African-Print Fashion Now!

African-Print Fashion Now! introduces visitors to a dynamic and diverse African dress tradition and the increasingly interconnected fashion worlds that it inhabits: “popular” African-print styles created by local seamstresses and tailors across the continent; international runway fashions designed by Africa’s newest generation of couturiers; and boundary-breaking, transnational, and youth styles favored in Africa’s urban centers. All feature the colorful, boldly designed, manufactured cotton textiles that have come to be known as “African-print cloth.”

The book tells the global stories of these textiles—the early history of the print cloth trade in West and Central Africa, the expansion of production following independence movements, and the increasing popularity of Asian-made print cloth today. Popular African styles from Ghana, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, and Senegal are featured, as well as groundbreaking runway fashions by some of Africa’s most talented couturiers: Ituen Basi, Gilles Touré, Lanre da Silva Ajayi, Titi Ademola, Lisa Folawiyo, Dent de Man, Adama Paris, Patricia Waota, Ikiré Jones, and Afua Dabanka. Black-and-white studio portraits illuminate print fashions of the 1960s and 1970s, while works by contemporary artists incorporate African print to convey evocative messages about heritage, hybridity, displacement, and aspiration.

Contemporary photographs by Omar Victor Diop, Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou, and Hassan Hajjaj; paintings by Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga; and a mural by graffiti artist Docta suggest the ever-present role of fashion in African life. Throughout the volume, African-print fashions are considered as creative responses to key historical moments and the imaginings of Africa in the future.

Foreword / Marla C. Berns
Acknowledgments / Suzanne Gott, Kristyne S. Loughran, Betsy D. Quick, and Leslie W. Rabine
Prologue: Notes on Fashioning Art across Africa / John Picton

Introduction: Introducing African-Print Fashion / Suzanne Gott and Kristyne S. Loughran

Part One | African-Print Cloth: Origins and Transformations
1. Dutch Wax Classics: The Designs Introduced / Ebenezer Brown
Fleming circa 1890–1912 and Their Legacy / Helen Elands
Interleaf A: Design at Vlisco / M. Amah Edoh
Interleaf B: Designing for Wax Prints at ABC / Helen Elands
2. African Prints/African Ownership: On Naming, Value, and Classics / Kathleen Bickford Berzock
Interleaf C: African Prints Made in Europe / Betsy D. Quick
3. “Bringing Fabrics to Life”: Akosombo Textiles Limited of Ghana / Stephan F. Miescher
Interleaf D: African Prints Made in Africa / Suzanne Gott
Interleaf E: African-Print Cloth in Abidjan: A Success Story / Anne Grosfilley
4. Real/Fake: Brands, Labels, and China in West Africa / Nina Sylvanus
Interleaf F: African Prints Made in Asia: China, India, and Pakistan / Leslie W. Rabine

Part Two | Fashioning Identities, Expanding Styles
5. Portraits in Print / Leslie W. Rabine
6. “Life” Dressing in Kumasi: African-Print Style in “Popular” Fashion / Suzanne Gott
Interleaf G: Nsaasaawa: Ghanaian Patchwork from the Kitchen to the Catwalk / Boatema Boateng

Interleaf H: From Grandmother’s Dress to the Fashion Runway Chitenge styles in Zambia / Karen Tranberg Hansen
7. Ankara Fashions in Nigeria / Elisha P. Renne
Interleaf I: Shopping in Abidjan with Saundra Lang / Leslie W. Rabine
8. Voices on the Runway: African Prints and African Fashion Designers / Kristyne S. Loughran
Interleaf J: Claire Kane Guaranteed Wax Collection and the Photography of Omar Victor Diop / Ken Aicha Sy

Part Three | New Directions
9. Vlisco—Rebranding into Fashion / Suzanne Gott and Kristyne S. Loughran
Interleaf K: Re-Dressing the Past Vlisco’s Entry into Post-Apartheid South Africa / Sandra Klopper
10. Designing Futures, Virtual Communities and Fashion Weeks: Push African-Print Fashion Forward / Helen Jennings
Interleaf L: The Eternal Return of Fashion Angelina, the Dashiki, and Twenty-First-Century African Fashion / Leslie W. Rabine
11. From Colonialism to Hip-Hop Style African-Print Fashion in Senegal / Leslie W. Rabine
12. In the Making: African-Print Fashion and Contemporary Art / Hansi Momodu-Gordon

Afterword: Cloth, Dress, and Drama / Victoria L. Rovine

Notes to the Text
References Cited
Index
Contributors