African Style v. "African" Style

thank you so much for posting this. beautiful pictures.

You're welcome. I found them a great tonic for the usual crap that comes across my browser. :-)

Fantastic links, thank you--I especially love the Threadbared post, and I know a professor who'd appreciate the comparison too.

I've really been enjoying Threadbared. The aca-jargon is sometimes a bit dense for me to follow in full, but their posts consistently make me go "Oh!" -- even the posts where I know I'm not getting everything, I usually get enough of an "Oh!" to have made it worth my while.

Also, they link to cool stuff. ;-)

Comment from the post you linked:

"You know, I hope this doesn't come off as insulting or maybe plain weird but I've gone through so many phases (used to be weeks, now just moments though - I suppose it's my self-confidence talking) that I wanted to have such a gorgeous black skin. I'm so creepily jealous of my few black friends sometimes!"

Yeah, that's creepy and you know it, lady. Stop it.

That comment aside, the stuff from Vlisco and Suno totally rocked me out of my grey wool Vancouver funk.

I also wholeheartedly agree with the notion that the western fashion world's use of "African" as a descriptor always seems to reflect the kind of sentiment that an "authentic Zulu mask" on the wall of a WASP's study wall does: "Isn't it lovely that I can look past the crudely fashioned simplicity of this ancient art form to appreciate that backwards culture? Oh, good for me! I think I'll make a donation to UNICEF again this year. Ohohohoho!"

...Or at least that's what I imagine it sounding like.

Ew. What is it with people admitting that they know something is creepy, but wanting validation for it anyway?

:: "Isn't it lovely that I can look past the crudely fashioned simplicity of this ancient art form to appreciate that backwards culture? Oh, good for me! I think I'll make a donation to UNICEF again this year. Ohohohoho!" ::

Yeah. The more I look at this stuff, the more it's clear that U.S. and European representations of Africa are typically chosen to project a particular image of the western storyteller. Most of the stuff I see that's "about Africa" (up to and including the idea that you can talk about Africa as if it's one place) isn't about Africa at all; it's about the white westerners telling the story. What I loved about this picspam is that the white storyteller isn't there. 'Cause, frankly? I know way too much about that white western storyteller. I certainly don't need to hear another story about how wonderful zie thinks hirself. :-/

SUCH an important discussion. thanks for posting this!

You're welcome.

great links, thanks for sharing these. i did take some issue with one point the threadbared post made: The continued refusal to see the African other as coeval (that is, contemporaneous) with the so-called modern observer, most obviously manifested in the classification of tribal chic, betrays the still-haunting presence of colonial aesthetics in Western art and design.

while i completely agree that the way 'african' fashion has been represented as "tribal chic" while the street style of south africa (for instance) is ignored is racist, i find the juxtaposition of a "tribal" pre-modernity and "street" modernity problematic. it seems to be saying "the white colonialist fashion world sees african fashion as tribal and therefore pre-modern, but it's actually very modern--look at them wearing western(-influenced) clothes!" this conflates westernity with modernity and reinforces the racist notion of "tribal" and indigenous dress as pre-modern, static, unchanging.

there is nothing wrong with celebrating "street style" and examining the subversive (and stylish) ways south africans and other peoples blend western trends with local aesthetics. if people want to wear dress shirts and ties and stuff, more power to 'em - i personally think some of those outfits are dope as hell. but i don't like to see this kind of dress, which is strongly influenced by western clothing, presented as "modern" in contrast to "pre-modern" "tribal" clothing. fashions and trends in non-western clothing change just as much as anywhere else; it's not just people wearing the same thing their ancestors did a thousand years ago, and indigenous dress is just as "modern" as jeans and sunglasses.

For whatever my own reading is worth: I was thinking about that issue when I was making the post (it's one of my buttons), and I read the Threadbared post as not making that error. They explicitly call into question the alleged modernity of "the so-called modern observer"; they set up their contrast as being between the "narrow and alienating" western construction of "African" fashion and... okay, something that they don't state, but which I understood by implication to be "not narrow" and "not alienating", where alienating was contextualized-by-link to mean racist and colonialist, not tribal or pre-modern. To me, they seem to be saying, "The white colonialist fashion world falsely perceives themselves as 'modern' and Africa as 'primitive', therefore they put forth a narrow, racist, colonialist view of 'African' fashion -- much of which isn't even African -- and ignore any African fashion that they would have to consider 'modern'."

However, I absolutely agree with you that examples of western-influenced African style should not be used as evidence that "Africa is TOO modern, SO THERE!" because that definition of modernity is completely borked and fraught with racist problems of its own. I failed to make that explicit in the post; thank you for making it explicit here.

Friggin amazing fashion! I really enjoyed these photos!