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While African fashion is spreading worldwide with specific fabrics and established “defilés” in a western style from new talented designers, there is a very unknown and strange side of African fashion, mostly coming from Western Africa.

Fashion is a matter of designers, trends, brands and marketing. Well not everywhere : while brands are promoting clothing made with low cost fabrics using heavy marketing tools, in some countries, people wearing the cloths make the trends themselves.

Looking at ceremonial dresses of nigerian and senegalese people, their dresses are made of quality fabrics that disappeared from our stores long time ago.

In fact, they are buying their fabrics, (Named swiss voile or African lace ), in Lustenau, Austria. Austria has a long history providing rich african laces. These embroideries are 100% made locally and it takes about 5 meters or yards to make one dress. If you travel to this small town on the border of Switzerland, you’ll be amazed to see in the streets African people traveling there just to shop fabrics. But not all kind of fabrics : swiss voile, a very high quality cotton that doesn’t schrink with washing. This cotton fabric is made of the smallest cotton yarns in the world. Result? A fabric of a very rare quality : unseen in any of your favorite stores!

Textile globalisation hits hard on us, forcing low quality cloths in our stores, African still buy straight from the manufacturing sources the most exclusive fabrics for all their special occasions. Of course, low cost fabrics come as well from other countries, but no mistakes : the real cotton voiles are from Austria/Switzerland and nowhere else. The fabric itself is a social distinctiveness, not the brand.

The dresses or bubu, for men and women alike but with different motifs and colors, are common cloths through Western African countries.

Fashion is a common trend among a group of people : African clothing are much more trendy than any “brands” from Europe, Japan or USA!

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Source by Pierre Girodet