battuta visited Mogadishu in 1331 on his way from Spain to Mecca, he noted that the citys leader was
a non-Arab native who spoke Arabic and was dressed in lavish robes from Egypt
and Jerusalem. Islamic practices such as modesty, avoidance of alcohol (even perfume that contains it), dyeing fingernails, hands, beards, and hair with henna,
washing before meals and daily prayers, and standing over burning incense to
scent clothing with fragrant smoke have become such a part of Somali culture
that the two have become forever intertwined.
Until the 1970s, however, the only women in Somali territory who wore hijabgarments designed to cover everything but the hands and facewere either descendents of Arabs and Persians or young women in urban areas whose
families wanted to protect their beauty and (hopefully) climb the social ladder
through marriage of the women. Certainly, Somali women did not wear niqab, a
face-covering veil that is now associated with very conservative countries such as
Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. The appearance of hijab in everyday Somali life
or as some saw it, the Arabization of Somali dresshappened for several reasons. After the discovery of oil in the Middle East, Somali men often found work
there as migrant laborers, returning home with new ideas about how to properly
live and dress. Somalias acceptance into the League of Arab Nations sparked
a new interest in learning Arabic and a renewed emphasis on memorizing and
understanding the Quran, leading some people to wear more obviously Islamic
clothing. Furthermore, by that time many Somalis were becoming disillusioned

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with the government, seeing it as misguided and corrupt. Some people viewed
Islam and Islamic dress as a divine solution, inspired by the Iranian Revolution
of 1979 which replaced the Shah (backed by the West) with a government based
on Islamic law.
By the 1980s, as Somalia was becoming more and more unstable, increasing
numbers of Somali women were wearing garments like the shuka and khimar
(Figure 12.5) or the jilbab, a three-piece ensemble consisting of a close-fitting head
scarf, a longer head covering that fits over the first one and drapes down over
the body, and a matching skirt. When the government collapsed in 1991 and the
country was overcome by civil war, hundreds of thousands of people were forced
to leave as refugees. Photos of Somalis taken by journalists in the refugee camps
in Kenya showed many wearing these styles of Islamic dress. Although it could
not protect women from the brutality of being refugees, this clothing at least projected an image of dignity and respectability.
As Somalis began migrating to Europe and North America, Islamic dress
became more complicated. One man explained to me that when his family first
moved to Canada his wife was not wearing a head covering. When she eventually
decided to wear hijab he felt it was appropriate to support her. Even so, he noticed
that non-Muslims often stared at him as if he had forced his wife to do this. When
she decided to stop he couldnt help feeling relieved. In Minnesota, many Somali
women are straddling two worlds: one where hijab is not only accepted but often expected by friends and family members as well as other Muslims, and one
where many employers discriminate against a woman who wears a head covering.
Equal employment laws require employers to accommodate religious dress, but
that doesnt have much of an impact when an applicant is told, Well call you,
and simply never hears back. Although Muslim men are also expected to wear
modest clothing, they do not need to wear a head covering outside of the mosque.
Some older men, for example, wear a kaffiyeh, a black-and-white checkered scarf,
but they drape it over one shoulder instead of wearing it as a head covering like
men in the Middle East. Because of these different standards, Somali women are
the ones who bear the burden of displaying religious devotion for themselves and
their familieseven if it interferes with their prospects for employment.
Although it might seem like fashion has no place in religious dress, the Quran
does not specify the shape or color of hijab. Black is very common in the Middle

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197

Figure 12.5. Pre-packaged khimar

imported from the Middle East.

Although the package shows
an adult woman, this kind of
head covering is often worn by
children, some as young as three
or four years old. The T-shirtlike
fabric is easy and comfortable to
wear and neatly covers the hair
and shoulders.

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Heather Marie Akou

East, but Somalis wear much brighter colorslemon yellow, burgundy, lilac, and
mint green. Each outfit is sewn individually to fit the head and body of the person
who will wear it. Unlike the dirac and garbasaar, which are made from special
imported fabrics, hijab is simply made from whatever is available. Local fabric
stores are full of opaque, solid-color fabrics like polyester crepe and rayon suiting. Since not much sewing is involved, an entire outfit can be made for thirty or
forty dollarseasy to replace when a new color comes into fashion or the wearer
simply feels like adding to her wardrobe. Lengths can also change. For a woman
who wants to be very modest, the head covering can go all the way to her knees.
Teenagers flirt with shorter styles to reveal their carefully maintained figures and
more fashionable clothes.
Vision #3: The Somali-American Dream
In the late 1800s, Somali territory was colonized by France, Italy, Great Britain,
and Ethiopia. At first very few Somalis wore European-style dress. They interacted with Europeans for trade, but objects like boots and jackets were little more
than curiosities. In some areas, religious leaders realized that changes in clothing
could lead to changes in lifestyle and politics, and they warned Somalis not to
wear European clothing because it would be taken as a sign that they accepted the
colonization of their land. It was only after the Second World Warwhen changes in lifestyle were happening as increasing numbers of people migrated from the
desert to cities like Mogadishuthat European fashions became popular. Instead
of returning to a defeated country, some Italians kept living in Somali territory
and opened clothing boutiques. As Somali men found jobs in Italian-owned businesses and eventually the new national government, they often adopted clothing
that seemed to suit their new positions in Somali society. Pants and shirts were
easy for men to wear and practical for some activities. In the 1960s, the new government of Somalia depicted men wearing tank tops and shorts while picking
bananas on the back of the five Shilin banknote. Delegates to the United Nations
wore three-piece suits. Women who were flight attendants for Somali Airlines
which partnered with the Italian airline Alitalia in 1963wore jackets and pillbox hats as part of their uniform. Men who served as police officers and soldiers
were issued European-style boots, pants, shirts, and jackets as well as berets. Even

Dressing Somali (Some Assembly Required)

