FASHIONING THE AFROPOLIS

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