African Apparel

Featuring African textiles, clothing, headwear, and jewellery, this book celebrates African dress as a product of global interactions, generational conflict and continuity, and expressions of gender. The book highlights the strength and resilience of long-standing practices that characterise African dress; the wide variety of cultural, religious, and political motivations for adorning oneself; and the varying identities reflected in analysing African material culture of the last century and a half. From formal European colonisation to independence for African countries, to the liberalisation of African economies, this book demonstrates how dress practices reveal personal and group identities, cultural traditions, religious associations, political affiliations, and aspirations.