Afrykański strój, europejskie tkaniny i katolicka moda w Ghanie
African dress, European fabrics, and Catholic fashion in Ghana

Author(s): Anna Niedźwiedź
Subject(s): Anthropology, Cultural history, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, 19th Century
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Ghana; dress; Catholicism; history of nakedness; colonialism; African wax print
Summary/Abstract: This paper discusses the complex history behind today’s African dresses, especially those used in the context of African Christianity in contemporary Ghana, where the author conducted ethnographic fieldwork. The history of clothes and fabrics used broadly to dayas markers of African identity reveals the hybrid and changing character of fashion. The first part of the paper focuses on the history of nakedness as a concept framed by the missionaries’ imagination and the colonial hegemonic gaze on the “African body”. Then the process of “inventing clothes for Africans” is discussed with a special emphasis on the development of the African wax print. In the final part, examples of contemporary “African dresses” are analyzed in the context of today’s post-missionary lived Catholicism in Ghana. Clothes are used as markers of religious and ethnic identities; they also express hierarchies and form gender roles. Additionally, they are intimately connected with individual bodies, shaping them as tools in religious practices.

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