Celebrating Fashion's African Themes (fwd)

[o. kasirim nwuke]

> April 6, 1997
>
> Celebrating Fashion's African Themes
>
> By SUZY MENKES
>
> [N] EW YORK -- This is an African fashion moment.
> For the first time since Nancy Cunard rattled
> her tribal bangles and the exotic Josephine Baker
> was the sensation of Paris in the 1920s, Africa's
> esthetic of adornment seems right for modern
> fashion.
>
> In a neat fit, "African Mosaique," a benefit
> evening of design and dance featuring
> African-inspired creations, will be held on
> Wednesday during New York's fashion week. The show
> is devoted partly to traditional tribal clothing
> and to contemporary African designers. But it also
> includes a roster of Western designers, from Romeo
> Gigli, Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Lacroix and
> Emanuel Ungaro of Europe to Donna Karan and Ralph
> Lauren of the United States.
>
> Their presence reflects the fact that the latest
> collections from international designers have been
> filled with images of Africa.
>
> John Galliano used Dior's ateliers to recreate, in
> haute couture, multicolored rivulets of Masai
> beadwork and the intricate drawn-thread work of
> ethnic textiles. And in a previous show for
> Givenchy, the same designer had put his models in
> makeup and body paint like tribal markings.
>
> The current Ralph Lauren advertisements show not
> visions of white country-club couples but Naomi
> Campbell, in an African-inspired halter-dress
> suspended from a gilded neckpiece.
>
> Hermes, a byword for sophisticated luxury, devoted
> its fall collection to the rich, dark colors and
> tactile textures of Africa and celebrated
> traditional craftsmanship in its catalogue.
>
> Alexander McQueen chose Africa untamed. He used
> for his show's invitation a computer-generated
> image of woman morphed into jungle animal, and he
> filled his raw London collection with roughly
> scissored skins.
>
> From Jean-Paul Gaultier came fashion's coup de
> theatre -- a powerful and poetic homage to Harlem
> and its Cotton Club, to the legendary Josephine
> Baker and to contemporary rappers. With those
> elements woven together and shown on predominantly
> black models, the show received an ovation as the
> most modern fashion statement of the European
> season.
>
> "It's the Zeitgeist -- the timing couldn't be
> better," said Mil Niepold, the marketing director
> of the Fashion Group International, a nonprofit
> industry group. She has been working for two years
> on "African Mosaique" and is one of its founders.
> The show, envisioned as part of the Solomon R.
> Guggenheim Museum's 1996 exhibition "Africa: The
> Art of a Continent," was instead presented in
> Paris last fall. After New York, it will go to
> Chicago, and it is being considered for Cape Town
> as part of South Africa's millennium celebrations.
>
> The New York event, which will be open to the
> public and will benefit the Ethiopian Children's
> Fund, will also feature an awards ceremony, with
> honorees including Tommy Hilfiger, Iman, Michael
> Jordan and Oprah Winfrey.
>
> The current feeling for Africa seems as powerful
> in fashion now as when the continent inspired
> Cubism at the start of the century. Why should
> this be so? Designers have long appreciated the
> authenticity of traditional artifacts. Ms. Niepold
> talks about a centuries-old "tradition of
> adornment" that is about self-expression and
> spirituality, with textiles an integral part of
> the culture.
>
> But African inspiration is not just about the
> ethnic or the exotic. It is also about modernism:
> the idea of simple forms enriched with fabrics and
> texture. And its appeal goes back to the 1920s,
> when Africa was at the heart of the modernist
> movement.
>
> Adam Bray, the London antiquarian whose collection
> of Masai breastplates inspired Galliano, sees the
> shapes of African furniture as the genesis of
> modern design. "It's a Brancusian thing -- an
> abstraction of nature that you get with African
> forms, coupled with a feeling for the exotic,"
> Bray said.
>
> The early part of the century vibrated to the
> drumbeat of Africa: in art, with the paintings and
> sculptures of Braque, Picasso and Brancusi; in
> decoration, with the Makassar ebony furniture, the
> tribal pattern inlays and the zebra or snakeskin
> upholstery of Pierre Legrain and other Art Deco
> furniture makers.
>
> In fashion and society, it was the same story.
> Miguel Covarrubias' cartoons in Vanity Fair were
> eulogizing Harlem, and New Yorkers were learning
> the Charleston. Josephine Baker was captured by
> the French illustrator Eric in Vogue in 1927 in a
> tulle and snakeskin dress (a look that could be a
> McQueen or a Galliano), with her curls "plastered
> close to her head with white of egg as though
> painted on with shellac," according to the
> accompanying text. (Those flat curls with carmine
> lips were recreated for the Gaultier show.)
>
> In "The Shock of the New," Robert Hughes' book
> about modern art, the author gives this
> explanation of why Picasso used African art as
> inspiration: "When he began to parody black art,
> he was stating that the tradition of the human
> figure, which had been the very spine of Western
> art for two and a half millennia, had at last run
> out; and that in order to renew its vitality, one
> had to look to untapped cultural resources -- the
> Africans, remote in their otherness."
>
> In the 1990s, fashion seems to find itself at a
> similar impasse. In the 1920s, it mirrored art
> experiments by rejecting the conventional
> silhouette of the human body (which had been
> either followed or distorted for centuries) and
> played instead with flat planes. But after 70
> years, designers have not moved so far beyond the
> shimmy dress, pajama pants, bias-cuts and sporty
> separates that were once revolutionary.
>
> American designers, in particular, have refined
> the concept of easy sportswear dressing. But how
> to develop the jacket, tunic and pants or the slip
> dress, without a recidivist slide into familiar
> forms or into the superficial decoration of the
> pre-modernist era?
>
> Forward-looking designers are turning to other
> cultures for colors and patterns that are
> integral, rather than exterior, to basic clothes
> in simple shapes. Asian influences also feature
> strongly in the current collections, but Africa
> offers rich inspiration because its adornment
> seems noble and devoid of vanity.
>
> To Vivienne Becker, a jewelry expert who curated a
> recent exhibition of ethnic adornment in Vienna,
> African jewelry is unique because it is rich with
> meaning that is genderless. "It is full of magic,
> ritual and, above all, tribal identification," she
> said. "And maybe its contemporary appeal is
> because we are looking for meaning in what we
> wear."
>
> That is why, in a crowded schedule of New York
> shows in (or often outside) the Bryant Park tents,
> "African Mosaique" may have something to offer
> fashion in its quest for a future -- and for style
> with a soul.
>
> "African Mosaique" will be presented on April 9 at
> 7 p.m. in the Fashion Theater, 225 W. 24th St.,
> New York, N.Y. Tickets, from $30 to $150, are
> available through Ticketmaster, at (212) 307-7171,
> or at the door.
>
>
> Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company
>
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