THE NEW YORK TIMES, THURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 2020 Y D5
distinction between non-Black buyers us-
ing their money to support Black designers
and non-Black designers using African-as-
sociated prints to make money for them-
selves.
“As a Black American, I relate to the fab-
ric in a different way,” she said. “If someone
doesn’t have a personal connection, cultur-
ally, to the fabric, that’s not cool,” she said,
referring to fashion houses like Stella Mc-
Cartney, which got pushback for using an-
kara prints. “Just going to a place and
studying a thing doesn’t mean you can co-
opt it to make money.”
The distinction between buyers and de-
signers is an important one for many in the
industry.
“I would like to see African print every-
where,” said Yetunde Olukoya, a Nigerian-
born designer who moved to the United
States with her husband when she was 26.
“As long as it’s made in Africa, and puts val-
ue back into the people who actually made
this fashion popular, then I would love to see
it worn all over the world.”
Ray Darten, the label she started in her
living room in 2016 with 160 pieces she
sewed by hand, now employs more than 100
workers in Nigeria.
For Ms. Olukoya, ankara print clothing
counters the narratives that too often asso-
ciate much of Africa with poverty and dis-
ease. “Americans needed to learn that there
are beautiful things that come out of here,”
she said.
Ms. Olukoya estimates that about 80 per-
cent of her customer base is African-Ameri-
can.
For Ms. Elabor, who moved to the United
States from Nigeria as a child, it is impor-
tant that any designer who popularizes Af-
rican print should be of African descent.
“Otherwise, it would make it seem like we
had to wait for another race to come and use
this before the world could see it as popu-
lar,” she said.
Ms. Orji of All Things Ankara has seen a
sharp increase in white buyers on her site in
the last month, a trend she welcomes. She
does publish photographs of non-Black
models in ankara print. “If we want these
prints to go viral, then we need more people
to use them,” she said.
Part of what is driving the current con-
versation is that while African-born design-
ers see African print as a way to spread
their culture, they are selling it in a country
that has its own separate history and rela-
tionship to these fabrics.
Many people of all colors in America
grew up associating African print clothing
with expressions of Black pride, based on
its popularity during the civil rights era and
its use in the Black Power movement as a
way to show solidarity and connection with
one’s African heritage. They see the fashion
not as a way to spread African culture, but
to reclaim it.
“The first time a customer cried in one of
my pop-up shops, I didn’t know what to do,”
said Ms. Olukoya of Ray Darten. “But then
as she began to explain to me how she felt, I
started crying as well. I’m Nigerian, I know
where I am from, and I can’t imagine what it
would feel like if I didn’t know where I was
from. It’s not just about the clothes on the
racks. It’s about being confident in them,
and confident in the culture.”
Abiye Yvonne Dede, a British designer
born in Nigeria and the founder of the cloth-
ing line L’aviye, estimates that about 70 per-
cent of her business comes from the United
States, with African-Americans being her
largest demographic.
A few weeks ago, she put up an Instagram
post in which she wore her designs along-
side models in L’aviye clothes. “Because
we’re always being asked if L’aviye is Black
owned,” the caption read.Comments came quickly: “Now I can buy.
I did research and could not find if it was
black owned. My bank account is already
crying!!!”
Other designers see their African her-
itage as a point of departure from which
they can bring something new to the global
fashion scene.
“As I sat on vacation, looking basic be-
cause I had nothing else to wear, I decided
to start pursuing swimsuits,” Buki Ade said
about why she founded Bfyne, a swimwear
company known for its innovative use of
straps, sleeves and prints drawn from her
Nigerian heritage.
“In these designs, you can walk into the
room and you don’t have to say a word be-
cause your outfit has already introduced
you,” she said. “It’s a vibe.”
Recent months have brought more atten-
tion, including in Allure and Elle, magazines
she believes would not have known about
her label if not for a heightened awareness
of Black designers. She is grateful for the at-
tention but finds it hard to think about the
reason so many Black designers are sud-denly being given the spotlight.
With the notable exception of kente cloth,
many recognizable African prints today are
based on Indonesian batiks. Known as Afri-
can wax block prints, or Dutch wax prints,
they were introduced to West Africa by
Dutch merchants in the mid-1800s, after the
Dutch tried to imitate traditional batik fab-
rics through machine-made work but found
that their mechanized fabrics failed to pene-
trate the Indonesian market.
Vlisco, a Dutch fabric company estab-
lished in the Netherlands in 1846, designed
and produced cloth sold all over West Afri-
ca. Today it continues to design many of the
most popular fabrics sold in the region,
though the cloth itself is named and given
its particular cultural significance by local
women.
