Fashion Theory, Volume 13, Issue 2, pp.

133-140
DOI: 10.2752/175174109X414240
Reprints available directly from the Pubiisiners.
Piiotocopying permitted by licence only.
© 2009 Berg.

Viewing Africa
Victoria L. Rovine through Fashion
Victoria Rovine is an assistant The articles gathered here explore the garments that are produced at
professor at the University of the intersection of two subjects that have only recently been addressed
Florida, in the School of Art
and Art History and the Center together: Africa and fashion. The authors address multiple aspects of
for African Studies. Her booi< Africa's production of and engagement with fashion, documenting local
Bogolan: Shaping Culture through markets and transnational influences, encompassing garments designed
doth in Contemporary Mali was
republished in 2008 (Indiana by Africans as well as African styles created by non-Africans. Taken as
University Press). Her current a whole, these articles offer rich insights into local identities and global
research focuses on African fashion markets, creativity and tradition, the movement of styles, and the re-
designers in giobal mari<ets.
vrovine@africa.ufl.edu shaping of meanings.
A small but growing literature is beginning to address the work of
Africa's haute couture fashion designers, including van der Pias and
134 Victoria L. Rovine

Willemsen (1998), Revue Noire (1997-8), Mendy-Ongoundou (2002),

Mustafa (2002), Geoffroy-Schneiter (2005), and Rovine (2004). Other
recent work has explored specific local markets for clothing design in
Africa, revealing the degree to which these practices reflect creative
change over time—the hallmark of fashion. This analysis of local design
practices is exemplified by Rabine (2002), Bastian (1996), Gondola
(1999), Hansen (2000), Picton (1995), Renne (1995), Rovine (2008),
and Perani and Wolf (1999), and several pieces in the edited volume
Allman (2004). All demonstrate the complexity of local fashion produc-
tion, many explore the diverse aesthetic, economic, social, and political
forces at work in the production and marketing of changing styles.
African fashion appears in the global. Western-dominated realm of
haute couture as well as in indigenous fashion economies, where de-
signers may draw frorn international styles yet remain distinctly local.
Fashion is difficult to define in a global context, requiring a negotia-
tion of the slippery territory between practices classified as "African"
and categories associated with the Western cultures. Fashion is usually
associated with a particular market for modern. Western garments,
beginning in mid-nineteenth-century Paris and since then centered in
that city, in Milan, and in New York. Africa, and other non-Western
sites, has no place in this conception of fashion, except as an occasional
source of inspiration. As Niessen has asserted, a reassessment of this
conception of fashion is long overdue: "A great divide between the stud-
ies of Western fashion/clothing processes and the universal phenomenon
of dress/adornment still obtains. As a result, global dress events of pro-
found implication for fashion theory are kept either hidden or barred
from scrutiny" (Niessen 2003: 250).
Temporality is central in this division between Western and non-
Western dress practices, epitomized by the all too prevalent discussion
of non-Western dress in terms of an "ethnographic present" as opposed
to the "perpetual future" associated with Western fashion's continual
rush to the next season. In but one example of this tendency, a reporter
for the New York Times breezily noted the absence of changing dress
styles in one rural Kenyan community, where British scouts for a mod-
eling agency were looking for likely prospects: "Orma girls grow up
wearing flip-flops, not heels. Their fashion is the same every season:
colorful robes that billow with the breeze and shield virtually every bit
of flesh" (Lacey 2003: 2). By declaring their dress to be unchanging,
this reporter implicitly excludes Orma attire from the realm of fashion.
Yet Joanne Eicher, whose research on African dress practices has been
in the forefront of non-Western fashion studies, notes: "Fashion is, after
all, about change, and change happens in every culture because human
beings are creative and flexible" (Eicher 2001: 17). Recognizing the his-
tories and networks out of which change emerges is key to the analyses
presented here, placing these garments within the contexts that trans-
form them from clothing into fashion.
 Viewing Africa through Fashion 135

That African dress has changed over time is clearly evident, even
if those changes have never heen explored in terms of fashion. The
Western influence on African clothing has heen well documented, and
often characterized as a "loss" of Africa's traditional cultures in the face
of overpowering Westernization or Glohalization (the two terms are
often used interchangeably). A clear example of this rhetoric of loss can
be found in Angela Fisher's immensely popular and lavishly illustrated
book, Africa Adorned. Over the course of her many visits to Africa,
she noted the disappearance of "some outstanding styles of jewelry and
dress," and she found that groups whose "cultural and moral frame-
work is still strong" were able to resist transformation from traditional
to Western dress (Fisher 1984: 9-10).' While certainly the drive to colo-
nize and convert Africans led to coerced or forced adoption of Western
clothing, it is important to recognize that the presence of Western styles
in Africa today often constitutes a creative adaptation rather than a
capitulation.
By exploring the movement of clothing forms between African and
Western cultures—exchanges that flow in both directions—the articles
in this special issue demonstrate the inadequacy of the "change as loss"
model. Many of the styles of clothing that are produced in Africa's highly
internationalized urban centers draw from diverse sources, enriching
rather than impoverishing their distinctly African styles. As is the case
everywhere, African designers and consumers draw forms and styles
from outside their immediate orbit, making these forms their own. As
Hendrickson notes, the identities associated with clothing may shift as
garments and styles travel: "When we see Africans using our products to
create their identities—and vice versa—we learn that the meaning of body
or commodity is not inherent but is in fact symbolically created and con-
tested by both producers and consumers" (Hendrickson 1986: 1-16).