199

women, who were employed in auxiliary divisions of the military as nurses and
secretaries, wore shoes with knee-high socks, miniskirts, jackets, and neckties.
For men, European-style clothing was quickly accepted and became widespread. Somali and Arab styles of dress such as wrappers and tunics did not
disappear, but they did become associated with religious and rural traditions.
European-style clothing for women was less common and much more controversial. Part of that was because of the current fashion for miniskirts. While they
were controversial enough in Europe and the United States, many Somalis considered them a threat to their culture and religion. Responding to this pressure,
the government established a special unit of the police called the buona costuma
(good costume) to monitor the dress of Somali women and arrest anyone who
was dressed too provocativelyassuming (correctly or not) that only prostitutes
would wear such revealing clothing. Some Somalis even took matters into their
own hands by beating or throwing stones at women who wore European-style
fashions. Furthermore, not as many women had access to this kind of clothing.
While men migrated to the city, women often stayed behind in rural areas to tend
the familys animals or land.
In Minnesota, pants and jeans are common for Somali men, but women hardly
ever wear them unless required to as part of a job uniform. Miniskirts are nonexistent. High school students (especially girls) who want to play sports often
need to modify their uniforms. Shorts and tank tops might be the standard gear
for high school athletes in the United States, but these garments are generally
considered too revealing (even for men, who are expected to be covered from at
least their navel to their knees). On the opposite side of the spectrum, baggy jeans
and oversized jerseyship-hop clothingare much more acceptable and common, although some Somalis have reservations about looking too much like an
African American or being perceived as belonging to a gang. In some cases, there
are more subtle differences. Tailors in the Somali malls will make Italian-style
suits and loose-fitting pants that look and fit more like saalwar than blue jeans.
These are styles that Somali men wore long before coming to the United States.
Teenage girls wear jean jackets and long skirts, but the cut is a little more fitted to
the body than what their parents or grandparents would wear. Platform sandals
are common, and cell phones are a popular accessory for both young men and
women. Some of this clothing is purchased at mainstream shops and malls such

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as the Mall of America, where it is not unusual to see Somali teenagers working
as sales clerks (giving them the advantage of employee discounts). In addition,
some clothing worn by teenagers is sold at the Somali malls in Minneapolis and
St. Paul. Ankle-length skirts are not always easy to find in mainstream shops, and
merchants at the Somali malls who buy the imported skirts from trucks brought
by Indian middlemen are able to offer them at a very reasonable price.
Mixed Visions: Where Is Somali Dress Heading?
Since the climate in Somalia (mostly a desert) is very different from Minnesota,
Somalis have had to be creative about their clothing when the weather turns cold.
A few styles, such as the jilbab, are large enough that a woman can wear a sweater
or even a coat underneath without really changing her appearance. Instead of
wearing a hat, head coverings can be made from warmer fabrics. The lightweight
dirac and garbasaar have presented more of a challenge. Older women, who are
most likely to wear these garments on a daily basis, cover them with cardigans
and scarves, dressing in multiple layers of clothing from different cultures.
Frequently, children and teenagers also wear a mixture of clothing from different cultures. Girls are generally not expected to wear an Islamic head covering until they can decide for themselves (around the time of puberty), but some parents
have their daughters dress this way as early as preschool. One style of khimar that
is easy for children to wear comes prepackaged from the Middle East (see Figure
12.5). This head covering is made from a T-shirtlike fabric and has two piecesa
lace-covered band that fits neatly over the hair and ears, and a longer cone-shaped
piece that fits over the first one and drapes down over the neck and shoulders
(how far depends on the size of the child). Teenage girls wear more elaborate and
fashionable head scarves that can be wrapped and draped around the head and
neck in a number of different ways and pinned back with plastic hijab pins. This
clearly identifies them as Muslims. The rest of their clothing might be a little more
modestand even cleanthan what the average teenager in Minnesota would
wear, but it is definitely American. Many Somali children drift easily between
Somali and English, picking up words from their relatives but also from television
and school. Likewise, their dress flows back and forth between these different
influences, depending on the occasion. Older men have no qualms about combin-

Dressing Somali (Some Assembly Required)

201

ing beards dyed with henna (which is thought to be sunna, a practice associated
with the prophet Mohammed) and other Islamic symbols like the kaffiyeh with
practical Western garments such as parkas and athletic shoes.
In Minnesota, Somalis have also been caught up in debates concerning religious freedom and religious dress. Even before the events of September 11, 2001, a
number of Somalis were assisted in filing discrimination lawsuits over two major
aspects of dress: beards for men and head coverings for women. Many Somalis
are well aware that the U.S. Constitution promises freedom of religion and are
keen to exercise this right. In 2000, a woman who was working at a temporary job
at the post office in downtown St. Paul was fired over dress code issues. With assistance and pressure from the Council on American Islamic Relations, the matter was eventually settled out of court in the womans favor. In some ways this has
opened the door for Somalis to wear garments like the garbasaar and dirac on a
daily basis. If the jilbab is acceptable, then why not other styles of cultural and
religious dress? There is nothing in Somali culture that makes the jilbab more required or traditional. Both became part of Somali dress around the same time
in the 1970s. If the jilbab seems more traditional to outsiders, this is probably
because it resembles the clothing worn by Catholic nuns and religiously conservative women in the Middle East.

Like members of any culture, Somalis have never been in perfect agreement
about how they should dress. Ideas about what is appropriate or desirable have
changed as the lives of Somalis have changedwhether from trade and colonization or from migration to Minnesota. What is rather unique about Somalis is the
range of dress they have chosen to weareverything from three-piece suits and
pillbox hats to the kaffiyeh and jilbab. In Minnesota, I remember watching a family walking to their car. It was autumn, and since the weather was already cold, the
grandmother (who was teaching me about tie-dye) was wearing a garbasaar and
dirac covered with a cardigan and winter coat. Her daughter (who was probably
in her thirties) wore the jilbab. Her grandson (who was definitely a teenager) wore
an oversized button-down shirt, a down-filled jacket with the zipper left open,

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loose jeans, and athletic shoes with the laces untied. Even between these members of the same family, differences in gender and generation were easy to see.
Each person was living out his or her own idea for how Somalis should dress and
express their culture in Minnesotaideas that vary widely based on history and
religious principles as well as personal taste and fashions both inside and outside
the Somali community.

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13

Translating African Textiles into

U.S. Fashion Design
Brenda Winstead and
Damali Afrikan Wear
Les li e W. R ab i n e

Beyond my insistence on impeccable quality in all my garments, the distinguishing feature of Damali Afrikan Wear is our fabrication. From a base of
fine linen, silks, wools, and cotton, our garments are constructed as a collage of
complementary, asymmetric sections of African fabrics. Reminiscent of quilt
making, I view my work as a medium of artistic expression. Many garments
are artistic collaborations between artists, seamstresses, stylists, clients, and
myself all working to create a breathtaking masterpiece.
As an Afrikan in America, the decision to explore and embrace cultures
of Africa is often dismissed as romantic and sentimental. For me it was a matter of logic and necessity, for Africa is undeniably a part of my heritage that
I embrace.
Brenda Winstead, fashion designer and owner of Damali Afrikan Wear

