Discover Africa's rising generation of fashion illustrators who are bringing diversity to the industry. Fashion Illustration Africa is a vibrant, visually inspiring sourcebook that presents the work of 23 dynamic fashion illustrators and designers drawn from across Africa and the diaspora, whose work is shaping what has until now been a virtually non-existent commercial industry across the continent. Given a voice by social media and the internet's democratizing, border-crossing abilities, this is a young and digitally savvy generation who are also championing diversity in a global industry that tends to be defined by one model of beauty and style.

Africa Fashion explores the kaleidoscope of craft cultures that have shaped African fashion for centuries and captures the intriguing stories of pioneering and contemporary African brands. Part One retells the history of African fashion, exploring Africa's textile traditions, artisanship in jewelry and embellishment and the continent's role as a global resource. The second part presents a New Africa and examines the promise and potential of Africa's markets, while challenging stereotypes and the concept of European hegemony in the realm of luxury fashion. It also spotlights Africa's unique position as the global industry shifts towards a more sustainable future. The third and final part ushers the reader into the spectacular world of African fashion today. It showcases a carefully curated set of the continent's most dynamic brands and, through interviews with prominent and inspiring designers, offers rare insight into their ethos and design practice.

The social enterprise Africa Fashion Guide has compiled the ultimate fashion guide from Africa. The book 'FASHION AFRICA' features the must-haves from just a handful of the creme de la creme of emerging and established designers who have taken their core inspiration from all corners of Africa 'FASHION AFRICA' proudly showcases 48 designers who have been influenced by the heartbeat, the many facets of history, culture, and people of Africa to bring about an aesthetic beauty which has been artistically illustrated. Featured in the book are designers such as Jewel by Lisa, Tiffany Amber, SUNO NY, Oliberte, NKWO, Loin Cloth and Ashes, Chichia London as well as ethical manufacturers such as Mantisworld and Kibotrade. You will also find fantastic modern illustrations, stunning photography and great analysis. This book - or visual guide - is the first of its kind that provides a contemporary, informative and visual overview of the African fashion and textiles industry with an ethical perspective.

Gain new perspective on the vibrant and innovative world of contemporary African fashion design, bursting with fresh creativity and free from reductive stereotypes. From the runway in Lagos and music festivals in Casablanca or Nairobi, to the “image makers” of Marrakech and the influencers of Dakar or Accra, a new gener­ation of African fashion designers, photographers, bloggers, and hair and makeup artists are redefining the aesthetic contours of the continent. Audacious, humorous, disruptive, and innovative are the bywords of these young creatives who, while drawing upon and reval­orizing their heritage, offer an ultra-contemporary perspective on fashion today. A creative revolution is spreading in an extension of continental revindication through cultural reappropriation and the invention of a visual language. Appliqué figures straight from Ghanaian Asafo flags seem to chant modern slogans as they march across silk dresses, traditional textile prints give power back to women, and Xhosa beaded embroidery serves as an inspiration for modern knitwear. Body-artists transform themselves into platforms for activism, and photographers—using clothing and finery—question identity, gender, and environment. Urban neighborhoods are reframed in a new light through the lens of ubiquitous smartphones. This volume celebrates a creative, effervescent gener­ation, which—by breaking the rules and rewriting the narrative of the African continent—is inventing a new and resolutely African chapter in the history of fashion that is now resonating across the globe.

Following the success of the bestselling New Fashion Illustration comes this exciting visual bible for illustrators and graphic designers. Featuring nearly 1,000 new and innovative images, it provides an unprecedented variety of approaches to the field. An international array of artists offer inspirational examples of every technique, from traditional watercolors, acrylics, and pencil drawings to cutting-edge designs using the latest technology from Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia FreeHand, and digital photography. The fabulous fashions include womenswear (including couture and bridal); menswear (from t-shirts to bespoke); children's clothing (tots to teens); and the hottest youth styles. Plus, there's stuff for sport and leisure, cool accessories, and beauty and glamour illustrations. This eye-catching resource is a must-have for any designer--and for anyone who loves fashion.

