Koen Hause
Inge van Lierop, designer (b. the Netherlands) Vlisco, the Netherlands. Dress: “Hommage à L’Art” collection, 2013, Vlisco wax print. Courtesy Vlisco Museum, Foundation Pieter Fentener van Vlissingen, Helmond, the Netherlands.
What’s in a name? Shakespeare said a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but for the manufacturers and merchants of African-print textiles, there’s a different kind of conventional wisdom at work.
Unlike most manufacturer-branded products, African prints are named by the consumers who buy, sell, and use them. The process creates meaning after the fact, transforming mass-manufactured patterns into classics that may speak to a specific occasion, commemorate an event, or simply reflect the objects and attitudes of day-to-day life.
The importance of naming is reflected in the title of this exhibition from the Los Angeles-based Fowler Museum, running at Memphis Brooks Museum of Art now through August 12th. Bringing together more than 100 historic and contemporary print designs, and contextualizing them with relevant samples of twentieth-century black-and-white photography and twenty-first-century art, “African-Print Fashion Now!” earns its exclamation point.
Subtitled “A Story of Taste, Globalization, and Style,” the exhibit shows how African taste and tradition impacted the Indonesian art of wax-resist dyeing, and how everything from meaning to manufacturing was changed by technology as production moved to Europe, China, and Africa itself. It’s a story that may result in fashionistas adding Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, to their lists of destination cities, alongside Paris, New York, and Milan.
Courtesy Tobias Wendl
Francis K. Honny (b. Elmina, Ghana, 1914–1998) Portrait of man and woman, Elmina, Ghana, circa 1975.
“It’s gone through some very interesting changes and become part of international fashion and the work of fashion designers,” says “African-Print Fashion Now!” curator Suzanne Gott, who’s been studying the traditions and techniques of the field since making her first trek to Ghana in 1990. “It’s become an increasingly interesting story over the past 20 years, and now seems like the perfect time to have an exhibition.”
So what is African-print fashion, exactly? And just how African is it? Not to be confused with kente cloth or other West and Central African weaving traditions, the materials and patterns collected for this exhibit represent a distinct kind of cotton textile created through a mechanized resist-dyeing process using wax or resin.
As is the case with many examples featured, contemporary African-print fashion often is manufactured through mechanical processes designed to mimic the traditional dyeing process. In the late-nineteenth century, Dutch manufacturers began to imitate Indonesian batik, developing a new genre of printed cloth aimed for African markets. Although it was an imported good, African consumerism and taste played a considerable role in determining its color and content.
Djibril Drame
Senegalese rapper and musician Ibaaku wears a classic dashiki - Dakar, Senegal, October, 2014.
To illustrate a complicated relationship, Gott describes cloth produced in 1957, when Ghana became the first British colony to gain independence. The cooperative work, laden with precolonial iconography, was a gift from European manufacturers. “This was [African] culture, and the fact that it was being made in Europe didn’t negate its value or the sense of African ownership,” Gott says. “When it began to be made locally, the cloth was more affordable, and I think there was pride in wearing locally produced cloth. But it did not stop people from buying the imported cloth.”
The product’s unique process of consumer naming also became a key feature of acculturation, as prints took on a meaning and life completely detached from design and production. Descriptive titles like “Night and Day” literally describe a fabric’s iconography. Proverbial titles like ‘Money Flies’ are a means of indirect communication for those with something to say and others who’ve been silenced by societal norms. Other names may commemorate politicians and important events or celebrate everyday objects (“iPod”) and pop culture (“Michelle Obama’s Handbag”).
Speaking of pop culture, there’s a moment near the very beginning of Marvel’s inestimably influential Black Panther film when the camera pans up to show all the citizens who’ve come out to see Prince T’Challa’s elevation to the throne of Wakanda, a fictional African nation that’s never been conquered or colonized. This colorful moment of pure Afrofuturist eye candy occurs as the camera scans up a cliff face dotted with people wearing every color of the visible spectrum. The movie’s much ballyhooed costumes are a pan-African blend of tropes and style, mixing sci-fi profiles along with traditional fabrics and accessories that include African print. It’s difficult to imagine a fashion-forward hit this big won’t make an impression on the ready-to-wear market, making the Brooks Museum’s timing of this exhibit just about perfect.
Brooks chief curator Marina Pacini is happy for this synchronicity between “African Print Fashion Now!” and an Afro-centric and fashion-forward superhero film that’s dominating the box office. “I love that you can enjoy this strictly on the level of the beauty and creativity of the clothes themselves,” Pacini says. “But the person who’s interested can dig down deep and learn things about the politics, the social history, the cultural history, the making of the textiles, and the independence movement.
“Or you can just come in and graze,” she continues. “We are absolutely proud of the fact that we have an exhibition that celebrates the creativity, the culture, the artistry, and the global reach of African-print fabric and the designers themselves.”
Courtesy Ikiré Jones
Lekan Jeyifo (b. Nigeria) and Walé Oyéjidé (b. Nigeria, 1981) - "Johannesburg 2081 A.D", .Africa 2081 A.D. series, 2014. Digital print.
Special events associated with the Brooks exhibit include a head-wrap workshop and special guided tours led by community experts like Ugandan-native Grace Byeitima of Mbabazi House of Style and professor Sonin Lee from the University of Memphis Department of Fashion Design and Merchandising.
African designer Ituen Basi, whose work is prominently featured in the catalog for “African-Print Fashion Now!”, will be visiting Memphis for Fashion Week next month and will speak at the Brooks on Wednesday, April 11th.
“African-Print Fashion Now! A Story of Taste, Globalization, and Style,” at Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, February 24th-August 12th. For more details go to brooksmuseum.org.
