Documenting changing fashion in Africa post-1960
This women’s Buba made of adire fabric in a water design is by Nigerian designer and textile artist Nike Davies-Okundaye. Adire is a type of textile where fabric is dyed with indigo, with patterns being created using different techniques to resist the dye. This is an example of tie and dyed adire called adire oniko. Read More …
Women’s Buba with adire cowrie shell design by Nigerian designer and textile artist Nike Davies-Okundaye. Adire is a type of textile where fabric is dyed with indigo, with patterns being created using different techniques to resist the dye. This is an example of tie dyed adire called Oniko. The process is time consuming and requires Read More …
This women’s long shirt was created by Nigerian designer and textile artist Nike Davies-Okundaye. The cloth was hand-woven in 1910 by Mrs Ibitola, Nike’s great grandmother. Mrs Ibitola lived in Ede, Osun State and was the head weaver in the village before her death at the age of 86. The patches sewn onto the garment Read More …
This gele was was bought by the owner in Nigeria in the late 1970s. She remembers wearing it to a party when she was a university student in the early 1980s. It is made from woven blue striped fabric. A gele is an elaborate headwrap worn by Yoruba women as part of a matching outfit, Read More …
Adire eleko indigo resist dyed cloth. The design is comprised of circles in square grids with the text ‘SanumiOluwa’ which means ‘Lord have mercy on me’ in Yoruba. The pattern is created using the starch resist (adire eleko) technique: cassava paste is applied to cloth through a stencil or painted on, areas where this is Read More …
This coat by Nigerian designer and textile artist Nike Davies-Okundaye is made from adire, a cloth dyed with indigo using resist dye techniques to create patterns . This design was created using a mixture of stitch resist (adire alabare) and starch resist (adire eleko) dying techniques on white imported sheeting fabric with pre-existing pink printed Read More …
Adire is a type of textile where fabric is dyed with indigo, with patterns being created using different techniques to resist the dye. This is an example of adire alabare, where the resist pattern has been created using machine stitching which is later removed to reveal the design. Collected as part of the Fashioning Africa Read More …
This cloth is an example of an aso-oke style called eleya-sanyan, with an inlaid striped design in two metallic blue shades. Sanyan is a classic style of aso-oke which is woven from from anaphe wild silk, while ‘elaye’ refers to the open work holes in the cloth that form the structural decoration along with the Read More …
This aso-oke fila was worn by Shola Bello, a British Nigerian man, at his wedding. Aso-oke translates as ‘top cloth’ or ‘high status cloth’ and was traditionally narrow strip-woven by men. It is a popular choice for special occasion outfits for Yoruba people in Nigeria and in the UK. While some groom’s outfits are entirely Read More …
This Yoruba groom’s outfit was worn by Shola Bello at his wedding. He wore white to match with his bride, Titi, whose outfit was also collected by the Museum. This intricately woven fabric was bought and made in Lagos, Nigeria, where it is known locally as Guinea Brocade. It was made by a tailor who Read More …