The influence of African designers has seldom been considered in the global fashion conversation, but the tide is starting to turn. From Thebe Magugu to Sarah Diouf, a new generation of designers from across the continent are making their voices heard, and a network of independent media publishers, curators, and entrepreneurs are rising to the challenge of amplifying their visibility.
In recent years, museums in major fashion capitals have staged exhibitions—from Africa Fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London to Africa’s Fashion Diaspora at the Museum at FIT in New York—dedicated to the history and artistry of African fashion. Separately, Fashion Week is gaining traction in African cities not traditionally considered fashion capitals yet that are rich in material culture, including Lagos, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Dakar. This confluence of events has bolstered positive momentum in the recognition of Africa’s contributions to the fashion canon. Increasingly, people are waking up to the multitude of cultures and diversity of thought and skills existing on the continent.
Among the change makers effecting this change is Idelle Taye, the Cameroon-born founder of Guzangs. Growing up in West Africa, surrounded by “African aunties” as she calls them, and a mom for whom “every occasion was a [fashion] moment.” Young Idelle was inevitably drawn to the world of her local tailors and the rich textiles they fashioned clothes out of. This early affinity for style turned into a veritable passion for championing the crafts of African designers. She founded Guzangs in 2020 in response to the persistent underrepresentation of Black fashion designers in the United States.
“We really want to change the face of African fashion,” Taye shares. “With a platform like Guzangs, you get to see how contemporary, how modern African fashion is, and how people are also reimagining old traditional methods of [dressmaking] and making them more avant-garde.”
From discovering and promoting new African design talent to connecting them to life-changing opportunities such as the chance to exhibit their work in galleries or participating in renowned textile festivals, Taye is unwavering in her commitment to elevating African fashion to the global stage. “You cannot really talk about fashion without talking about Africa,” she says. “We can be players as well.”
We caught up with Idelle Taye to discuss Guzangs, the challenges facing the growth of African fashion, and her hopes for the industry.
ESSENCE: What kind of girl was young Idelle and how did she develop this connection to African fashion specifically?
Idelle Taye: I think my story is not very unique from how I started because someone has to inspire you in your family, right? And that person in my family was my mom because she loved dressing up. Every occasion was a moment for her! So I think just having African aunties and moms you know, they go overboard so that’s something that inspires you.
I think that was my first big inspiration. And just growing up, I just think my taste evolved and I was like “This is what I like about fashion.” I’m not educated in fashion but I just had this natural affinity for it.
How did you channel that into the career you have today?
That was because I noticed there was a gap. You know when you live in Africa and you think about African fashion, you think about your local tailor at the market. You’re not thinking, “They have an established store front” in the way you do with European brands like Gucci and the rest. Then when I moved to the United States as a teenager, it became more glaring that when they talk about fashion, Black designers as a whole were never in the picture. Or even if they had one, it was always like a token. So I was like, “Africa is a whole continent with so many different kinds of fashion. How come no one is thinking about what comes from here but you always see the inspiration? How come no one is talking to these designers and getting their opinions about what is going [on] there?” So that led me to research what is happening on the continent and that’s how Guzangs was born.
So what were those initial days like?
MAXHOSA was the person [I first discovered] because when I saw his collection, I was just in awe that this was an African doing this. Then I wondered why no one was talking about him. Why is he not [in] Vogue? Why are we not reading about him on TV shows or front page magazines? So it made me wonder about who else is out there, who else is advancing fashion on the continent.
I want to go back to that moment when you realized that African fashion was underrepresented and that no one was talking about the designers on the continent. What was happening in the United States and fashion specifically?
Moving as a teenager, it didn’t really dawn on me at first. Like every other young person I was into what Gucci is doing then the older you get, and for me this was around 2016 and 2017, you start to notice things. I had this concern that we were framing African fashion as ankara, a wax print fabric popular in West Africa. Like how do you make a whole continent about Ankara? It’s something that doesn’t even belong to us. In Cameroon where I’m from, the Ankara isn’t a thing. There are all these different fabrics, different textures, different ways of fabricating stuff so that’s what sparked questions in my mind. Then with COVID-19 when everyone was stuck at home, I started digging deep.
