Description:
"A revelation. Reclaiming fashion from its European history." - Shane White
With a focus on sub-Saharan Africa, Fashioning the Afropolis provides a range of innovative perspectives on global fashion, design, dress, photography, and the body in some of the major cities, with a focus on Lagos, Johannesburg, Dakar, and Douala. It contributes to the ongoing debates around the globalization of fashion and fashion theory by exploring fashion as a genuine urban phenomenon on the continent and among its diasporas. To date, "fashion" and "city" have not been systematically related to each other in the African context and, for too long, a western-centric gaze has dominated scholarship, resulting in the perception of Africa as provincial and its visual arts and textile cultures as static and folkloristic. This perspective is all the more distorted, given Africa's rich sartorial past. With a huge number of tailors ready to adapt and renew clothing, reshaping garments into contemporary styles, and many cities in Africa becoming hot-spots for a steadily growing and well-connected scene of fashion designers in the past 20 years, the time is ripe for a reevaluation and reconsideration of the fashionscapes of Africa. Leading scholars offer an updated empirical and theoretical foundation on which to base new and exciting research on sub-Saharan fashion, challenging perceptions and offering new insights.Brief description: Elizabeth Wilson is a pioneer in the development of fashion studies, and has been a university professor, feminist campaigner and activist. Her writing career began in the 'underground' magazines of the early 1970s, (Frendz, Red Rag, Spare Rib, Come Together) before she became an academic. She's written for the Guardian and her non-fiction books include Adorned in Dreams (1985, 2003), The Sphinx in the City (1992) (shortlisted for the Manchester Odd Fellows Prize), Bohemians (2000) and Love Game (2014) (long listed for the William Hill sportswriting prize), as well as six crime novels, including War Damage (2009) and The Girl in Berlin (2012) (long listed for the Golden Dagger Award).
Review Quotes:
"In the long process of decolonizing fashion curricula, Fashioning the Afropolis will be a useful reference for fashion scholars and students alike: it is a rich and diverse volume about contemporary and historical fashion on the African continent, backed by thorough empirical and historical research." --Journal of Design History
"A brilliant contribution to the study of fashion in urban Africa, which will inspire designers, artists, and researchers in Africa and its Diaspora." --Elisha Renne, University of Michigan, USA "Fashioning the Afropolis is a revelation. Reclaiming fashion from its European history, these wide-ranging and generous essays about African cities recast clothing in surprising ways. The verve and panache of today's fashion scholarship is here on vivid display." --Shane White, co-author of Stylin': African American Expressive Culture from its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit "This fascinating collection breaks new ground by framing fashion as a powerful expressive form in urban Africa. The contributions offer compelling insights as to why and how fashion is a force shaping to why and how fashion is a force shaping the city." --Joanna Grabski, Arizona State University, USA "So few books focus on the influential and visually stunning fashion culture of the African continent. I love this book for its mix of scholarly study and rich visuals. It helps push past stereotypes we hold in the west on what African fashion is." --Fashionista's 31 Best Books Fashion People Read, 2022 - Elizabeth Way, The Museum at FIT, US