Is Africa the new IN continent?
So, I thought about it...and this is my thought, I have always felt like African culture is beautiful BUT I think I am still slightly disturbed by this notion of...props. African culture feels like a prop instead of touching on the intellects, the brillance, the true depth of the culture. Although this article does a pretty good job in not going towards this idea of Africans as "Avatars" but still there is a lack of depth outside of cultural rituals... I am sure there are many people that can make this point more eloquently.
Designing to an Afro Beat
From left: Suno, Rodarte and the Na’vi in “Avatar.”
More Photos >
By RUTH LA FERLA
Published: December 30, 2009
THE Na’vi, the blue-skinned clan of the planet Pandora in James Cameron’s screen blockbuster “Avatar,” scale treetops and mountains, and even fly, with a loose-limbed elasticity that Tarzan would have envied. At once exotic and familiar to fans of adventure films, the Pandorans wear latticed animal skins and brightly colored beads, and score their faces with chalky tribal markings.
Jake Sully, the former Marine assigned to infiltrate the tribe, can’t take his eyes off Neytiri, a regal member of the clan. When he first encounters her clambering along a slender tree branch, he is drawn unstoppably into her world.
A similar exoticism is casting its spell over the style world of late, as vanguard retailers like Barneys New York, mass marketers like American Apparel and designers as disparate as Oscar de la Renta, Marc Jacobs, Frida Giannini of Gucci and Dries Van Noten embrace pan-African influences, responding, as if in concert, to some far away drumbeat.
Western fascination with African art and design has blown in gusts for over a century, of course, ever since Picasso and Kandinsky filled their canvases with tribal motifs. As recently as the 1970s, Yves Saint Laurent introduced a collection of “African” dresses constructed from raffia, shells and wooden beads.
Now another Afrocentric wind is rising. “Its beauty is in having crossed all sorts of racial barriers,” said Malcolm Harris, the creative director of Unvogue, a popular fashion-focused Webzine. “It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from. People are incorporating bits and pieces into their wardrobes and their lives.”
