Fashion and clothing in colonial Central Africa: Two worlds meeting
##This study is an attempt to reconstruct and interpret the process of incorporation of European dress style or of specific items by Africans in the Congo region since their first contacts with Europeans in the 15th century, through the period of colonial rule, up to the 1980s. What might be mistaken at first sight as a phenomenon of acculturation because of its striking similarity with conventional European models, is in fact a selective and intentional choice by the Africans according to their local aesthetic norms and to the particular sociosymbolic value attached to outward appearance and styling. Africans of different social backgrounds were keen on fancy European dresses because of their strong symbolic value of prestige and power and they used this particular consumer pattern as a weapon in their struggle for sociopolitical emancipation.##
Keywords: precolonial and colonial Central Africa, traditional styles o dressing, aesthetics in Africa, symbolical meaning of clothing, European fashion in Africa, clothing in Africa
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