The Story of the African Diaspora, Told Through Its Fashions

By Sandra E Garcia, New York Times

By examining the work of designers of African descent, a new exhibition in Manhattan finds common threads and, more interestingly, divergences.

In a darkened gallery, a dress designed by Madame Willi Posey bedecks a mannequin standing under a spotlight. Notably, Ms. Posey, who worked as a fashion designer in Harlem in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, is the person who taught Faith Ringgold, a venerated multimedia artist whose story quilts have hung in many of the great American museums, how to sew. She was her mother.

The Posey ensemble, which includes wide-leg pants and a long-sleeved tunic in a gold fabric that combines zebra and leopard print, is part of “Africa’s Fashion Diaspora,” a new exhibition at the Museum at FIT in Manhattan that examines works from designers of African descent.

The 60 looks included in the exhibition, which opened last week, were created by designers from Africa, Europe, the United States, the Caribbean and South America. The show aims to draw out a mosaic of stories from the African diaspora — a term for the patchwork of global communities of people descended from Africans. From Denim Tears to Balmain to Telfar, the show seeks to highlight connections across the Black experience through fashion.

“For this exhibition, I think one of the hidden themes is that fashion is storytelling,” Elizabeth Way, the show’s curator, said. “All of the designers really use fashion to tell stories, and they, as Black people, tell stories about themselves and about their cultures. I think that through fashion we can understand other cultures a bit better.”

Finish the article to see examples of her work.

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