Obroni Wawu is the Akan expression for used clothes in Ghana. It translates to “the white man has died clothes”: a reference to Western material abundance. “Dead White Man’s Clothes” is also the name of the multimedia research project on the secondhand clothing trade that Americans Liz Ricketts and Branson Skinner begun in 2016 to investigate the impact of fast …

Kate Fletcher and Mathilda Tham’s Earth Logic (2019), available at this link, is a compelling free-to-read, free-to-share, intervention on sustainable fashion and the industry’s shortcomings. In fact, it is a critique of widespread approaches to the crisis that fashion, as one of the world’s largest industrial sectors, has not only contributed to precipitate, but is also accelerating. Fletcher and Tham …

Saturday 16 November I attended “L’Etica Indosso”, an event on fair fashion organised by CEFA Onlus in collaboration with the Municipality of Bologna. CEFA – Il seme della solidarietà is a human rights NGO that works to alleviate poverty in African rural areas through sustainable agriculture projects and other activities that create opportunities of work and entrepreneurship across the continent. …

arteBOTANICA launched early this month in Johannesburg to send a message of social responsibility in the setting of the Cradle of Humankind, at Nirox Sculpture Park. Creative director Manthe Ribane, of Dear Ribane collective, chose ethical fashion as the inaugural theme of this annual event that promises to “reveal the exuberant aesthetics and joie de vivre of contemporary Africa”. Ribane lined up some …

In an old post I anticipated that I would take part in a conversation on African fashion at Centro Internazionale di Quartiere (C.I.Q.) in Milan, where, on 29 September, I attended the art + fashion performance “DEI”, organized by Antonella Rizzo of HubWax and the Ecole de Couture AEFIJ, Guediawaye-Dakar. Antonella is an independent researcher/school counselor/artist. Above all, she is …

Vusie Shabalala (@vusieshabba), the Soweto-based stylist whom I wrote about in July, has just released the first part of a new visual project entitled “Skin color matters” on Instagram. Vusie anticipated it to me in August and I’m happy to share a sneak peek on Afrosartorialism. Racism and colorism are a topic that the 25-year old stylist feels strongly about. …

On Sunday 29 September I have been invited to take part in an “informal conversation” on African fashion at Centro Interculturale di Quartiere, C.I.Q. in Milan, along Emanuela Mora, full professor of Sociology at Cattolica University and director of the research institute MODACULT, and Claudia Mazzucco, journalist at ETNOTV. The conversation will take place after the fashion+art performance “Dei”, curated …