Homegrown to High Fashion: African Musicians’ Style Journey and Cultural Pride
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Burna Boy (@burnaboygram) Burna Boy in Ozwald Boateng at The Met Gala 2025 African musicians have long used fashion to reflect their cultural roots and global ambitions. In the early 2000s, as genres like Afrobeats gained momentum, artists championed local designers, wearing traditional fabrics […]
Woven Histories: A Series on African Hair
A three-part Guzangs series on African hair: how it has been styled, what it has signified, and how those traditions are evolving region by region. Hair across Africa has long carried lineage, spirituality, and social standing. Woven Histories traces that record across three regions, beginning in the Maghreb and ending in East and Southern Africa. […]
Trans-continental Collaborations Opened New Markets for African Fashion — Why Did They Pause?
The most transformative moments in African fashion over the past decade have been defined by strategic collaborations that elevated the industry to unprecedented heights. Yet this remarkable ascent was only possible because African designers first established an unshakeable foundation: placing culture at the very heart of their creative vision. What distinguishes African fashion from its […]
The History of African Designers at New York Fashion Week
When African designers began appearing on the New York Fashion Week stage, they brought with them more than collections—they introduced perspectives that expanded the conversation of global fashion. From Nigeria’s vibrant textiles to South Africa’s bold silhouettes, these creators have steadily woven cultural heritage and contemporary vision into one of the industry’s most visible […]
Big Four vs Africa: Fashion Week’s Contrasting Realities
Fashion weeks have always been about more than the clothes. Yes, they’re displays of style, but they’re also where global trends are born, where billions of dollars change hands, and where designers make statements that ripple far beyond the runway. A single collection can spark conversations about politics, identity, or sustainability. In Lagos or Paris, […]
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 […]
Inside the Rise of Africa’s Skateboarding Culture
In Kampala, in a neighborhood called Kitintale, a half-pipe rises from the red earth. It is not polished concrete poured by a city planner or a glossy installation by a global sports brand. It is a handmade monument, built nearly twenty years ago by Jackson Mubiru, who believed Uganda’s children needed a place to […]
Labor Day 2025: William Matlala’s Lens on Labour and Documenting the Dignity of Black Workers in South Africa
When William Matlala picked up his mother’s camera in the early 1980s, he began what would become one of South Africa’s most quietly powerful photographic projects: a visually dense archive of factory floors, miners, families, and community life that refused the narrow images of Black existence under apartheid. Even after decades, his work continues to […]
Africa Textile Talks 2025: Weaving Circularity, Wool, and Culture Into the Future of Fashion
“The Cape once dressed a nation. Now it’s being dressed by the rest of the world.” — Ilse Menck, Menck Clothing That line, delivered in Cape Town, set the tone for Africa Textile Talks 2025 (ATT). Organised by sustainability platform Twyg, ATT has grown into one of the continent’s most important gatherings on fashion, textiles, […]
Sindiso Khumalo Debuts Flagship Store in Cape Town as a Love Letter to African Craft
There are many facets to Sindiso Khumalo: She is, foremost, a designer whose textiles are instantly recognizable for their bold colors and hand-drawn prints. She is a storyteller who weaves African and Black history into contemporary fashion, creating a compelling bridge between different eras of design. Beyond that, she is an architect by training, an […]