Creating African Fashion Histories examines the stark disjuncture between African self-fashioning and museum practices. Conventionally, African clothing, textiles, and body adornments were classified by museums as examples of trade goods, art, and ethnographic materials—never as "fashion." Counterposing the dynamism of African fashion with museums' historic holdings thus provides a unique way of confronting ways in which coloniality persists in knowledge and institutions today. This volume brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and curators to debate sources and approaches for constructing African fashion histories and to examine their potential for decolonizing museums, fashion studies, and global cultural history. The editors of this volume seek to answer questions such as: How can researchers use museum collections to reveal traces of past self-fashioning that are obscured by racialized forms of knowledge and institutional practice? How can archival, visual, oral, ethnographic, and online sources be deployed to capture the diversity of African sartorial pasts? How can scholars and curators decolonize the Eurocentric frames of thinking encapsulated in historic collections and current curricula? Can new collections of African fashion decolonize museum practice? From Moroccan fashion bloggers to upmarket Lagos designers, the voices in this ground-breaking collection reveal fascinating histories and geographies of circulation within and beyond the continent and its diasporic communities.

An insight into the intricacies of contemporary fashion in four African cities. From couture to street style, from luxury to thrifting, this publication provides a shapshot of some of Africa's most exciting contemporary fashion scenes in Nairobi (Kenya), Casablanca (Morocco), Lagos (Nigeria) and Johannesburg (South Africa)

The Nigerian and West African practice of aso ebi fashion invokes notions of wealth and group dynamics in social gatherings. Okechukwu Nwafor’s volume Aso ebi investigates the practice in the cosmopolitan urban setting of Lagos, and argues that the visual and consumerist hype typical of the late capitalist system feeds this unique fashion practice. The book suggests that dress, fashion, aso ebi, and photography engender a new visual culture that largely reflects the economics of mundane living. Nwafor examines the practice’s societal dilemma, whereby the solidarity of aso ebi is dismissed by many as an ephemeral transaction. A circuitous transaction among photographers, fashion magazine producers, textile merchants, tailors, and individual fashionistas reinvents aso ebi as a product of cosmopolitan urban modernity. The results are a fetishization of various forms of commodity culture, personality cults through mass followership, the negotiation of symbolic power through mass-produced images, exchange value in human relationships through gifts, and a form of exclusion achieved through digital photo editing. Aso ebi has become an essential part of Lagos cosmopolitanism: as a rising form of a unique visual culture it is central to the unprecedented spread of a unique West African fashion style that revels in excessive textile overflow. This extreme dress style is what an individual requires to transcend the lack imposed by the chaos of the postcolonial city.

Fashion Designer's Handbook for Adobe Illustrator 2ndEdition is a teach-yourself guide that provides step-by-stepinstructions and diagrams on how to use Adobe IllustratorCS5. Bursting with detailed technical information and full colourillustrations, its highly practical approach ensures fastlearning. You will not only learn how to create technicaldrawings, but also fashion illustrations, flat drawings andstoryboards for the fashion industry, and how to combine AdobeIllustrator and Adobe Photoshop. Once the basicsare covered, you have the opportunity to learn more about thesophisticated aspects of this essential software package. If you are a fashion student or a fashion designer, this is theonly book you'll need to master the very latest version of AdobeIllustrator.

African Fashion, Global Style provides a lively look at fashion, international networks of style, material culture, and the world of African aesthetic expression. Victoria L. Rovine introduces fashion designers whose work reflects African histories and cultures both conceptually and stylistically, and demonstrates that dress styles associated with indigenous cultures may have all the hallmarks of high fashion. Taking readers into the complexities of influence and inspiration manifested through fashion, this book highlights the visually appealing, widely accessible, and highly adaptable styles of African dress that flourish on the global fashion market.