All images: Humphrey Gateri
Sunny Dolat – who has worked in the fashion space for over 17 years, in various capacities – has embarked on a fascinating research project: “Fashioning a Nation”. He explores ideas around the agents behind fashion, especially in Kenya. He has interrogated how fashion has grown, evolved and perhaps even stagnated at times alongside the nationbuilding of the country.
As well as a research project, “Fashioning a Nation” is presented as a visual exhibition at the Goethe-Institut Auditorium in CBD. The exhibition displays images from fashion and street photography in the 20th century, alongside the genius idea of photos from family albums – one of the few resources which Dolat says is available to document Kenya’s fashion history. But to really dig deep into the subject, two talks were organized around these ideas, the first of which was this past Thursday.
Due to his movement across the fashion world, Dolat’s understanding of the ecospace comes from a variety of different perspectives, which he shared at the event through conversation with Sue Muraya and Katungulu Mwendwa. Muraya is a designer and founder of Kenyan Fashion Week, with a long history in Kenyan fashion. Mwendwa is a designer with her own sustainable brand: Katush, whose website describes her approach to design as “a curious sceptic’s review of the perceptions of Kenyan, African and female identity” – both women clearly well placed to interrogate these ideas of national identity within fashion history alongside Dolat.
The questions stemmed from Dolat’s time working on the “Africa Fashion” exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) in 2022. Dolat was part of the curatorial team and when they were working on the exhibition, the curators spent time doing detective work on the history of fashion and fashion designers across the continent. In places like Nigeria, Mali, and Ghana, it was easy to find names of designers who were working in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. However, this was not the case for Kenya.
“One of the questions [that has always been] present in my mind is this idea that Kenyans, in comparison to other parts of the continent, don’t have as great a sense of style”
From this point, Dolat has pursued the idea of decodifying fashion in Kenya; looking at how fashion, culture and national identity intersect. While fashion is sometimes held up as trivial, it in fact reflects a lot about the wearers. Dolat is not alone in feeling that a collective amnesia exists in Kenya, which many scholars have discussed and which has had an impact on fashion history:
“I think that that’s not something that we have an opportunity to unpack often enough – to look at our histories, our collective histories, our creative histories, and unpack what they look like, what we can learn from them and how they’ve shaped us”.
He also noted that it’s “interesting to think of our insecurity & where it stems from”.
In a sense, this conversation was a furthering of Dolat’s research. Muraya discussed what a huge impact the internet has had on fashion in Kenya. In the 80s and 90s styles were informed by the odd copy of an imported fashion magazine like Vogue, which got passed around many times. People were looking to follow what was in those magazines, even if they were already dated by the time they reached them. At the time, she said, there was an embracing of anything imported, which nods to the colonial past.
Mwendwa also noted an aspiration to a formality and functionality that seems to her to be a legacy of colonialism. Those who took over the roles of government were those who became affluent. They stepped into the roles of the British and dressed like them as well.
Dolat said that looking at archival material he and his team found three clear “beacons” that energized fashion in the timeline. First, the early years of Independence, culminating around 1975/78. In this period there is a confidence and joie de vivre that visibly shines from the photographs of fashion shows and of street wear. After that a conservatism seems to set in.
The beginning of the Kibaki administration in 2002 is the second beacon that Dolat identified: “it was quite clear to see the impact of a new presidency on collective imagination. It was the hope and the energy of Kibaki coming into office, and the end of the violence of the Moi era [which seems to have] energized the creative sector”. The third was the “New Nairobi” of the second decade of the 2000s.
Throughout these eras a search for a “national dress” has recurred. Again, in the shadow of other countries of the continent who have a cloth or clothing style that is considered representative of their fashion internationally, Kenya does not.
The most well known search for Kenya’s national dress was in 2003: The Sunlight Quest for Kenya’s National Dress, an interactive public process hosted by the GoDown Arts Centre in Nairobi. The quest was part of an effort to move away from colonial dress and to have a national dress that represented the Kenyan people. While a consensus was reached and a style drawn up, there was no public uptake of the style.
Furthermore, there had been previous, unsuccessful, searches in 1967, 1971 and 1995. This year another search has been announced, however, Mwendwa, Muraya and Dolat wondered if an answer can ever be found through a formalized search and proposed a national style is something that needs to come about organically, and then be recognized.
Dolat noted that designers like Carol Mahome & Wambui Njogu of Moo Cow were so far ahead of their time, working with concepts like leather & bone corsets, which are closest to ideas of indigenous dress, and incorporating leather, horn and brass…materials that existed historically in almost all traditional dress in Kenya. Yet, there was not enough public uptake. Is this because there is actually an intentionality among Kenyans around being tame or restrained in their dress? Perhaps, as Mwendwa suggested, due to religious ideas of modesty that were embraced by the generations raised within the framework of the colonialism and Moi? Does this restraint therefore speak to Kenyan’s fashion identity?
Other ideas raised were around fabrication issues and lack of a comprehensive local textile industry producing quality cloth which hinders designers in terms of materials to work with. In addition, the cloths that are associated with Kenya – the Maasai shuka, the leso, the kanga – are also associated with particular tribes or regions, and therefore the whole country is hesitant to embrace those as a unified symbol.
This conversation delved deep and looked at both sides of the questions – how fashion has shaped the nation and how the nation shapes fashion. Despite the insightful conversation the question remained open ended; codes and origins of Kenyan fashion were examined but there certainly wasn’t an answer. Nor was one expected for this huge question which Dolat is mulling over.