Out of Africa

Suzy Menkes
The New York Times
March 31

The masked face with its feathers of hair glares from the instep. And the savage hybrid of a shoe mixes python straps and a sky-high heel with beads, wooden pearls, a cord and a tassel.

When it appeared on the runway at the Louis Vuitton show in October, who could have believed that the fantastical footwear — selling at €1,250 to €2,250 (about $1,650 to $3,000) a pair — could be the hottest item for summer 2009?

No wonder that the designer Marc Jacobs baptized it the “Spicy,” giving a name to the shoe, as had previously been the custom with the now-fading It bags.

To spice up this footwear, the designer added everything but the kitchen sink — as long as it was out of Africa. Snakeskin, plumes and semiprecious stones set the tone for a shoe that was inspired by Josephine Baker, the famous singer and dancer of 1920s Paris. She resonated with the exotica that was prevalent in a period when the Ballets Russes had set off one fashion trend and the discovery of Egyptian mummies another.

But the surprising thing about the 2009 spring season, where African style is a drumbeat through clothes and accessories, is that it isn’t about the ethnic.

Instead, it is the sculpted, geometric shapes of Africa and its rich, spicy colors that are the strongest forms of identity.

John Galliano brought Africana to Dior, once again by the shoes, which had fertility symbols carved into high heels. But it was the sculpted hairdos by the couture coiffeur Orlando Pita that made the most powerful impact, along with the weave-effect textures of dresses that were pure Parisian.

Fabric was the story at many shows, starting with the animal prints revisited — but in bright hues — at Lanvin. That echoed an African theme that had been seen in early designs, from Yves Saint Laurent in the 1960s to Naomi Campbell walking the runway for Dolce & Gabbana in 2004 in a leopard-print dress.

The most dramatic example of tribal fabrics was offered by the Japanese designer Junya Watanabe. He came up with bold prints in an African palette of big-sky blue, burnt orange, earth brown and leaf green. Those fabrics were made into pretty summer dresses, while heads wrapped with bunches of wildflowers sweetened the mix.

Africa has had many moments in the fashion sun. Those YSL gowns even had pointed breastplates, long before Jean Paul Gaultier promoted that idea on Madonna.

When the Josephine Baker shows were in Paris vaudeville, ivory bangles climbed up fashionable arms.

The colonial world has also been mined for inspiration. The heat-and-dust colors of stone gray and sand beige, with a hint of military khaki, produced another African scenario. For Hermès, that meant re-creating the effect of desert sands on the surface of rippling suede dresses. For Ralph Lauren, the colonial looks fell somewhere between India and Africa, with low-crotch pants — those sarouel and jodhpur styles that are so à la mode this summer.

Accessories with an African stamp work best for summer in the city, as well as on vacation. Necklaces with a faintly tribal feel look great when in graphic shapes. Bangles are everywhere, from wide cuffs to narrow bracelets, mostly in inventive modern materials to emulate the ivory and horn of now-endangered species.

Bags have just a hint of the wild in their serpent skins or with other natural materials like galuchat (a type of fish skin) or stout saddle leather. For the smaller clutches, a few beads threaded on a cord are sufficient to pass the message — without resorting to the heavy embellishments that are going out of fashion.

But it is the shoes that are leading the forward march of African style — if you can get your hands on them. Chloë Sevigny is one Hollywood star who has managed to get her feet into the Vuitton Spicy shoe, thereby creating a celebrity gold rush for the footwear. The demand is all the more piquant because no pair of these shoes is alike, enforcing a desire for the unique, handcrafted object in which Africa itself excels.

The irony is that one step on African soil in this high and mighty footwear would probably bring even a hardened fashionista to her knees. Yet, in fashion, the dream creates desire. And there are, among the dizzyingly high shoes, sandals that are flat and strappy, in snakeskin or gilded fake crocodile, that would be as useful on the shores of the Limpopo River as in the world’s fashion capitals.

For ethnic fashion, see also the resources related to Hussein Chalayan

www.husseinchalayan.com

Turkish-Cypriot on-line Museum of Fine Arts