Paper short abstract:

African tailors are one the main agents in the creation of local/regional fashion. This article discusses a case study with African tailors in Lisbon. In a one-year Lab/workshop, culture, creativity and sustainable development meet cross-knowledge sharing on tailoring.

Paper long abstract:

Working with cosmopolitan vision, African tailors are readers and narrators of a dialectic relationship between Africa's tradition and contemporaneity. Aesthetics par excellence, these artisans, using mainly West African clothing, baste 'new' cloth to dress the 'new' Africa(s). As this research identified, the endogenous knowledge these tailors hold is not recognized as a cultural (re)generator.

This project is part of a PHD research aiming both to apply, at an academic level, identity, tradition and fashion-able challenges of African capulana fabric into the 21th century fashion and, in parallel, to contribute, in a applied form, towards social justice through sustainable fashion design, this latter seen as a vehicle for knowledge empowerment, to improve better livelihood and self-representation.

Specifically, this article proposes the first co-learning platform for African tailors, where culture works as mediation for space and dialogue. Idealized by the author and fashion designer Sofia Vilarinho and supported by the Fashion Institute Modatex, the model has been developed in Lisbon, with the aim to apply it locally, in various African contexts. This program may contribute to develop a model of working facing an alternative approach to the 21th fashion/clothing system and exchange deeper values that work cognitive levels, identity, and cultural narratives together with economic sustainability.