In practice, how do you work with the designers or external stakeholders like retailers, and museum curators to bring your mission of championing African fashion to life?
We’re trying to create an ecosystem and a community where they belong and know this is a space they can come to and show their work to the world. We don’t have a platform where they sign up but we have a platform that promotes their work. Let’s say we have to partner with an organization on something, it’s easier for them to do it with us because they know who we are.
Take for example an event like XTANT—this yearly textile festival in Mallorca—where everyone from around the world comes to showcase their indigenous textiles and talk about how to preserve [these traditions]. It’s also a conference where you get to collaborate and establish relationships with designers from around the world. They had reached out to us to collaborate because they were fascinated by what they saw on Guzangs. We were able to sponsor two designers from the continent to go. Unfortunately one of them [Florentina Agu of Hertunba) didn’t receive their visa on time, but the one who was able to make it got a lot out of being involved with the community. Other organizations also reach out to us for recommendations. And when they do, we reach out to our network and think about who can partner up with these different brands and give them that exposure as well.
I know Guzangs is still young but what kind of impact has it had on the brands you’ve supported so far?
What we’ve seen so far is that when we post designers, they sell out. They will reach out to thank us or tell us that other brands reached out to them because of us. So this is the kind of impact we’re seeing; it’s been very philanthropic in that way and [Guzangs] was just driven by this passion of wanting to see a change.
I’d love to touch on how the perception of African fashion has changed. You mentioned the previous narrow lens but now if you think about the recent African fashion exhibitions happening in major capitals of the world, it feels like that perception is shifting. How is it different from when you first launched Guzangs?
I believe that the perception has changed in a way that people are looking at African fashion now as contemporary and modern. Back in the day, they probably thought of it as very traditional, colorful, and very monolithic. With a platform like Guzangs, you get to see how contemporary, and modern African fashion is, and how people are also reimagining old traditional methods of [dressmaking] and making them more avant-garde. I think social media has also helped spread that perception.
Absolutely! Africa is so diverse as a continent with 54 countries I also think it’s reductive to say it’s just one style of dress. How does the fashion differ from region to region for example West vs East vs South vs Central Africa?
If you take East Africa for example [which has a smaller fashion industry], the fashion tends to be monotonous with dark, white, and earthy colors. But if you move to West Africa it’s more colorful. You have all these vibrant colors. Going up north, North African fashion stands out for its flowing kaftans, intricate embroidery, and rich fabrics like silk and brocade, blending Arab, Berber, and African traditions. Meanwhile, in South Africa, you see a lot of European influence in their aesthetics and the way they manufacture, which has a lot to do with their history. In Central Africa, you have the Kuba cloth from Congo, which has been around for thousands of years. But this is just to show how different we are.
I think I have a pretty good understanding of how colonialism and Western biases play into the historical exclusion of African fashion, but I’d love to hear about some of the internal challenges hurting the growth of the industry?
I think Africa only has a fraction of the resources that our counterparts in the West have, but I also think Africans don’t necessarily believe in an “industry” in the way of the West—as in sending your kid to fashion school or promoting the arts. It’s a thing you can just do but it’s not really promoted in society. Then when you think about trade between two African countries, there are so many roadblocks. Shipping a good from Nigeria to Uganda is way more expensive than shipping it to the United States. So if those trade agreement barriers aren’t lowered so that it’s more favorable for the countries to trade with each other then that’s not going to work. There’s an overall lack of investment in the sector.
What are your hopes for the future of the African fashion industry?
[We want to] be involved in the direction that the fashion industry is going. And it shouldn’t just be [known as] African fashion but global fashion. How do we participate? I think the perception of Africa as a charitable case is very popular, but it shouldn’t always be this way. We can be players as well.