Even dashiki tops, as popularized in the
United States in the late 1960s, were styled
from Vlisco’s Angelina print, which in turn
was taken from a longstanding West Afri-
can tunic design.
For centuries, the patterns have been a
way to communicate without saying a word,
and it can be jarring for some to see these
designs worn without regard to their origi-
nal messages. (Some of the cloth used now
for shorts, halter dresses and jumpsuits
holds specific meaning in Nigeria or Ghana,
where it may signal that one is pregnant,
newly married or mourning a relative.) But
others say there is no way to stop cultural
innovation.
“There is a time to say you want to wear
something because you look really good in
it, and you like it,” said Paulette Young, the
director of the Young Robertson Gallery in
New York, which specializes in the visual
arts of Africa. “And that’s OK, too.” Ms.
Young wrote her dissertation on the Dutch
origins of African wax fabrics.
Scot Brown, an associate professor at the
University of California, Los Angeles, and a
historian of African-American social move-
ments and popular culture, is not worried
about whether ankara print will lose its sig-
nificance for the African-American commu-
nity if it goes mainstream. Though he loves
his D’iyanu blazers, he sees the innovative
use of this print for Western business
clothes as another sign that African fashion
will constantly evolve and adapt to chang-
ing conditions.
“When something goes mainstream,
there is always some new underground
thing happening,” Mr. Brown said, adding
that expressions of Black pride will simply
evolve and take up new forms. “Africa style
is such a vast, almost infinite body of cre-
ativity that you don’t ever have to worry
about running out of creative gas.”Clockwise from top left: a look
from D’iyanu; looks from
L’aviye; swimwear from Bfyne;
and looks from the label Ray
Darten for children and adults.CONTINUED FROM PAGE D1
SOME PEOPLE
SEE THE FASHION
N OT A S A WAY T O
SPREAD AFRICAN
CULTURE, BUT TO
RECLAIM IT.African Prints Find a Bigger Market
VIA L’AVIYEPHOTOGRAPHS VIA RAY DARTEN (LEFT AND ABOVE)cific food items in Sydney, Australia, but an
entire culinary experience: eating at a
diner. “I miss being able to get a $10 break-
fast that’s bigger than my entire face, and
really cheap American coffee,” he said.
Mr. Carrico, a strategy director at an ad-
vertising agency, expects to wait until 2021
to see family and visit Orphan Andy’s, a
diner in the Castro district in San Francisco
where he eats every time he is home.
Everyday Luxuries
Though comfort foods helped her adjust to
living in Europe when she moved in 2010,
Ms. Valentine said that she now focuses
more on daily-use items, like toiletries. “I’m
African-American, so I get my hair prod-
ucts at home,” she said. “There’s less choice
here and it’s far more expensive.”
Rashi Rohatgi, 35, a novelist who lives in
northern Norway, stocks up on Fenty
Beauty cosmetics for a similar reason. “The
color choices are limited here,” said Ms. Ro-
hatgi, who is of South Asian descent.
Other items that Americans abroad often
purchase on trips home include over-the-
counter medications that are cheaper and
easier to buy in bulk than they are in Eu-
rope, like Advil or Claritin, and supplements
like melatonin and gummy vitamins.
“Europeans understandably don’t think
adults need vitamins to be gummy, but I
need them to taste like candy,” said Elisa-
beth Bloxam, 27, the director of programs
for the Fulbright Commission in Brussels.
After each trip back to Virginia, she has a
“mini-CVS pharmacy” in her apartment,
Ms. Bloxam said.
After 11 years abroad, Ms. Rohatgi is well
aware of the high cost of living in Norway,
where consumer goods are among the most
expensive in Europe. As her toddler grows
out of his clothes, she thinks about all the
hand-me-downs she would normally re-
ceive from friends in Pennsylvania. In the
absence of visitors, she said, “I have spent
about $100 on three pairs of kid pants.”
She also yearns for move diverse reading
material for her child. “I really miss books
with nonwhite people in them,” she said.
“The library here does a decent job, but
they have other considerations. I’ve spent
so much money on kids’ books with brown
kids.”
Then there are the books she owns but
left behind. “There are a lot of books I left at
my parents house that I said, ‘When I have a
kid, I’ll read this book to my kid,’ ” she said.
She has also been nostalgic for American
franchises she never expected to feel so
fondly about.
“I miss things I didn’t even do when I
lived in the U.S.,” Ms. Rohatgi said. “I want
to go home and hit up a Target so bad.”