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Yards of Style University of California UCOP | Yards of style [MUSIC PLAYING] We are standing in the Fowler in Focus gallery in our intersections gallery at the Fowler Museum. This is the space that is devoted to our permanent holdings. And we do small, specialized exhibitions that rotate several times throughout the year. This latest project, Yards of Style, African-print cloths from Ghana, focuses on about 40 different cloths mostly purchased in the markets in Kumasi and Accra. The cloths that you'll see really speak to issues of history, of trade, of globalization, of fashion, of style, of women's agency in fashion, and is really a microcosm of cloth and fashion in West and Central Africa. Roller skates, commemorative portraits, royal regalia, the visual imagery featured on commercially-produced, African-print cloths is eclectic and compelling. The brilliant patterns speak at once to local concerns and global realities, making the cloths repositories of ideas, memories, and histories. Initially inspired by Indonesian batik and Indian chintz, these boldly-patterned cotton textiles have been embraced across the continent. Today, despite their historical origins or place of manufacture, they are essentially and profoundly associated with Africa. They are African by design, African in sensibility, and African in use. Yards of Style focuses primarily on print cloths from the markets of Ghana and hints at the enormous range of patterns that exist. Fashioned into tailored or wrapped styles, collected for their beauty and value, and given as gifts, African print cloths are central to women's lives. A woman's cloth collection equates with wealth and is a measure of her status and taste. A woman of means may own over 150 costly, imported wax prints, the most prestigious type of African print cloth admired for its superior color fastness and durability. The cloth market today has undergone drastic changes. High-quality commercial fabrics for the African market were initially only manufactured in Europe. With the end of colonialism, this shifted to Africa. And today, a vast amount of cloth is imported from China. Of the four African-print companies established on Ghanaian soil in the 1960s, only two remain. And their viability is challenged by cheaper, sometimes illegal, Chinese imports. Despite the threat to the Ghanaian-print cloth industry, some believe that the availability of these cheaper imports in difficult times has enlivened in the market, ensuring the presence of a patterned-cloth universe for a public still eager to consume it. Despite the threat to the Ghanaian-print industry with the recent Chinese imports and imports actually from other parts of Asia, many would still argue that this has been a good thing for the market, that people are buying, that their markets are lively, traders are doing business. Others, however, would say that this has really cast the end of the local-print production that Ghanaian companies, and other companies in West Africa, have had to close their doors because they can't keep up with the Chinese industry. Nonetheless, we still see a market that is eager to buy. They are eager to buy imported cloth. And they're eager to buy Asian and African-produced cloth, a universe that really wants this cloth. With the global financial crisis of the late 1970s and 1980s, the US adjusted its monetary policy and instituted other measures so it could compete more aggressively for capital on a global scale. The IMF World Bank loaned greater and greater amounts of money to so-called developing nations requiring higher and higher interest rates and demanded that trade protections in those nations be removed. They demanded more liberalized open-trade policies, dictated what goods were to be sold, in essence devastating local economies. Africa has a very long tradition, of course, of cloth production and cloth trade and years and generations of cloths being exported from different parts of the world. The earliest commercially-made cloths that came into West Africa were copies of Indonesian batiks and Indian chintzes. The Dutch had developed a way to make a factory copy of a batik. That is a cloth that is produced with wax on the surface that resists dies. And then that wax is removed and a pattern emerges. The Dutch thought that they could make a factory made copy of it and it would sell in Indonesia. And in fact, it didn't, and they then had to look for a new market. The kind of cloth that I'm mentioning is one like this, where it looks like a batik cloth, but this is commercially produced. This is not an old cloth, but it is a pattern that has lasted a long time. The highest-quality cloths are those that are produced in Holland because they are true wax-resist cloths. But in the 1960s cloths began to be made in West Africa. And we have a number of cloths here that were made in West Africa. This was a cloth produced in West Africa. This is a cloth produced in West Africa as is this one. But these are also wax-produced and very high quality, but not as high quality as those produced in Holland. A long-standing tradition in Ghana is that of naming cloths. So patterns are named, cloths are named, hand- woven kente cloths are named, and so are commercially-printed cloths. For instance, this cloth is named Eyes. And it refers to a proverb which is, "I have only my eyes to watch you." And this is an admonition by a woman who wears this cloth in a tailored outfit to her husband that she is watching him carefully. Or a woman might wear this, and as again a warning to a politician, that the public is watching what they are doing. Another really interesting cloth is this cloth. It is a Chinese-made copy of a Dutch cloth. And it is entitled Michelle's bag. It is a reference to the purse that Michelle Obama reputedly carried on her trip to Ghana in 2009 when she traveled with the first family on the president's first visit to Africa after he became president. This was enormously a successful event in West Africa. Everyone came out in droves for the president's visit. And many, many people wore ensembles made from this kind of cloth. Another really interesting pattern, and a very long-standing pattern, is the ABC pattern. And it dates all the way back to the beginning of the 20th century. If you'll notice in every one of the top four as well as this fifth cloth, ABC's literacy education is being valued and promoted on these cloths. We See a repetition of an easel of letters and numbers, of writing implements on the cloth. And notice what has happened in the 21st century where the importance of education appears on the laptop screen. Again, some of the same motifs-- the pen, the letters, the allusion to the easel-- all appear along with disks on this cloth. We have seen that African-print cloth can be associated with different proverbs, with messages. Print cloth can also very much take on the traditions of the past. Some of the print cloth you see in this group here are riffs on kente cloth and on Adinkra. You may be familiar with kente cloth. That is the narrow-strip cloth that when attached by large pieces is worn kind of Toga style by men and as a wrapper set by women. But it's also worn by many African-Americans at graduation. It's a very life-affirming and culture-affirming kind of motif kind of cloth. These cloths that we have in the lower portion, the lower two rows, are riffs on kente cloths. But here they are not meant to be a dishonest representation of the tradition but really and new adaptation of the tradition so that tailored outfits can utilize kente designs as well. Remember that these cloths are found in tailored outfits men and women wear, also on international fashion runways by the hottest designers who are using African-print cloth as a kind of marker of one's African-ness and is a very cool fashion statement. The kente cloth, as you see again, riff on patterns from the past. And there are thousands and thousands of named patterns in the kente tradition. Another cloth that you see now in print is the upper-right cloth, which is an Adinkra cloth. And that's a certain style of cloth that if in dark colors would be worn at a person's funeral. When it is printed in white as these are with these very traditional African symbols, the cloth might be worn on Sunday as something for church or a family occasion. So these cloths are rich with history, rich with stories, rich with years of tradition. Across Africa, commemorative cloths deliver potent political messages, they celebrate important events, and they make notice of events that are happening in the local and the global arena. Most of these cloths today are produced in Africa, but the earliest cloths were produced in the 1920s in Europe and England. We can see here that flags of the nations are included, sometimes a coat of arms, almost always the image of a political leader, maybe someone who is running for office or someone whose office is in reign, is continuing. And we also see cloths that commemorate a World Cup, the opening of a church, the arrival of a president. So you can see two cloths that marked the occasion of the president and Mrs.
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