Africa Fashion

Published to accompany London’s V&A Museum’s long overdue 2022 exhibition of the same name, this book gives credit where it is due, for African fashion has often been imitated yet hardly recognised by the West. Christine Checinska, the museum’s first curator of African Fashion and the author of four of the book’s 12 insightful essays, acknowledges that there is not one singular African aesthetic. Work from 25 of the continent’s 54 countries is featured. Highlights are Amanda Gorman in kente cloth on the cover of US Vogue, stories of “elders” of fashion design who recovered and reinvented past traditions such as Mali’s Chris Seydou, and new talents such as Orange Culture (Nigeria), woven bag maker AAKS (Ghana), and Lukhanyo Mdingi (South Africa.) The book has a great bibliography and glossary too, for those who want to read more, or know their boubous from their caftans.