Catwalks and Streetstyle in West African Fashion: History, Concepts and Utility

Catalog description

This course will look at the history of West African fashion, its current state, opportunities and challenges facing it and the possible solutions. Through the semester, we will engage the understanding of native designers and consumers in West Africa, their knowledge and use of fashion on occasions such as funerals, naming and marriage ceremonies, and puberty rites within the rites of passage, festivals, durbars, parties, and sports fiestas. We will reflect on fashion in these contexts as not something that is not just dress, but that also engages agency in spiritual expression and cultural identity, colour symbolisms, conceptual ideas and the way these ideas are expressed in the middle of all that is happening around us. In this way, students will come to understand the history of West African fashion, the impact of foreign influences, and the driving forces of youth and fashion. This class will involve guest lecturers and visits to selected fashion-related spaces in Accra.