Fashioning the Afropolis: Histories, Materialities and Aesthetic Practices

(Paperback)

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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 Africas 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.

Reviews

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 todays fashion scholarship is here on vivid display. 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 todays fashion scholarship is here on vivid display. * 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 todays 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 *

Author Bio

Kerstin Pinther is Professor of Arts and Material Cultures of Africa in the Department of Art History at Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany. Kristin Kastner is Lecturer and post-doctoral researcher at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. Basile Ndjio is Professor of Anthropology, University of Douala, Cameroon, Central Africa, and Senior Research Fellow at Freie Universitt Berlin, Germany.