Designer Brenda Winstead sells her beautiful Damali Afrikan Wear through studio, trunk, and art shows. She advertises to her nationwide clientele through photograph postcard invitations. Having received these charming invitations over a
period of ten years, I was curious. How, in this age of the giant discount retailer
and the big box, I asked myself, does she stay in business? So I finally attend my
first show in 2004, at the home of a prominent African American politician in
San Francisco. While the hostess and her assistants model the swirling dresses

of sheer Mauritanian hand-dyed voile in burnt umber with delicate apricot, lime
green with indigo, or peach/orange stripe with dark violet (Figures 13.13), a
steady stream of women come through, and they are not there just to look. They
come to buy, and they are serious. Each client buys several pieces of Brendas upscale garments individually collaged or hand-painted. Many clients are ordering
them to be custom tailored. During my two-hour stay at a show in Oakland, California, six months later, her most lavish new design receives at least four orders.
The costly two-piece gown of saturated red-orange, bias-cut heavy cotton voile,
hand-dyed in Mali, is cleverly pieced together with heavy serging (Figure 13.4). Its
luxurious tiers cascade to the floor in giant asymmetrical handkerchief points. At
the shows, the diminutive designer combines a theatrical presence with infinite
kindness and patience for each of her often anxious clients.
Brendas design work represents the finest accomplishments of U.S. Africaninspired dress. First appearing in the 1970s as the visual expression of a new
African American political awareness, and transformed in the late 1980s into
a mass-produced fashion, African-inspired dress has survived fad status to become a complex style system. During this development, it grew up within the
cross-currents between movements in the U.S. to redefine Black identity and an
economic crisis in Africa that brought to America a new wave of African traders
and immigrants. They introduced to the Black American community the fashion
and textile designs of diverse African continental communities at the same time
that African Americans traveling to the land of their ancestors discovered the immense variety and creativity of West African fabric and fashion. The cross-traffic
created a vibrant informal global network where African immigrant and African
American designers learned and borrowed from each other. They began to adapt
to American tastes and cuts the handwoven Ashanti cloth (or kente) from Ghana, mudcloth (or bogolan) from Mali (Figure 13.5), and the intricately hand-dyed
damasks and voiles from Senegal, Nigeria, Guinea, and Mali.
Within this sartorial world, Brendas Damali Afrikan Wear in Washington,
D.C., stands outand not only for its visual beauty. It merits attention for the
serious and sustained fusion of design creativity, humane business practices, and
grounded social consciousness that, one hopes, can provide a model for the future
of high fashion. Since 1991, Brenda has untiringly put into practice the ideals quoted at the beginning of this essay. Her gift for marrying the rich histories of African American womens quilting and West African textile arts goes hand in hand

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Leslie W. Rabine

with unusual business practices. Whatever the day-to-day stresses of business,

she takes time to treat with respect the textile artists who supply her from Africa,
the seamstresses who sew her fashions, and her clients. The result of her dual insistence on craft and collaboration is a business model that evokes the traditional
womens networks of reciprocity in African American and African communities.
Brenda has persevered with humor and charm through all manner of obstacles to
sustain her ideal as a viable business, and so she has also sustained the original joy
of creativity that started her on this path. As she has written:
If economic exploitation, military force and political manipulation continue as
global currency, Africa will remain in the shadows, and all of our futures will be
uncertain. But if, as I believe, Our Culture is Our Future, then Africa has much
to teach the world about what it means to be a human being on Earth. This is why
I create; this, by the grace of the Creator and the spirit of my ancestors, is the
source of my inspiration. And if this is romance and fantasy, so be it, but I have
no choice but to dance to the song in my heart.

In the illustrations for this essay, I have tried to represent Brendas connection to African culture and the spirit of ancestors and contemporaries by framing
her own fashion photos (by Kim Johnson, www.urbanoasisstudio.com) within
historical images of fashionable West African people from the nineteenth to the
mid-twentieth centuries. In some figures, the Damali models appear to be entering or emerging from the scenes of the African images. The illustrations may appear to harbor a romantic fantasy of an African past, but they challenge common
stereotypes of African people as bound in static tradition and closed communities. The historic images show their subjects keen sense of elegance and sophisticated incorporation of foreign textiles from diverse African, Arab, Asian,
European, and American cultures into their own creation of style.
Figure 13.1 contains an early nineteenth-century watercolor of a signare (elite
mtisse woman of Gore Island or Saint Louis du Sngal) whose outfit incorporates handwoven strip-cloth and imported prints, silks, and laces. In Figure 13.2,
a cloth trader in Senegal in the 1850s carries three different kinds of textiles, one
over each shoulder and one on his head. In Figure 13.3, a photo taken in Saint Louis du Sngal in 1948 shows a young woman in a newly fashionable grand boubou
with a stylish flounce over a flounced under-dress. Figure 13.4 contains a photographed postcard from the early twentieth century of a Senegalese woman in a

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207

fashionable short boubou and handwoven pagne, with a delicate veil adorning her
head. Figure 13.5 includes an image of a Bambara woman in the 1850s wearing a
West African pagne and boubou fabricated of imported silk prints and a head scarf
of imported madras. The Damali photos themselves feature Brenda and friends
who have supported Brenda for many years.
One set of connections between Brendas photos and the figures from the past
involves the mixing of textiles from different cultures. As in Brendas collages,
the historic costumes in the illustrations show their wearers combining local and
foreign textiles. For Brenda, the practice has deep meaning:
As Afrikans born in the Diaspora, we are not constrained by allegiance to any
colonial or post-colonial national identity. As such, we have a unique opportunity
to explore and connect African cultural expressions from diverse regions of the
Continent and further express the notion of what Cheikh Anta Diop called the
Cultural Unity of Africa. I hope that the lessons I have learned from Africa
are expressed well in the garments I create. I hope that by placing Kuba next
to Ashoke, and Adire next to Bogolan, and Adinkra next to . . . , that the spirit
of these great cultures will blend and empower those who wear my garments
with the light to illuminate our future.
The illustrations, which include images of people from these great cultures engaged in their own empowering modes of blending, seek to suggest multifaceted
interactions with the African-inspired designs worn by the Damali models.
Like many U.S. designers of African-inspired fashion, Brendas career began
when she visited Senegal and the Gambia in the late 1980s:
I was just in awe of the colorful fabric and styles. One of the things
that really captivated me was that despite the range of peoples sizes
and shapes, everybody looked wonderful. As I contemplated all this,
I found that the colors and the lines flowing with the body were the
key ingredients that made it possible for everyone to look fantastic.
A virtuosa of color and line, Brenda makes one-of-a-kind, limited-edition, and
many custom-made garments.
In 1992, Brenda met a Malian trader who specialized in textiles from Mali. This
was her introduction to mudcloth:

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Leslie W. Rabine

Figure 13.1. Damali model

wears an ensemble collaged of

Mauritanian stitch-resist handdyed voile and a jacket collaged in
Kuba cloth and upholstery fabric
(photograph by Kim Johnson,
www.urbanoasisstudio.com).
The historical image reproduces
a watercolor by Stanislas Henri
Benoit Darondeau (18071841)
depicting a signare of Saint Louis
du Sngal. Courtesy Centre de
Recherches et de Documentation
du Sngal.

