Fashion Accounts in Museum Africa

Fashion Accounts is a series of installations that explore and challenge the practices and rituals of collecting, archiving and memorialising through dress. Curated by Wanda Lephoto, Erica de Greef, and Alison Moloney, the exhibition delves into the rituals of memory, resistance, and preservation.  Featuring new commissions by The Sartists and Mimi Duma, alongside works by Thebe Magugu and Sindiso Khumalo, this exhibition addresses the legacies of colonial museum practices and the material cultures they have collected, stored and preserved.

Among the collections at Museum Africa, is an ethnographic collection with 14 000 items and a photographic archive containing 11 000 images that provide a historical perspective on the country’s people, places and progress. The Bernberg Costumes & Textiles Collection, a significant part of the museum collection, comprises around 16 000 predominantly European, white-owned fashion objects, either imported into South Africa or locally made.. This collection spans from the mid-1700s to the early 2000s, and includes items such as shoes, buttons, hats, ties, day and evening dresses, suits, military attire, christening gowns, wedding and mourning dresses, and more. Despite the scale of these collections, there are significant gaps regarding whose stories, dress histories and lived experiences have been collected and preserved.

The seemingly “innocent” objects in the fashion collections are deeply problematic, embodying both moments of beauty and traces of trauma. These items reflect the colonial power structures that once served as tools of oppression, yet they also offer a means to surface Afrocentric memories and stories often left untold.

Fashion Accounts documents the ongoing collaboration between South African fashion designer and artist Wanda Lephoto, London-based fashion curator and researcher Alison Moloney, and South African fashion curator and academic Dr Erica de Greef. Together, they confront the violent absence of black South African fashion histories within museum collections. They have worked closely with the museum’s existing display props and materials to make visible these tools, limitations and challenges.

The exhibition is funded by the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, with the support of the French Institute of South Africa, the City of Johannesburg and Museum Africa.

About the co-curators

• Wanda Lephoto: Johannesburg, South Africa based Ready To Wear Menswear brand that redefines luxury dress using the plurality of culture, tradition, identity and history through storytelling as a way to create new worlds of beauty in fashion.
• Erica de Greef: Curator, author and co-founder of the African Fashion Research Institute (AFRI). She works collaboratively to promote redress and invite decolonial (re)imagination, with projects spanning museums, creative platforms, educational institutions and grassroot spaces. She holds a PhD in African Studies from the University of Cape Town with a thesis titled ‘Sartorial Disruptions’.
• Alison Moloney: Independent fashion curator, writer, lecturer, and consultant based in London. Her research and curatorial practice are driven by community-led and collaborative initiatives as a means of thinking together to develop new forms of knowledge which brings into focus often overlooked material culture or hidden narratives.

About the artists

• The Sartists: In 2014, The Sartists launched the collaborative project entitled The Sports Series, which re-enacts and reclaims black South African history that segregation, the apartheid regime, and the archives excluded. The performative act of self-portraiture with Wanda Lephoto, Andile Buka, Kabelo Kungwane, and Xzavier Zulu represented within the photographs and embodying this absent history reveals the hauntings of colonialism. Unseen work from this series will be on display, alongside a new commission to celebrate 10 years of this multidisciplinary collective.
• Mimi Duma: South African natural hair stylist, Ncumisa Duma or “Mimi” as she’s known in the industry, was still in primary school when she first discovered her interest in styling hair. Back then, Mimi recalls that she would braid her friends’ hair into cornrows during lunch breaks. Born in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa, Mimi’s journey began in the theatre, where she performed for audiences in her home country as well as abroad in London, Germany, and Austria. On her decision to work primarily with natural Black hair, Mimi says she wanted to develop a greater understanding of the different natural hair textures. “I wanted to know everything they hadn’t taught me at the hair academy,” she reveals. Mimi studied at Carlton Hair International for three years and went on to challenge the academy’s curriculum by refusing to take the trade test due to its lack of diversity and focus on Black hair. “I objected to being tested on a syllabus that didn’t serve Black hair. The trade test didn’t speak to my type of styling,” she declares.
• Sindiso Khumalo: Sustainable textile designer based in Cape Town. Central St Martins graduate, Khumalo, studied architecture at the University of Cape Town prior to moving to London, where she went onto study a Masters in Design for Textile Futures. The Jagger Collection presented in Fashion Accounts is a homage to The University of Cape Town Jagger African studies Library that was caught in a mountain fire in April 2021. Illustration of Charlotte Maxeke, hand illustrated by artist Sinalo Ngcaba
• Thebe Magugu: THEBE MAGUGU is a luxury South African fashion brand. We offer ready-to-wear collections while exploring parallel concepts through multidisciplinary capsule projects. Between pillar practices of cultural honour, novelty and uncompromising quality, we are establishing an identity marked by self-evolving timelessness. We constantly seek new ways of presenting women & men with clothing that embraces and enhances their everyday experience. Sleek, forward-looking design intersects with motifs & details that draw from our continent’s storied past, complex present and exciting imagined futures, providing smart, multifaceted clothes that mirror the inspiring qualities of the people they are made for.

Supporting institutions

• The African Fashion Research Institute (AFRI): Founded in 2019 by Dr Erica de Greef and Lesiba Mabitsela as a platform to remember, rethink, and rewrite Afrocentric fashion histories whilst addressing the gap in critical fashion studies and education on the African continent. We work collaboratively in order to engage and support local fashion knowledges on and from the continent through virtual and real exhibitions, podcasts, talks, workshops, papers, zines and performance interventions.