Paper short abstract:

Our analysis focuses on Angolan fashion designer Nadir Tati who says to be a "transporter" out of Africa of the signs of African culture in the global world and seeks to cross borders (Lotman,1996), transgress secular concepts, transpose the miscellany and becoming a privileged cultural translator.

Paper long abstract:

Transporting a mixture of cultures, whose crossings go beyond a simple hybridization of forms, Nadir Tati embodies Africanity without borders and is a unique intercultural mediator endowed with a strong creative energy. Diversity makes all things possible.

Cosmopolitan, sensitive to the influences out of Africa without forgetting the heritage of ancestral traditions perpetuated from generation to generation, briefly, with a work able to challenging the stereotypical Western representation of Africa, Tati wants to tell the story of Africa on international runways, in Europe and other parts of the world, to be seen everywhere (Tati, 2014), resending to different ways of being in the world, different forms of life (Fontanille, 2015), by the statement of an identity and by the expression of the memory of an entire culture (Lotman & Uspenski, 1971).

African culture has always fascinated fashion designers such as Poiret, YSL, Missoni, Galliano, Gaultier, Burberry or Watanabe, all inspired by the eccentricity or exoticism, always a transgression. Today, the transgression is in reverse order and evolves new forms with a growing number of African designers accessing to the global fashion. It's the inquiry on the other side of the thought, from which we can cast new glances on the world (Bakhtin, 1965).

On the semiotics of culture, we find a theory, concepts and methodologies that allow us an intercultural approach because meaning is born on difference, on relationship and therefore on comparison (Saussure, 1916). Transporting /coming out of Africa: Nadir Tati, a fashion translator.