.... An heiress with exquisitely decorated homes and chauffeured cars and hostess of music-filled soirees, she personified the spirit and flamboyance of the era. Always stylish, her blend of regal, statuesque African beauty and haute couture served as an inspiration to poets, painters, and novelists. Among those...

... appeal of Africanness. African models and local fashion designers were Kente’s transcendence of the spatial and economic shifting the power dynamic within the realm of constraints placed upon nonwhites under apartheid haute couture by reclaiming local textiles and modes undoubtedly inspired Drum...

... American designers—Halston, Oscar de la Renta, Anne Klein, Bill Blass, and Stephen Burrows—in a runway rumble for haute couture dominance against Paris heavyweights Yves...

... Sy's designs, made for film and haute couture, to a popular audience. Since 1997, the annual fashion show brings together designers from across Africa...

... of its own claims to thoughtlessly swept into the shadow of some supposedly authentic machismo, and thus presented with an opportunity to look itself in the haute-couture of which the earlier is only a tragic mimicry. Osorio mirror, laugh at itself, and perhaps chance upon...

... the with his “Africa collection” of revealing latticed shift shade of a straw parasol with a monkey perched on dresses made from raffia, shells, and wooden beads. her shoulder. In 1997 John Galliano’s debut haute Born in Algeria, he developed a great affinity for couture collection for Christian Dior...

... an excellent tor of Corridor 8, and a freelance writer tions on haute couture that elevate choice by exhibiting Gaba’s Museum of and has published and presented papers the everyday into art. Contemporary African Art, which was relevant to the work of the Greek Arte In the last...

... and is director of curatorial affairs at the Chicago History Museum. Notes 1 All garments in Inspiring Beauty are from the collection of Johnson Publishing Company. The oldest garment in the exhibition is an haute couture wool jacket from Christian Dior’s fall/winter 1964 season. Ensembles from...

...), Avedon included the covers of Queen, Harper’s Bazaar, and British photographs of two especially striking African Vogue—the first black woman to attain this dis- Americans: the remarkable high school basketball tinction—and was photographed in haute couture talent Lew Alcindor (who would later go...

... of personality and status.27 of nation: a hope he continues to express in his art Colomba’s black subject perfectly adapts to this and musings. narrative of portraiture with her haute couture, To conclude this examination, I want to briefly powerful posing, and steely gaze...