It is always interesting to see how different cultures with completely different paths and histories can meet and intersect in the name of art or fashion. For Spring/Summer 2010, Dries Van Noten presented a collection inspired by the vibrancy of African clothing, very similar to the garbs worn by women of the Hadza tribe in Tanzania, with quintessential prints and colors that reflected the culturally rich continent. There was a hybridity between the bourgeois and the third world; paradoxically beautiful and unsettling. While it was a beautiful homage, and the collection was well executed, there are two ways of looking at this: it can be looked at as a designer in love with a culture and is visually alluding to it, or simply taking a part of a people’s history and placing it in a context surrounding aesthetics and capitalism: the fashion world.
African culture continues to inspire so many facets of Western society serving as a patron for art, music, fashion, et al, however, the exchange between the two worlds are uneven. The West reaps more benefits while Africa perpetually receives the short end of the stick. One cannot help but think about how for the price of any of these runway pieces, the very people who inspired the collection could live and eat for months.
Junya Watanabe, another designer who has been inspired by African textiles and the way the garments are worn, showed his interpretation of African textiles for his SS2009 collection (the silhouettes were a little bit more authentic, in relation to those of Van Noten’s). The “borrowing “ of African culture and its transplant into modern art and fashion begs the question: do the clients/ customers who buy the clothes really understand the meaning behind it all? Odds are, most people buying these “African-inspired” pieces do not get past liking them on an aesthetic level, thus turning it into a “summer trend.” They do not know that there is an entire history behind the patterns and the colors, and the weaving and dying techniques that have been instilled in African culture for years.
While it is great to see globalization and the cross-breeding of cultures taking place on a fashion stage, people still need to take it upon themselves to learn and familiarize themselves with the culture they hold a piece of when buying a certain garment or artwork. Yes it’s beautiful, but there is more to it than that.
