Kwetu Kwanza 2025: Over 4,000 Gather in Uganda for Circular Fashion at Nyege Nyege
Kwetu Kwanza 2025 drew over 4,000 visitors on Saturday, November 22, with thousands more
Nyambo Masa Mara on Border Politics, Sustainability, and Building Masa Mara
Nyambo Masa Mara on Border Politics, Sustainability, and Building Masa Mara Portrait of Nyambo Masa Mara, Founder of the brand Masa Mara. Nyambo Masa Mara’s two freeform dreadlocks hang down his back, thick and heavy. He estimates they weigh about 15 kilograms total. “People always ask if they’re heavy,” he says. “Of course they are. […]
Kwetu Kwanza 2025: Building Circular Fashion Infrastructure from the Ground Up
As Kwetu Kwanza 2025 opens in Uganda, designers from across Africa redefine circular fashion
The Sustainability Checklist: African Fashion in the Age of Green Demands
While African fashion practices have long been inherently sustainable, designers are now navigating a global system where sustainability means compliance
Hortense Mbea of AFROPIAN: The Fashion Griot
Hortense Mbea of AFROPIAN: The Fashion Griot Hortense Mbea, founder of Afropian Hortense Mbea moves through the world as if every gesture were a prayer. Every fold of fabric, every hand-stitched seam, every bead threaded with care carries a story—a word, a sentence, a chapter in Africa’s vast and unending book. Born and raised abroad, […]
Woven Histories: Hair in East and Southern Africa — Ritual, Resistance, and Rebirth
Woven Histories: Hair in East and Southern Africa — Ritual, Resistance, and Rebirth The eembuvi-plaits of Mbalantu women before the Ohango initiation ceremony, Namibia, 1930s. Photograph by C.H.L. Hahn. Collection Antje Otto. Editor’s Note: This feature is part of Guzangs’ ongoing exploration of African hair traditions, tracing their evolution from spiritual practice to global artistry. […]
How Colonial Morality Still Polices African Fashion
How Colonial Morality Still Polices African Fashion Akamba Warrior (Kenya): Image No. 10768. Courtesy of Penn Museum Archives. Before colonial rule, most communities wore practical, hand-made garments: woven cotton wrappers in West Africa; smocks and robes for traders and farmers; leather and beadwork in parts of the Sahel and southern Africa; wool and barkcloth where […]
The Milaya Project: Embroidering Resilience in Uganda’s Largest Refugee Settlement
When Swedish/German photojournalist Nora Lorek first set foot in Bidibidi, northern Uganda—one of the world’s largest refugee settlement, home to over 250,000 South Sudanese—she did not expect to discover a textile tradition that would transform her work. It was 2017, and she had come to document Uganda’s refugee response, curious to understand how a functioning […]
In the Time of Silk: Bolé Dakar’s Rebellion Against Waste
Luxury is not always new. Sometimes it is the silken whisper of a scarf once worn by a grandmother. Sometimes it is a talisman fashioned from a lover’s forgotten tie, reborn as a necklace that rests close to the heart. This is the world of Bolé Dakar, a brand that refuses the disposable tempo of […]
Beyond the White Lines. Africa, Fashion, and the U.S. Open
The first tennis clubs in Africa were built like fortresses. Behind their gates in Lagos, Johannesburg, Nairobi, and Casablanca, colonists played in pressed whites while Africans raked clay, carried balls, or stood outside the fence. The game was there but not for them. That shadow framed a remark by South African designer Wanda Lephoto […]