A History of Textiles and Fashion in the Twentieth Century Yoruba World
From the local to the global, Yoruba people cherish textile consumption and fashion in everyday life. Central to this is the role of Yoruba women in the making of a fashion culture. As this book shows, textile commodities are entangled in global economic histories, yet the local consumption culture has created a fashion industry that portrays new ways of work and talent display beyond the twentieth century. This text is useful for researchers who wish to gain deeper insights into a critical, but often neglected, aspect of being Yoruba.
Dr Mutiat Titilope Oladejo is a Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She is a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies and the author of Ibadan Market Women and Politics, 1900-1995 (2015) and The Women Went Radical: Petition Writing and Colonial State in Southwest Nigeria, 1900-1953 (2019). She edited the book Gender, Politics and Governance in Africa and the co-editor of Social Protection in Africa: A Study of Paradigms and Contexts, Food, Technology and Culture in Africa and What Should Women Want? Before and Beyond: Selected Essays to Commemorate WORDOC’s 30th Anniversary.
“In this book, Mutiat Titilope Oladejo offers a fascinating study of the economic, social, and political role that textile and fashion have played throughout history until contemporary times for the Yorùbá women. In this valuable study, Oladejo exquisitely provides well-researched and well-documented details about the nexus between Yorùbá women as textile consumers and the active roles they have played not only as textile producers, weavers, and traders, but also as fashion icons and fashion designers, thus allowing the reader to understand the importance of textile and fashion for the social and political identity formations of these women.”
Heike Raphael-Hernandez
Professor of American Studies, University of Würzburg, Germany; co-editor of Migrating the Black Body: The African Diaspora and Visual Culture; author of Contemporary African American Women Writers and Ernst Bloch’s Principle of Hope
“An extraordinary rich and dense account on the history of textiles and fashion from twentieth century Yorùbá worlds. Focused on the role of women as producers, traders and consumers, the book provides readers with a sense of sartorial practices and intense attachment to textiles shaped by local and outside materials and techniques. Another strength of the book is the thorough examination of all relevant aspects of textiles and styles, including economic, political and social levels. It is Mutiat Titilope Oladejo’s merit to open our eyes and ears to textiles and fashion as an essential part of (contemporary) culture and public life!”
Professor Kerstin Pinther
Institut für Kunstgeschichte, LMU München
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