It was love at first sight and the beginning of a long love affair. This was the defining
moment of my business. I decided immediately that I would make coats and jackets
with the fabric. As the handwoven mudcloth came in five-to-six-inch strips sewn
together in a wide variety of methods to make pieces of 1.5 to 2.5 yard widths, I had
to come up with a consistent process of fabrication. I tried many ways to join the
strips, and finally came up with the serging technique. I used the condensed stitch
that normally goes on the inside of a garment to finish the raw seam and put it
on the outside [Figures 13.15].

Translating African Textiles into U.S. Fashion Design

209

Figure 13.2. Model Saundra Lang

wears a Damali ensemble of

repatterned embroidery-resist
dyed Mauritanian voile and a
bolero jacket of repatterned,
machine-woven kente cloth from
Ghana (photograph by Kim
Johnson, www.urbanoasisstudio
.com). The historical lithograph
is a cloth trader in Senegal, drawn
by Senegalese priest David Boilat
in the 1850s. From Esquisses
sngalaises, 1984 [orig. 1853]
Karthala.

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Leslie W. Rabine

Figure 13.3. Brenda Winstead

wears a swing jacket collaged

in tie-dyed and appliqud Kuba
cloth and upholstery fabric;
and a tiered skirt collaged in
Mauritanian stitch-resist handdyed voile (photograph by Kim
Johnson, www.urbanoasisstudio
.com). The historical photograph,
taken by Grard DuChemin, in
Saint Louis du Sngal in 1948,
depicts a fashionable young
Wolof woman wearing one of the
new postwar styles. Courtesy
Centre de Recherches et de
Documentation du Sngal.

Translating African Textiles into U.S. Fashion Design

211

Figure 13.4. Model wears a two-

piece Damali gown of red-orange

cotton voile (photograph by Kim
Johnson, www.urbanoasisstudio
.com). The historical image is a
postcard from the early twentieth
century of a Soninke woman in
Senegal. Archives nationales du
Sngal.

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Leslie W. Rabine

Figure 13.5. Model Geraldine

Thompson wears a two-piece

Damali ensemble collaged in
mudcloth, or bogolanfini, made
by Bambara Malian textile
artist Boubacar Doumbya
(photograph by Kim Johnson,
www.urbanoasisstudio.com). The
historical lithograph is a Bambara
woman drawn by Senegalese
priest David Boilat in the 1850s.
From Esquisses sngalaises, 1984
[orig. 1853] Karthala.

Translating African Textiles into U.S. Fashion Design

213

But what started as the practical solution to a material necessity turned into an
artistic method with multiple applications to fabrics from different African cultures. At first Brenda thought that the serging on the mudcloth would add neatness and a decorative touch, and when people saw it, my business just took off.
In the process of finding the technical solution to working with mudcloth, Brenda
realized that it also allowed me to repattern fabric. The asymmetric repatterning, which takes on new forms with each new season of Damali clothing, contributes to making the fabric into a changing artistic medium.
In addition to transforming mudcloth through her serging, Brenda has increasingly turned to Kuba cloth from the Congo region for collage designs. A handwoven raffia, Kuba is either tie-dyed, appliqud, or embroidered in thick nap. Its
coarse, fragile weave requires, like mudcloth, meticulous craft, creative serging,
and lining. Brenda often mixes Kuba cloth with high-quality upholstery fabric
(see Figures 13.1 and 13.3). Her mudcloth styles have developed as well. Since the
late 1990s, she has sourced much of it from the talented textile artist Boubacar
Doumbya in Sgou, Mali. His work includes the widely disseminated, traditional symbolic motifs, but also very original and arresting giant graphics, in which
blacks and browns separate cleanly from white borders with a haunting line of
shadow between them. In Brendas work, these black and white graphics become
panels serged into collages with black linen on long sweeping gored or mermaid
skirts, swing jackets, and wide-sleeved tunics.
In 2004, Brenda began to apply her vision for repatterning fabric to a handdyed voile by women dyers of Mauritania. They had adapted from Soninke women dyers the techniques of very fine embroidery-resist dyeing traditionally used
for indigo wedding boubous. All the rage in West Africa in 2004, the Mauritanian
designs on a two-by-six-yard piece of voile often embedded tiny stitch-resist motifs in large concentric diamond shaped blocks of bright contrasting or complementary colors. The fabric design is intended for a wrap garment which covers the
body and the head with one long and fairly narrow piece of flowing cloth. Brenda
uses her cutting and serging technique to continue the process of creativity and
transformation carried on by the Mauritanian women dyers. In her one-of-a-kind
asymmetric collages, the center diamond-shaped patterns reappear in an asymmetrical, kaleidoscopic and surprising light (see Figures 13.2 and 13.3).
But not all of Brendas styles show off these spectacular collage effects. In response to her clients expressing their wardrobe needs, she was induced to bring

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into her line a heavy linen and a fine gabardine for chic, basic, custom-made business suits and separates. In professionally decorous black, brown, navy blue, beige,
and cream, the suits are all nonetheless discretely, elegantly, and monochromatically collaged with Damalis signature serging. They are made to be coordinated
with the more fabulous patterned pieces.
As Brenda has developed her art and her business since 1991, Damali Afrikan
Wear has exemplified one of two opposite pathways that grew out of the Africaninspired fashion scene of the 1980s. When the style began in the 1970s, designers
crafted garments at home or in small studios and disseminated them through informal networks. But in one of the two pathways, giant retailers began appropriating the styles. By 1992, J.C. Penney, for example, was having authentic African
fashions cheaply mass-produced in sweatshops in Asia. Although the small-scale
designers, as well as more established African import firms like Homeland and
Sotiba-USA in Manhattan, had brought to birth a renaissance in African American fashion creativity, the mass-produced garments cheapened both the look and
the political meaning of the styles. As a result, Afro-centric fashion as a mass-consumption fad disappeared by the late 1990s. Many small designers were driven out
of business, while some others stopped using African fabrics. But from the demise
of the fad emerged a small group of talented designers freed to expand their creativity and cater to clients for whom the high-quality African textiles continued
to resonate with intimate, powerful meaning. Intrinsic to this designer pathway is
learning firsthand about diverse African cultures. As Brenda has written:
I have long been attracted to African art, sculpture, craft, food, music and cultural tradition as sources of information and inspiration. My embrace of African
fabric is spiritual, seductive and addictive. Infinite in complexity and creation,
the fabric has been teacher and guide. From the fabric I have learned to respect
the cultures that produced it. I have learned humility from my understanding of
the ways in which these cultures are considerably more advanced than our own.

