Standing before the people of Ghana to declare his nation’s independence from the British Empire, Kwame Nkrumah chose to ditch the bespoke Savile Row suits he usually wore in public. Instead, he wore the traditional West African kente cloth, adding sartorial elegance to his eloquent speech.
Nkrumah’s mid-century fashion statement provides a fitting preamble to a remarkable new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert, one of the museums where the British once denigrated African achievement. African fashion features spectacular outfits from forty-five of the continent’s leading designers – from Shade Thomas-Fahm to Chris Seydou to Thebe Magugu – but it’s more than a simple showcase of their ingenuity, because African clothing holds more than just show in its folds Theirs. Although clothing everywhere functions as a form of communication, Africa is particularly notable for its depth of significance and long history of misunderstanding by outsiders.
Nelson Mandela ANC Commemorative Cloth, South Africa, 1991. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The meaning woven into kente is characteristic of the communicative power and subtlety found in clothing across Africa – from Johannesburg to Bamako – and Kwame Nkrumah was a communicator par excellence. On the night he declared Ghana’s independence, he wore a model called The art is over, which means “I have done my best.” Six years ago, when his party first advanced in the elections and he was released from prison, the clothes he chose had a pattern known as INJURY, which means “something that hasn’t happened before”. In both cases, the geometric designs Nkrumah chose were Asante and bore the insignia of royalty because the kente was historically worn exclusively by Asante chiefs. When appearances mattered most, Ghana’s first future president knew that Savile Row tailoring was too sketchy.
As curator Roslyn A. Walker notes in her essay on African fashion The catalog is just one of “hundreds, if not thousands” of textiles found on the world’s second most populous continent. Some of them are immediately readable to anyone from Europe or North America, at least in general terms. For example, commemorative clothes are common across Africa, commercially printed to celebrate events such as Nelson Mandela’s release or Barack Obama’s visit to Kenya. The cotton fabric is usually screen printed with pictures and flags, overlaid with text to reinforce the message.
Design by Chris Seydou. © Nabil Zorkot
Other textile designs are so private that their full meaning can only be known to the person wearing them. This is especially the case with bògòlanfini, otherwise known as mud cloth, because the ornate fabric is dyed with iron-rich fermented mud. Dating back at least ten centuries and primarily associated with the Bamana of Mali, the bògòlanfini was traditionally worn by women during rites of passage, providing protection to the wearer. The hand-drawn patterns look geometric, but are actually made up of symbols representing animals, places and figures from mythology. While this vocabulary is widely known within the community, the significance embedded in their combination is as personal as a dream.
You wouldn’t know it if you saw Oscar de la Renta’s Spring/Summer 2008 collection, which featured bògòlanfini-inspired patterns printed on fashionable dresses and skirts. You probably wouldn’t understand the Basmana cosmology from the patterning of the mud cloths on the tapestries imported from China. In fact, the designs would be equally inscrutable to someone from Mali, as the similarities to traditional textiles are purely stylistic. Nothing is being communicated.
The curators of African fashion are sensitive to the dynamics of cultural appropriation. In her impassioned prologue to the catalog, playwright Bonnie Greer calls appropriation an act of erasure, in the same way as slavery and colonization. “They are the ultimate grand effort to recreate and forget,” she writes.
But although appropriation has been widely condemned, very few attempts have been made to define it and distinguish it from positive cultural exchange. The trivialization of bògòlanfini stands as a good example of erasure because it ignores meaning and denies meaning. Cultural illiteracy is an insult – and often an attack.
No one would argue that every African designer approaches heritage with the diligence of a scholar. The art is over it doesn’t always mean “I did my best”. What matters is that the current clothes designed and made in Africa are created in dialogue with the past, as are many clothes originating from the African diaspora by designers such as Virgil Abloh.
People who do not share a particular nationality or background can also enter these dialogues if their commitment is genuine. Cultural exchange is the opposite of erasure. African fashion it invites countless new conversations.
