Creating African Fashion Histories examines the stark disjuncture between African self-fashioning and museum practices. Conventionally, African clothing, textiles, and body adornments were classified by museums as examples of trade goods, art, and ethnographic materialsnever as "fashion." Counterposing the dynamism of African fashion with museums' historic holdings thus provides a unique way of confronting ways in which coloniality persists in knowledge and institutions today. This volume brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and curators to debate sources and approaches for constructing African fashion histories and to examine their potential for decolonizing museums, fashion studies, and global cultural history.

The editors of this volume seek to answer questions such as: How can researchers use museum collections to reveal traces of past self-fashioning that are obscured by racialized forms of knowledge and institutional practice? How can archival, visual, oral, ethnographic, and online sources be deployed to capture the diversity of African sartorial pasts? How can scholars and curators decolonize the Eurocentric frames of thinking encapsulated in historic collections and current curricula? Can new collections of African fashion decolonize museum practice?

From Moroccan fashion bloggers to upmarket Lagos designers, the voices in this ground-breaking collection reveal fascinating histories and geographies of circulation within and beyond the continent and its diasporic communities.

JoAnn McGregor is Professor of Human Geography, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex. She is author ofCrossing the Zambezi: The Politics of Landscape on a Central African Frontier and (with Jocelyn Alexander and Terence Ranger) ofViolence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the 'Dark Forests' of Matabeleland, Zimbabwe. She was part of the Fashioning Africa Collection Panel at the Brighton Museum.

Heather Akouis Associate Professor of Fashion Design and former Director of the Elizabeth Sage Historic Costume Collection in the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture& Design at Indiana University. She is author ofThe Politics of Dress in Somali Culture. Her work is published in numerous journals such asFashion Theory,Dress, andClothing Cultures.

Nicola Stylianou is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex working on the AHRC-funded project "Making African Connections: Decolonial Futures for Colonial Collections." She received an AHRC Cultural Engagement Award for her work at the Victoria& Albert Museum, and she was part of the Fashioning Africa Collection Panel at the Brighton Museum.

Acknowledgments1. Introduction: Creating African Fashion Histories: Politics, Museums, and Sartorial Practices, by JoAnn McGregorPart I: Constructing African Fashion Histories2. Historicizing Fashion in Western Africa: Global Linkages, Regional Markets, and Local Tastes, 1400-1850, by Jody Benjamin3. Finding Fashion in the Museum: (Re)Assembling a Precolonial Eastern African Fashion Moment, by Sarah Fee4. Beloved, Ignored, and Contested: The Politics of Kente in Ghana since the 1960s, by Malika KraamerPart II: Transmitting and Translating African Fashion Identities5. Translocal Subjectivities, Space, and Aesthetics: The World of Nigerian Fashion, by Harriet Hughes6. Fabric in the Fashion Photography of Omar Victor Diop, by Beth Buggenhagen7. "There Was No Fashion in Morocco Before": (Re)Creating Contemporary Moroccan Fashion History, by M. Angela Jansen8. Unrest and Dress: The Symbol of the Sycamore Tree in Oromo Adornment, by Peri M. KlemmPart III: Collecting, Curating, and Displaying Africa Fashions9. Stories behind the Collections and Why They Matter: Examples from Indiana University, by Heather Akou10. Refashioning Clothing Collections in South African Museums, by Erica de Greef11.Fashioning Africa: Using a New Collection of Dress to Decolonize Museum Practice, by Edith Ojo, Helen Mears, and Nicola StylianouBibliographyIndex