Paper short abstract:

The paper aims to show why fashion in, and from, Africa is gaining attention, not because new fashion capitals are emerging, nor that systems of reference are included in the creative process, but instead, that perhaps, new terms are emerging for thinking about fashion in the 21st century,

Paper long abstract:

False assumptions are made that African fashion capitals are only just emerging. Due to fashion's perceived eurocentricity, 'African fashion' has largely been excluded from the discourse of fashion and the canon of fashion theory. This paper aims to argue how African fashion has long been a powerful tool used to negotiate continuity, change, tradition and modernity both within local and global networks. Mixing local crafts and aesthetics with foreign materials and symbols, or re-inventing functions, shapes and meanings of fashion objects, has meant that African fashion has continually innovated and engaged with broader social, political and cultural influences .

As a positioning paper, we at the Research Centre for Decolonising Fashion aim to use a critique of contemporary fashion in Africa , as a means to re-think fashion from a non-Western perspective. The question, 'What's with the Fashion Capitals in Africa' aims to re-position, and re-frame, the dialogue about African fashion delivered from new perspectives. Key to 'decolonising' is the need to dismantle the 'epistemic violence' of institutions, discourses and knowledge structures that perpetuate the hierarchies, disavowals and 'orders' sustaining largely Western forms of power and control. The western fashion system is no different in trying to maintain control, and in need of 'decolonising'. Following decolonial theorist, Walter Mignolo, this paper proposes ways in which to question the control of knowledge, and the control of ways of knowing and being, and in this way, considers ways of changing the terms of the conversation about African fashion, not just the content .