To continue to enhance the looks and meaning of her African-inspired clothes,

Brenda travels often to West Africa, where she deepens her learning about textiles
and her connections with textile artists. As she writes:
I have followed fabric to its source in Ghana, Mauritania, Senegal, the Gambia
and. . . . At each junction, I have been welcomed, instructed, and empowered.

Translating African Textiles into U.S. Fashion Design

215

When you experience the creation of a particular fabric woven, dyed, embroidered, or otherwise brought to life, it ceases to be an object and becomes an essence. It is the embodiment of the lives that formed it, the cultures that inspired
it and the relationships that sustained it along the way.

Through her at once respectful and adventurous repatterning of the fabric, Brenda strives to transmit this embodied essence of living people, cultures, and relationships to her clients.
Her work counters the prevalent American stereotype of African artifacts as
coming from a timeless, homogenous continent immersed in unchanging tradition. She goes, as she said in an interview with me, to investigate . . . what is new
and what is evolving. She commented on the meaning of the fabrics as signifying
not only change through time, but also the immense and rich variety of local arts
in African communities:
Its part of my mission to expose Americans to the rich variety of textiles in Africa.
We havent even touched the tip of the iceberg. . . . Its constantly evolving, and each
year new, exciting colors and patterns emerge. As the hand weaving and dyeing
processes are very labor intensive, I wonder how long the traditions will continue
if the artists dont receive proper compensation. You know its really important to
keep this art and these traditions alive. I try to educate my clients about the fabric.
The effort to educate her clients about African culture forms part and parcel of
Brendas caring relations with them. As with the design and sourcing, sustaining
these relations requires a deep and tireless commitment. When the African-inspired fashion scene took off in the 1980s, designers sold through African American cultural and music festivals, but these have tended to become overwhelmed
by cheap imports and so no longer offer a viable market. Yet Brenda has no interest in selling her dramatic designs through retail stores. Her design mastery,
principled politics, and spirit of interpersonal connection have allowed her to rely
on an informal network of African American women living in major cities from
Washington, D.C., through Atlanta and Chicago, to Los Angeles, Oakland, and
San Francisco. She travels to these cities, and whether she does private showings
or exhibits at an art show, she counts on their support:

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Leslie W. Rabine

To the extent that we have enjoyed success through the years, I believe this is a
reflection of the love, support, and encouragement of family, friends, and customers who have embraced my dreams and shared them as their own. The
journey of Damali has long ago exceeded my initial aspirations and has taken
me to places of wonder and insight that have enriched me beyond description.
In all my interviews and conversations with Brenda, she returns again and
again to admire the marvelous, wonderful women who make up her loyal clientele:
I have been blessed with women who have rah-rahed me on, and who
have really supported my business. . . . I can make a living and I enjoy
it. I know that this is a blessing, and Im thankful for that. But its been
the people along the way who have just done the most incredible things.
She describes her large clientele of mostly African American women as very
grounded in their heritage and their work. During my stay on a very busy few
days in Brendas Washington home/studio, and in all the shows Ive attended (not
to mention my own experience as one of her clients), I noted her charm, her inexhaustible patience with her clients demands, and their deep trust in her commitment to making them look good.
Most noteworthy in this age of global outsourcing are the relations that Brenda
builds with the women who work for her. At various times, one or more women
have worked in her home/studio. Brenda also has a close association with a professional seamstress and patternmaker in Maryland who, in turn, has a small staff
of seamstresses. Brenda has explained to me that her business model emerged
out of a complex set of decisions at the origin of Damali Afrikan Wear. I contemplated the question: What will I produce? And I thought: Let me produce
garments that are unique, high quality, and upscale. This was precisely what she
was not seeing as a consumer. She thought that other people must also be tired of
seeing the same things at mall after mall in city after city. If she desired something
different and more beautiful, then, she reasoned, other people might also desire
it. In addition to aesthetic concerns, Brendas decision was driven by economic
concerns. In an era when mainstream manufacturers were rushing to find the

Translating African Textiles into U.S. Fashion Design

217

cheapest foreign sweatshop labor they could get away with, Brenda just assumed
that my production was going to be in this country, and my labor costs were going to be the U.S. level. It is a remarkable tribute to her business ethics that she
does not find this assumption remarkable. The needs to make a profit and still be
competitive in the U.S. garment industry even with the high cost of handmade
African fabrics and high labor costs cemented Brendas decision to produce dramatically different couture designs.
Beyond her concern to pay well, Brenda also fosters the professional and artistic development of employees. Some of Brendas styles are hand-painted with
various techniques or hand-stamped with adinkra symbols. Some painting is
done by a fabric artist, but Brenda also taught herself to do some of her own painting. She also taught two of the women who worked in her studio. All people have
many talents, and I provide opportunities for their artistic expression. As she
says of one of the employees: She loves it . . . because we all love to paint. Its that
artistic expression in us. In 2005 Brenda began including one of the employees as
a model in her photo shoots because, she said: She is like my daughter. I want her
to have a wide range of experiences.
This employee became the only assistant in Brendas studio when the economic crisis of 2008, along with Brendas decision to travel less, brought about a
reduction in sales. She began working with a marketing consultant in order to restructure part of her business. But through these changes, Brenda remained committed to the business practices of which she was a pioneer long before they were
called fair trade and green enterprise. Her artistic vision expanded as her line
began to include her own hand-dyed cloth.
Through Brendas relation to her employees, her customers, her sourcing artists, and her own art and craft, Damali Afrikan Wear turns mainstream U.S.
fashion inside-out. At a time when well-known labels like Ralph Lauren, Calvin
Klein, or Donna Karan direct their business toward marketing logos and fantasy
life-style rather than concerning themselves with challenging design standards,
meticulous and innovative craft, or the ethical issues of production, Damali fashions stand out. They are certainly visually challengingtheatrical, fantastical,
and spectacular. But at the same time they are also wearable and comfortable,
both physically and psychologically. To that rare combination, Damali adds a
third term: the glamour, often associated with the Harlem Renaissance, for which

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African Americans are famous. But even in this respect, Damali fashion also deviates from the norm, by visually linking in its advertising photos glamorous hauteur with a spirit of warm and inclusive sisterhood.
As a person who never imagined herself pulling off a glamorous, theatrical
look, I gradually came to find all these meanings in Damali fashions. When I wear
the pieces, the material garment envelops me with the sense of a costume that is
beautiful, festive, comfortable, extremely well made, and infused with fond memories of a collective production in which even I play a part. Brendas work, then,
turns fashion inside-out in yet another way. It destabilizes the mainstream fashion boundaries that have pigeon-holed diasporic African style for Black women
only. Brendas fashions can be seen not as a side category to mainstream style,
but as overarching it and bridging ethnic bordersto young Latina women who
model for her, to white women (like me), and to anyone really who seeks beauty,
craft, and ethical production as intrinsic to the pleasure of fashion.

