Fashions in Africa, and Africas in Fashion–Global Africa as Method

Abstract

“‘Africa’ can mean many things… there are thus multiple Africas, including regions, diverse politics and economies, and some 2,140 living languages” (Large 2021, 9). This article proposes Global Africa as Method as an epistemological approach for rethinking the multi-layered production, circulation and valuation of African fashion. The framework simultaneously decenters Eurocentric perspectives on Africa and fashion while recentering African fashion practices within relational, non-Western circuits of creativity. Drawing on multi-sited ethnography conducted in Nairobi, Maputo, and Guangzhou between 2023 and 2025, this article advances an expanded understanding of African fashion beyond dominant framings that privilege novelty, elite or designer-led creativity, pan-Africanist esthetics, cultural purity, spatio-temporal fixity, or material symbolism. By examining everyday practices across China–Africa fashion networks—spanning design, trade, and consumption in both formal and informal markets—the analysis foregrounds how fashion value is produced through processes of mediation, adaptation, and recombination. By foregrounding these grounded, South–South fashion practices, this article reframes African fashion as plural, relational, and processual, intervening in how non-Western fashion systems are conceptualized within global fashion studies. Beyond African fashion, Global Africa as Method also offers a framework for rethinking how fashion systems, value, and creativity are theorized within fashion studies more broadly.