In their Winter 2021 First Word, “Listening as a Radical Act,” DeGreef, Gonalves and Jansen highlight that using fashion as a noun creates a sense of it as superior, universal, and contemporary that ultimately leads to exclusion and discrimination (2021:4). This is undoubtedly true of the historic attitude of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, to African fashion, and it remains to be seen if the museum can begin to address some of these issues. Can large institutions rooted in the history of colonialism make these changes or can it only happen in transgressive spaces like that created by RCDF?
In July 2022, the V&A will open a high profile new temporary exhibition entitled Africa Fashion, curated by Dr. Christine Checinska, the V&A's first senior curator of Africa and African Diaspora: Textiles and Fashion. The exhibition “will explore the vitality and global impact of a fashion scene as dynamic...