Translating African Textiles into U.S. Fashion Design

219

F u r t h e r

R e a d i n g s

Foreword
Akou, Heather Marie. 2007. Building a New World Fashion: Islamic Dress in the 21st Century. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body, and Culture 11(4): 40321.
Blumer, Herbert. 1969. Fashion: From Class Differentiation to Social Selection.
Sociological Quarterly 10: 27591.
Eicher, Joanne B., and Barbara Sumberg. 1995. World Fashion, Ethnic, and National Dress.
In Dress and Ethnicity: Change across Space and Time, ed. Joanne B. Eicher, pp. 295306.
Oxford: Berg.
Potvin, John, ed. 2009. The Places and Spaces of Fashion, 18002007. New York:
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Simmel, Georg. 1971 [1904]. Fashion. In On Individuality and Social Forms, ed.
Donald Levine, pp. 294323. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Stone, Gregory P. 1962. Appearance and the Self. In Human Behavior and the Social Processes: An Interactionist Approach, ed. Arnold M. Rose, pp. 86116. New York: Houghton
Mifflin.
Tortora, Phyllis G., and Keith Eubank. 2009. Survey of Historic Costume. 5th ed.
New York: Fairchild.

Introduction
Allman, Jean, ed. 2004. Fashioning Africa: Power and the Politics of Dress. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Arnoldi, Mary Jo, and Christine Mullen Kreamer, eds. 1995. Crowning Achievements:
African Arts of Dressing the Head. Los Angeles: Fowler Museum of Cultural History.
Beckwith, Carol, and Marion van Offelen. 1983. Nomads of Niger. New York: Harry N.
Abrams.
Bickford, Kathleen E. 1997. Everyday Patterns: Factory-Printed Cloth of Africa. Kansas City:
University of MissouriKansas City.
Blauer, Ettagale. 1999. African Elegance. London: New Holland.
Brand, Jan, and Jos Teunissen, eds. 2006. Global Fashion, Local Tradition: On the Globalisation of Fashion. Arnhem, The Netherlands: Uitgeverij Terra Lannoo BV.
Courtney-Clarke, Margaret. 1987. Ndebele: The Art of an African Tribe. New York: Rizzoli.
Eicher, Joanne B., ed. 1995. Dress and Ethnicity: Change across Space and Time. Oxford: Berg.

Eicher, Joanne B., and Doran Ross, eds. 2010. Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion.
Volume 1, Africa. Oxford: Berg.
Fall, Sokhna, and Fabien de Cugnac. 1998. Sduire: Cinq Leons Sngalaises. Paris: ditions
Alternatives.
Fisher, Angela. 1984. Africa Adorned. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
Gardi, Bernhard. 2000. Le Boubou Cest Chic: Les Boubous du Mali et dAutres Pays de
lAfrique de lOuest. Basel, Switzerland: ditions Christoph Merian.
Geoffroy-Schneiter, Brnice. 2001. Parures Ethniques: Le Culte de la Beaut. Paris: Assouline.
. 2005. LAfrique est la mode. Paris: Assouline.
Hansen, Karen Tranberg. 2000. Salaula: The World of Secondhand Clothing and Zambia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hendrickson, Hildi, ed. 1996. Clothing and Difference: Embodied Identities in Colonial and
Post-Colonial Africa. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Kalman, Tibor, and Maira Kalman. 2000. (Un)Fashion. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
Kennett, Frances, and Caroline MacDonald-Haig. 1995. Ethnic Dress: A Comprehensive
Guide to the Folk Costume of the World. New York: Facts on File.
Lehman, Ulrich. 2000. TigerSprung: Fashion in Modernity. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Luttman, Ilsemargret, ed. 2005. Mode in Afrika: Mode als Mittel der Selbstinszenierung und
Ausdruck der Moderne. Hamburg: Museum fr Vlkerkunde Hamburg.
Manservisi, Michela. 2003. African Style: Stilisti, Moda e Design Nel Continente Nero. Rome:
Cooper srl.
Mendy-Ongoundou, Rene. 2002. lgances Africaines: Tissus Traditionels et Mode Contemporaine. Paris: ditions Alternatives.
ModeMuseumThe Fashion Museum. 2005. Beyond Desire. Gent: Ludion.
Perani, Judith, and Norma H. Wolff. 1999. Cloth, Dress and Art Patronage in Africa. Oxford:
Berg.
Picton, John, ed. 1995. The Art of African Textiles: Technology, Tradition and Lurex. London:
Lund Humphries.
Rabine, Leslie W. 2002. The Global Circulation of African Fashion. Oxford: Berg.
Revue Noire. 1998. Special issue on Fashion, Revue Noire 27. Paris: Editions Revue Noire.
Roach-Higgins, Mary Ellen, Joanne B. Eicher, and Kim K. P. Johnson, eds. 1995. Dress and
Identity. New York: Fairchild Publications.
Rovine, Victoria L. 2004. Working the Edge: XULY.Bts Recycled Clothing. In Old
Clothes, New Looks: Second-Hand Fashion, ed. Alexandra Palmer and Hazel Clark, pp.
21527. Oxford: Berg.
. 2009. Viewing Africa through Fashion. In African Fashion/African Style, ed.
Victoria L. Rovine. Special issue, Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body, and Culture
13(2): 13340. Oxford: Berg.
Saitoti, Tepilit Ole, and Carol Beckwith. 1990. Maasai. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
Tulloch, Carol, ed. 2004. Black Style. London: V&A.
Van der Plas, Els, and Marlous Willemsen, eds. 1998. The Art of African Fashion. Trenton,
N.J.: Africa World Press.

222

Further Readings

The Ghanaian Kaba

Boelman, V. J., and F. L. van Holthoon. 1973. African Dress in Ghana. Kroniek Van Afrika
(Leiden) 3: 23658.
Gott, Suzanne. 2009. Asante Hightimers and the Fashionable Display of Womens Wealth
in Contemporary Ghana. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body, and Culture 13(2):
14176.
Manuh, Takyiwaa. 1998. Diasporas, Unities, and the Marketplace: Tracing Changes in
Ghanaian Fashion. Journal of African Studies 16(1): 1319.
Steiner, Christopher B. 1985. Another Image of Africa: Toward an Ethnohistory of European Cloth Marketed in West Africa, 18731960. Ethnohistory 32(2): 91110.
Wass, Betty M., and S. Modupe Broderick. 1979. The Kaba Sloht. African Arts 12(3): 6265,
96.

