Suddenly, Africa is Everywhere (NY Times Article)
While I was in Miami for Art Basel, it was noticeable that anything African is in vogue right now. You see sprinkles of the culture emanating from the fashion world to cinema (Avatar) and the movement continues to gain traction.  I look forward to seeing all my peeps @ the forefront of the African Renaissance get their shine in 2010.
From Broadway to the Runway – we taking over – get used to it . Special shout out to Malcolm Harris (Unvogue), Tyson Perez (Unvogue) & Maya Lake (Boxing Kitten – who designed the outfit above that Solange is rocking. ) Check out this piece that was in the NY Times today. – !YG
Designing to an Afro Beat
THE Na’vi, the blue-skinned clan of the planet Pandora in James Cameron’s screen blockbuster “Avatar,†scale treetops and mountains, and even fly, with a loose-limbed elasticity that Tarzan would have envied. At once exotic and familiar to fans of adventure films, the Pandorans wear latticed animal skins and brightly colored beads, and score their faces with chalky tribal markings.
Jake Sully, the former Marine assigned to infiltrate the tribe, can’t take his eyes off Neytiri, a regal member of the clan. When he first encounters her clambering along a slender tree branch, he is drawn unstoppably into her world.
A similar exoticism is casting its spell over the style world of late, as vanguard retailers like Barneys New York, mass marketers like American Apparel and designers as disparate as Oscar de la Renta, Marc Jacobs, Frida Giannini of Gucci and Dries Van Noten embrace pan-African influences, responding, as if in concert, to some far away drumbeat.
Western fascination with African art and design has blown in gusts for over a century, of course, ever since Picasso and Kandinsky filled their canvases with tribal motifs. As recently as the 1970s, Yves Saint Laurent introduced a collection of “African†dresses constructed from raffia, shells and wooden beads.
Now another Afrocentric wind is rising. “Its beauty is in having crossed all sorts of racial barriers,†said Malcolm Harris, the creative director of Unvogue, a popular fashion-focused Webzine. “It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from. People are incorporating bits and pieces into their wardrobes and their lives.â€
That may be because in the popular imagination, African jungles, deserts and plains retain a near-mystical allure, which the reality of the continent’s political turmoil and poverty have never entirely dispelled.
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