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Explore some of the continent’s textiles, headdresses and hair, and jewelry and beadwork in this selection of free content.
In previous Featured Content, we have looked at the ‘Big Four’ western Fashion Cities (New York, Milan, London, and Paris), and at East Asian Fashion, with a focus on China, Japan and South Korea. Now, we turn to look at the fashion of Africa.
Africa is not a small region: the continent contains 1.2 billion people, over 50 countries, and between 1,250 and 2,100 different languages/dialects are spoken. Needless to say, we will not be able to cover everything here. Instead, we will be focusing on textiles, headdresses and hair, as well as jewelry and beadwork.
Take a look at Africa and the Middle East from Going Global: The Textile and Apparel Industry, which introduces the key lexicons you will need to know when looking at fashion in the region, as well as providing a political and economic overview. For example, in East Africa, explore how the domestic market was impacted by an influx of second-hand clothing from the US. This chapter also explores the reasons why cotton is a primary agricultural export for many Sub-Sarahan countries, but only a small amount is processed in the region and those factories are largely controlled by foreign interests.
Dive further into African Dress with this five-week lesson plan, exploring its history, the use of textiles, regional styles, and contemporary fashion.
Content included here is free to access until end of October.
Textiles
Take a look at Cloth and Dress as a Mirror of Culture in Africa, which describes cloth as “the most important two-dimensional artform in Africa”. Flexible and portable, its design can carry hidden meanings. A particular type of cloth or dress item can visually portray the wearer's gender, social status, political office, allegiance to a deity or personal prestige.
Part of a man’s sash shows the detail and colour of a work from 1850s Tunisia. This item would have been folded and wound around a man’s waist, the folds creating space to hold small objects as needed. In contrast, a Woman’s Shawl from the same country in the early 20th century includes different detailing and colouring. The pattern here shows the village it was made in and echoes designs used in Amazigh jewellery and tattoos.
Born to shine: Fashionable practices of refining and wearing textiles in Dakar, from Fashioning the Afropolis, looks at present day Dakar, where fabrics still function as ‘social skin’. To keep up with, and stay ahead of, trends, second-hand clothes are manipulated, cut and recombined en masse - while imported damask is altered to fit local styles.
In what other ways are African fashion design and construction techniques changing? The Mbuti are famous for their painted bark cloth, historically used in clothing and bedding, now they are almost exclusively produced for the art market. Mbuti (BaMbuti) Bark Cloth covers how it was made, and how the craft has been impacted by external interests. Similarly, Fact, Fabrication and Material Misreading: The Genealogy of “Authentic African Print Fabric” looks at Sotiba factory wax print fabric and its history, asking ‘what is authentic?’
Headdresses and Hair
“More than fashion statements, they [hats and hairstyles] serve as significant cultural indices. Headwear can mark the wearer’s ethnic identity and social status.” Headdresses and Hairdos.
Braided hair dates back thousands of years; in fact, historians believe people in Africa have been braiding hair since at least 3,500 BCE. Braiding looks at this practical, as well as aesthetically pleasing, and socially meaningful practice.
Headwear also serves a protective function, primarily from the weather, and differs to match local climates. Different headwear can represent religion, political and social status as well as life stages. Africa from Hats and Headwear around the World, looks at the significance of headwear on the continent and how behaviours have changed with colonisation and globalisation.
Masquerade, Theater, Dance Costumes delves into the art of African masquerades. The masker’s mask, while centred on a face (mask and headpiece), includes other elements too. Together these serve as a method to create and help organize values and knowledge.
Styles of headdresses vary greatly to match the time, place, and individual. From the beaded coronet (Ori-ko-gbo-ofo) of the Yoruba peoples in Nigeria, to the Fohola (hat) worn as part of a festival outfit for a man from the Ivory Coast, and everything in between and beyond.
Jewelry and Beadwork
“Beads are global in distribution, and many of their technologies, uses, and trade intertwine through time.” Beads: Prehistory to Early Twenty-First Century.
Communities have long manufactured beads for ritual, exchange, and decorative purposes (Beads and Beadwork). Explore how, in Morocco, deliberately perforated Nassarius marine shells were manufactured eighty-two thousand years ago, while the earliest record of ostrich-eggshell beads is more than forty thousand years ago, in Kenya.
Bead making can also be restricted by gender. Gender in African Beadwork: An Overview explains that iron, brass, silver or gold beads were most often made by men as it was believed women of child-bearing age should stay clear of metal-smelting. While in in Mali and Mauritania filigree golden jewellery and powder-glass ‘Kiffa’ beads were made by women.
As with cloth and hair, beads can serve as social signifiers. Beaded and Bedecked Kalabari of Nigeria details the use of bead fastenings and jewellery to denote rank. These are passed down and cared for as part of family genealogy and identity. Similarly, the jewelry worn by a Hamer woman from Ethiopia in this photograph shows her status as a wife.
Jewellery also emphasises cultural ideals of beauty and enhances gestures and movements. For example, young Wodaabe women display heavy brass anklets known as jabo, which make their hips swing when they walk. Other items make noise with movement as these Woman's Earrings would.
Colonisation led to many looking down on aspects of their heritage. The 2019 Kenyan census found that only a handful of tribes still appreciate their beadwork. #Ownyourculture: Decolonizing Fashion Through Traditional Jewellery covers a movement to encourage Kenyans to embrace their heritage through styling with traditional accessories. The author’s research also shows how styles have travelled and been adapted over time.
We would like to thank Frederica Brooksworth for reviewing this piece. She is Regional Editor for Africa on Bloomsbury Fashion Business Cases, and Curator of African and African diasporic fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A).
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