The Visual City

Andrewes, Janet. 2005. Bodywork, Dress as Cultural Tool: Dress and Demeanor in the South of
Senegal. Leiden: Brill.
Grabski, Joanna. 2003. Dakars Urban Landscapes: Locating Modern Art and Artists in the
City. African Arts 36(4): 2839, 93.
. 2009. Making Fashion in the City: A Case Study of Tailors and Designers in Dakar, Senegal. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body, and Culture 13(2): 21542.
Harney, Elizabeth. 2004. In Senghors Shadow: Art, Politics, and the Avant-Garde in Senegal,
19601995. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Mustapha, Hudita Nura. 2001. Ruins and Spectacles: Fashion and City Life in Contemporary Senegal. NKA 15 (Fall/Winter): 4753.
Sy, Oumou. 2002. Ideas Have No Boundaries: Interview with Wolfgang Kos, 2000. Flash
Afrique: Photography from West Africa, ed. Gerald Matt and Thomas Miessgang, pp.
3236. London: Steidl and Thames and Hudson.

Secondhand Clothing and Fashion in Africa

Haggblade, Steven. 1990. The Flip Side of Fashion: Used Clothing Exports to the Third
World. Journal of Development Studies 29(3): 50521.
Hansen, Karen Tranberg. 2000. Salaula: The World of Secondhand Clothing and Zambia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
. 2000. Other Peoples Clothes? The International Second-Hand Clothing Trade
and Dress Practices in Zambia. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body, and Culture
4(3): 24574.
. 2004. Helping or Hindering? Controversies around the International SecondHand Clothing Trade. Anthropology Today 20(4): 39.
Palmer, Alexandra, and Hazel Clark, eds. 2004. Old Clothes, New Looks: Second-Hand Fashion. Oxford: Berg.
Rivoli, Pietra. 2005. The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines
the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons.

Further Readings

223

Fashion, Not Weather

Hansen, Karen Tranberg. 1999. Second-Hand Clothing Encounters in Zambia: Global Discourses, Western Commodities, and Local Histories. Africa 69(3): 34365.
. 2000. Salaula: The World of Secondhand Clothing and Zambia. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.

Contemporary Wedding Fashions in Lagos, Nigeria

Ingraham, Chrys. 1999. White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture. New
York: Routledge.
Mann, Kristin. 1985. Marrying Well: Marriage, Status and Social Change among the Educated
Elite in Colonial Lagos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Perani, Judith, and Norma H. Wolff. 1999. Cloth, Dress and Art Patronage in Africa. Oxford:
Berg.
Renne, Elisha. 1995a. Becoming a Bunu Bride: Bunu Ethnic Identity and Traditional Marriage Dress. In Dress and Ethnicity, ed. Joanne B. Eicher, pp. 11737. Oxford: Berg.
. 1995b. Cloth That Does Not Die: The Meaning of Cloth in Bunu Social Life. Seattle:
University of Washington Press.
Suga, Masami. 2003. Packaged in Japan: Elite Weddings in Osaka. In Wedding Dress across
Cultures, ed. Helen B. Foster and Donald C. Johnson, pp. 3951. Oxford: Berg.

African Fashion
Allman, Jean, ed. 2004. Fashioning Africa: Power and the Politics of Dress. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Brand, Jan, and Jos Teunissen, eds. 2006. Global Fashion, Local Tradition: On the Globalisation of Fashion. Arnhem, The Netherlands: Uitgeverij Terra Lannoo BV.
Hendrickson, Hildi, ed. 1996. Clothing and Difference: Embodied Identities in Colonial and
Post-Colonial Africa. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Klopper, Sandra. 2003. From Adornment to Artefact to Art: Historical Perspectives on
South-East African Beadwork. In South-East African Beadwork, 18501910: From Adornment to Artefact to Art, ed. Michael Stevenson and Michael Graham-Stewart, pp. 845.
Vlaeburg, South Africa: Fernwood Press.
Rabine, Leslie W. 2002. The Global Circulation of African Fashion. Oxford: Berg.
Rovine, Victoria L. 2004. Working the Edge: XULY.Bts Recycled Clothing. In Old
Clothes, New Looks: Second-Hand Fashion, ed. Alexandra Palmer and Hazel Clark, pp.
21527. Oxford: Berg.
. 2008. Bogolan: Shaping Culture through Cloth in Contemporary Mali. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
. ed. 2009. African Fashion/African Style. Special issue, Fashion Theory: The Journal
of Dress, Body, and Culture 13(2). Oxford: Berg.
Steiner, Christopher B. 1985. Another Image of Africa: Toward an Ethnohistory of European Cloth Marketed in West Africa, 1873-1960. Ethnohistory 32(2): 91110.

224

Further Readings

Using the Past to Sculpt the Costume of the Future

Gardi, Bernard. 2000. Le BoubouCest Chic: Les Boubous du Mali et dAutres Pays de
lAfrique de lOuest. Basel, Switzerland: ditions Christoph Merian.
Goldner, Janet. 2002. The Language of Beads: An Interview with Kandioura Coulibaly.
Beadwork Magazine 5(3): 3235.
Goldner, Janet, and Kletigui Dembele. The Groupe Bogolan Kasoban. http://www
.uiowa.edu/~africart/toc/contemporary/groupe1.html.
Gumpert, Lynn, ed. 2008. The Poetics of Cloth: African Textiles / Recent Art. New York: Grey
Art Gallery, New York University.

Intersecting Creativities
Mustapha, Hudita Nura. 1998. Sartorial Ecumenes: African Styles in a Social and Economic Context. In The Art of African Fashion, ed. Els Van der Plas and Marlous Willemsen,
pp. 1348. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press.
. 2001a. Oumou Sy: The African Place, Dakar, Senegal. NKA 15 (Fall/Winter):
4446.
. 2001b. Ruins and Spectacles: Fashion and City Life in Contemporary Senegal.
NKA 15 (Fall/Winter): 4753.
Sy, Oumou. 2002. Ideas Have No Boundaries: Interview with Wolfgang Kos, 2000. In
Flash Afrique: Photography from West Africa, ed. Gerald Matt and Thomas Miessgang, pp.
3236. London: Steidl and Thames and Hudson.

From Cemetery to Runway

Green, Rebecca L. 2009. Conceptions of Identity and Tradition in Highland Malagasy
Clothing. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body, and Culture 13(2): 177214.
Kreamer, Christine Mullen, and Sarah Fee, eds. 2002. Objects as Envoys: Cloth, Imagery, and
Diplomacy in Madagascar. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution National Museum
of African Art.
Mack, John. 1986. Madagascar: Island of the Ancestors. London: British Museum.
Pivin, Jean Loup. 1997. Jol Andrianomearisoa: The War of the Senses. Revue Noire 26:
67.
. 2001. Jol Andrianomearisoa. Revue Noire 35.

