The African Fashion Research Institute (AFRI) convened a one-day Fashion in Museums Symposium at Museum Africa on Saturday, 6 September 2025. Supported by the French Embassy in South Africa and the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS), the symposium examined contemporary methodologies and radical curatorial strategies shaping how African fashion is researched, presented and archived in museums.
The programme brought together a wide range of voices. International participants included Alison Moloney, co-curator from Goldsmiths University, London, and French-Ivorian PhD scholar-artist Pierre-Antoine Vetterello. South African contributions featured Associate Professor Khaya Mchunu (University of Johannesburg), Kiara Gounder (Durban University of Technology), curator Wanda Lephoto, designer Sindiso Khumalo and hairstylist Ncumisa Duma, alongside younger researchers Lethabo Xulu, Duduzile Mathebula, Melusi Masike and Bongani Tau. Around 50 attendees, including academics, curators, researchers and designers, joined for presentations, provocations, panel discussions and audience dialogues, moderated by Dr Erica de Greef of AFRI.
The discussions interrogated how curatorial practices intervene in, rewrite and reshape narratives of fashion on and from the continent. Presentations explored how designers, filmmakers and curators are restoring lineages of fashion that draw on indigenous meaning systems, the black urban experience and afrocentric maker histories. What emerged was a spectrum of visual, spatial and sonic strategies that point to ways of disrupting colonial legacies embedded in museums and reimagining archives for decolonial futures.
Catch Fashion Accounts in Museum Africa before it closes on 30 September!
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