Fashion in Așǫs

Abstract

This article discusses the concept of Afro-Brazilian fashion in Candomblé, considering their transatlantic symbolic exchanges in an aesthetics of dress, based on the four vectors proposed by Cunnington—fabric, color, shape, and mobility—through which fashion is expressed. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Brazil received ships from the African coast with așǫ oke, a handwoven fabric created by the Yorùbás to be used as head wraps or to be sewn and worn as shawls by Black women. This and other fabrics, such as wax prints, enter the terreiros as a search for aesthetic identity through clothing, especially during the second half of the twentieth century with the (re)Africanization movement. In this scenario, fabric and color join the shapes and silhouettes of Candomblé costumes to create aesthetic crossovers. While silhouettes common to Brazil’s colonial period meet the various forms of fabric binding in traditional Candomblé costumes, the (re)Africanized terreiros bring more rectangular shapes to their dress. Adorning these costumes are the insignias worn by the òrìṣàs, which act as an extension of their gestures. Wielding, wearing, and adorning themselves with different insignias on their arms, head, and legs, the òrìṣàs dramatize their mythical stories, in narrative and symbolic performances of dress. Thus the Afro-Atlantic fashion seen in these costumes escapes the boundaries of Euro-Western fashion.