African Fashion/Africa as Fashion

Our examination of Africa's role in fashion production is particu-

larly timely, for with the new millennium the continent is remarkably
prominent in the realms of fashion design and marketing. As I write
this introduction, Suzy Menkes—arguably fashion's most widely read
journalist—has published a piece in the New York Times Style Magazine
entitled "Next Stop, Africa." In it, she predicts that global fashion mar-
kets are on the verge of creating "a fashion first: a popular movement
that sees the beauty and craft in sub-Saharan Africa" (Menkes 2005:
60). Since 2002, the year of the conference in Iowa Gity that inspired
this special issue,-^ references to Africa have appeared in haute couture
collections on major European and North American runways. Africa
seems to be the muse du jour for a wide array of designers, including
Jean Paul Gaultier, Donna Karan, Kenzo, and Dolce and Gabbana.
136 . Victoria L. Rovine

While Africa's profile in international fashion circles has been

heightened by its appearance as a source of inspiration for Western
designers, the many African designers who are themselves engaged in
innovative transformations of African style receive little attention in the
international fashion press. Their work emerges out of a long history of
fashion in Africa, a continent whose styles of dress provide insights into
both ancient cultures and the latest global fashion trends. Many African
designers today create garments that make reference to or borrow from
local clothing practices, often melding these forms with international
influences. Their work spans diverse markets, from the seasonal run-
ways of international haute couture to local markets, where garments
reflect swiftly changing local styles.
Three of the articles presented here are focused on local fashion prac-
tices, yet all reveal the degree to which local and international fashion
systems are intertwined, so that while designations such as "African"
and "Western" can provide insights into the intentions of designers and
marketers, they often obscure rich histories of exchange. Gott analyzes
the dramatic fashions of an Ashanti women's subculture, placing their
swiftly changing styles in the context of a long history of competitive
displays of wealth. In her exploration of Dakar's fashion scene, Grabski
describes how this cosmopolitan city provides fuel for the work of
designers in diverse markets. Green's work in Madagascar documents
the surprising intersection of fashion and funerary practice in a culture
that accords cloth great spiritual power. In addition, Loughran pro-
vides a survey of Africa's long history as a source of inspiration for
Western fashion design, and an overview of the work of one African
designer whose career straddles Africa and Europe. Taken as a whole,
these articles describe the complexity of African dress practices, which
draw from both deep local roots and from contemporary, international
trends, shifting constantly to absorb new influences and adapt changing
elements of indigenous garments.

Fashion: Indigenous Everywhere

As numerous past articles in this journal have demonstrated, the study

of non-Western fashion as fashion, not as garb, costume, or dress, is a
growing field of inquiry (see, for example: Sun 1997, El Guindi 1999,
Dogbe 2003, and Nagrath 2003). In her 2004 survey of current an-
thropological analysis of dress, Karen Hansen noted that recent schol-
arship in a variety of academic venues "demonstrates that fashion no
longer is an exclusive property of the West" (Hansen 2004: 370). Much
of the attention to non-Western fashion in academic circles has been
centered on Asia, which has been a source of "exotic" inspiration for
Westerners (much like Africa) as well as a producer of internationally
renowned fashion designers (unlike Africa). As Lisa Skov notes, Japan
 Viewing Africa through Fashion 137

in particular was the first non-Western player in the ratified realm of

haute couture: "... the 1980s was the first period when non-Western
fashion designers came to influence mainstream fashion, when Issey Mi-
yake, Yohji Yamamoto, and Rei Kawakubo, along with a series of other
Japanese designers, proved themselves to be the leading fashion innova-
tors of the world" (Skov 2003: 216).
Two publications that provided rich insights into the intersections
of traditional and contemporary impulses in Asian fashion cultures
are important precedents, and sources of inspiration, for the analyses
of non-Western fashion presented here. China Chic: East Meets West
(Steele and Major 1999) focused on multiple dimensions of Chinese
fashion—historical styles, the absorption of new influences, revivals
of historical styles, and the internationalization of those styles. Re-
Orienting Fashion: The Clobalization of Asian Dress (Niessen et al.
2003) explores contemporary Asian garments as symbols of local iden-
tities, diaspora communities, and international chic. While African and
Asian fashion systems have in common only their mutual "otherness"
for the Western-dominated international fashion industry, our hope is
that this special issue will continue to demonstrate that fashion is not
"indigenous" only to Western cultures.

Acknowledgments

For their support of my research, I thank the Rockefeller Foundation's

Bellagio Study Genter, the Getty Foundation's Guratorial Research Grant
program, and the University of Iowa (Arts and Humanities Initiative and
International Programs). Many thanks as well to my former colleagues
at the University of Iowa Museum of Art. I am also grateful to Lamine
Kouyaté, Garlo Gibson, Ziemek Pater, Ly Dumas, Anna Getaneh, Mari-
anne Fassler, and the many other designers in Africa and Europe who
have shared their time with me, and to Stephan Houy-Towner of the
Gostume Institute Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Many
thanks, as always, to Florence Babb.

Notes

1. The same tendency is evident in Fisher's work with her collabora-

tor Garol Beckwith. Fisher and Beckwith have produced several lush
publications, featuring their photographic work in Africa. These in-
clude African Ark (Fisher et al. 1990), Nomads of Niger (Fisher and
Beckwith 1983), and the two-volume African Ceremonies (Fisher
and Beckwith 1999).
2. The conference, which I co-organized along with Dr Sarah Adams,
was entitled "The Gultured Body: African Fashion and Body Arts." It
was held at the Univetsity of Iowa Museum of Art on October 17-20,
38 Victoria L. Rovine

and received significant support from the Obermann Center for Ad-
vanced Studies, International Programs, and the Project for the Ad-
vanced Study of Art and Life in Africa, all based at the University of
Iowa. The articles collected here were selected from two of the confer-
ence's five panels.

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