La Sape Exposed!
Friedman, Jonathan. 1990. The Political Economy of Elegance: An African Cult of Beauty.
Culture and History 7: 10125.
Gondola, Ch. Didier. 1999. Dream and Drama: The Search for Elegance among Congolese
Youth. African Studies Review 42(1): 2348.
. 2004. Sapeurs. Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion. New York: Charles Scribners
Sons.

Further Readings

225

MacGaffey, Janet, and Rmy Bazenguissa-Ganga. 2000. Congo-Paris: Transnational Traders

on the Margins of the Law. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Martin, Phyllis.1994. Contesting Clothes in Colonial Brazzaville. Journal of African History 35: 40126.
. 1995. Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

Have ClothWill Travel

Boateng, Boatema. 2004. African Textiles and the Politics of Diasporic Identity-Making.
In Fashioning Africa: Power and the Politics of Dress, ed. Jean Allman, pp. 21263. Bloomington: Indiana University Press
Brand, Jan, and Jos Teunissen, eds. 2006. Global Fashion, Local Tradition: On the Globalisation of Fashion. Arnhem, The Netherlands: Uitgeverij Terra Lannoo BV.
Luttman, Ilsemargret, ed. 2005. Mode in Afrika: Mode als Mittel der Selbstinszenierung und
Ausdruck der Moderne. Hamburg: Museum fr Vlkerkunde Hamburg.
Rabine, Leslie W. 2002. The Global Circulation of African Fashion. Oxford: Berg.
Roach-Higgins, Mary Ellen, Joanne B. Eicher, and Kim K. P. Johnson, eds. 1995. Dress and
Identity. New York: Fairchild Publications.
Tulloch, Carol, ed. 2004. Black British Style. London: V&A.

Dressing Somali (Some Assembly Required)

Akou, Heather Marie. 2004. Nationalism without a Nation: Understanding the Dress of
Somali Women in Minnesota. In Fashioning Africa: Power and the Politics of Dress, ed.
Jean Allman, pp. 5063. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
. 2007. More than Costume History: Dress in Somali Culture. In Dress Sense: Emotional and Sensory Experience of the Body and Clothes, ed. Donald Clay Johnson and Helen
Bradley Foster, pp. 1622. Oxford: Berg.
. 2008. Documenting the Origins of Somali Folk Dress: Evidence from the
Bonaparte Collection. Dress 33: 719.
Barnes, Virginia Lee, and Janice Boddy. 1994. Aman: The Story of a Somali Girl. New York:
Vintage.
Berns McGown, Rima. 1999. Muslims in the Diaspora: The Somali Communities of London
and Toronto. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Translating African Textiles into U.S. Fashion Design

Brydon, Anne, and Sandra Niessen. 1988. Consuming Fashion: Adorning the Transnational
Body. Oxford: Berg.
Picton, John, ed. 1995. The Art of African Textiles: Technology, Tradition, and Lurex. Barbican
Art Gallery. London: Lund Humphries.
Rabine, Leslie W. 2002. The Global Circulation of African Fashion. Oxford: Berg.

226

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C o n t r i b u t i n g

A u t h o r s

Heather Marie Akou is Assistant Professor in the Department of Apparel Merchandising and Interior Design at Indiana University Bloomington. She is author of Nationalism without a Nation: Understanding the Dress of Somali Women in Minnesota, in
Fashioning Africa: Power and the Politics of Dress (Indiana University Press, 2004) and
she has contributed several entries on Islamic dress to the Encyclopedia of Clothing and
Fashion.
Elisabeth L. Cameron is Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art
and Visual Culture at University of California, Santa Cruz. Her publications include The
Art of the Lega and Isnt S/He a Doll? Play and Ritual in African Sculpture.
Janet Goldner is an independent artist in New York City. She co-curated the Malian
Groupe Bogolan Kasobanes 1998 exhibition at the Walter Reade Theatre Gallery at New
Yorks Lincoln Center. In 2009 she was selected for a Fulbright Specialists project in Bamako, Mali, at Balla Fasseke Kouyat Conservatory of Arts and Multimedia.
Didier Gondola is Professor in the Department of History at Indiana UniversityPurdue University Indianapolis. He is author of Villes miroirs: Migrations et identits urbaines
Kinshasa et Brazzaville, 19301970 and editor (with Charles Tshimanga and Peter J.
Bloom) of Frenchness and the African Diaspora: Identity and Uprising in Contemporary
France (Indiana University Press, 2009).
Suzanne Gott is Assistant Professor in the Department of Critical Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. Her work includes Asante High-Timers and the
Fashionable Display of Womens Wealth in Contemporary Ghana in the journal Fashion
Theory and The Power of Touch: Womens Waist Beads in Ghana in Dress Sense: Emotional and Sensory Experiences of the Body and Clothes.
Joanna Grabski is Associate Professor in the Art Department at Denison University.
Her work includes Dakars Urban Landscapes: Locating Modern Art and Artists in the

City in the journal African Arts and Making Fashion in the City: A Case Study of Tailors and Designers in Dakar, Senegal in the journal Fashion Theory.
Rebecca L. Green is Associate Professor and Chair of Art History at the School of Art,
Bowling Green State University. Her publications include Betsileo Textiles: Negotiating Identity between the Living and the Dead, in Unwrapping a Little-Known Textile
Tradition and Conceptions of Identity and Tradition in Highland Malagasy Clothing
in the journal Fashion Theory.
Karen Tranberg Hansen is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University. Her publications include Salaula: The World of Secondhand Clothing and
Zambia and Youth and the City in the Global South (Indiana University Press, 2008).
Kristyne Loughran is an independent scholar in Florence, Italy. Her publications include Jewelry, Fashion, and Identity: The Tuareg Example in the journal African Arts
and Art of Being Tuareg: Sahara Nomads in a Modern World, which she edited with Thomas K. Seligman.
Hudita Nura Mustafa is a McMillan-Stewart Fellow at Harvard University. Her publications include Ruins and Spectacles: Fashion and City Life in Senegal (in NKA Journal
for African Contemporary Art) and Sartorial Ecumenes, in The Art of African Fashion.
Leslie W. Rabine is Professor Emerita of Womens Studies and French at the University
of California, Davis. Her publications include The Global Circulation of African Fashion
and Creating Beauty across Borders, in Mode in Afrika.
Elisha P. Renne is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. Her publications
include Cloth That Does Not Die: The Meaning of Cloth in Bunu Social Life and The Politics
of Polio in Northern Nigeria (Indiana University Press, 2010).
Victoria L. Rovine is Associate Professor in the Departments of Art History and African Studies at the University of Florida. Her publications include Bogolan: Shaping Culture through Cloth in Contemporary Mali (Indiana University Press, 2008) and Working the Edge: XULY.Bts Recycled Clothing, in Old Clothes, New Looks: Second-Hand
Fashion.

228

Contributing Authors