Top 10 African Inspired Fashion Trends – The Afropolitan Effect

Top 10 African Inspired Fashion Trends – The Afropolitan Effect Western fashion has often looked to African and African-American culture for inspiration but this time around the world seems to want an official romance with it. Here’s what you should know about when the affair started and how Afropolitans are changing the narrative. Western designers have been flirting with African symbols, patterns and fibers since as far back as the 1970s when Yves Saint Laurent created a fashion collection that evoked images of an exotic Africa for non-African audiences. These collections were based on what Western designers imagined Africa to be as opposed to what it really was. As expected, this cultural appropriation, which was not benefitting African designers or textile weavers in any way created an uproar because it was a one-sided affair and was not mutually beneficial. Africa was the glamorous mistress whom Western designers wanted to profit from but not empower. The resistance also came because no one can tell Africans how to be authentically African. Despite the deep cultural similarities, the countries in the continent share different political climates, geographic realities, languages and weather. Meaning that there is no one single narrative of African reality. These diverse experiences of Africans gave rise to the term Afropolitan. Afropolitans are young Africans with a global outlook, upwardly mobile, culturally savvy, changing the perceptions about Africa through creative expression and redefining what it means to be African in the midst of a multitude of subcultures. To be Afropolitan means we understand that the world is a global village (heck, we are products of that globalization), and that design inspiration can come from anywhere. However, if the fashion world borrows from Africa we ask for recognition, inclusion and empowerment of African designers and retail brands that have worked hard to keep evolving African style, giving it new currency and new associations. With this understanding, let’s take a look at the top 10 Afro-inspired trends for women that have found their way to the retail fashion streets.