37thStateDOTcom: WAfrica-Ankara Japanese kimonos by Cameroonian designer Serge Mouangue

37thstate:

The name WAfrica is a combination of the word for Japanese spirit, “wa,” and Africa. 
“In 2007, I experimented with Japanese kimono by producing them with African fabrics,” says Serge Mouangue. “After showing them to Japanese audiences, many people felt the resulting garment existed beyond boundaries it was neither Japanese nor African, it was part of a heretofore unknown world, a ‘third aesthetic’.”
A Cameroonian, Mouangue has produced his kimono in collaboration with Odasho, a 150-year-old Kyoto-based kimono maker. “I want people to experience the birth of totally new cultural dimensions,” Mouangue says. “West Africa and Japan have never truly met when it comes to their historical traditions, thus with the WAfrica kimono, I realized that there is the possibility of creating something complete original a third aesthetic that is more than a simple blending of two existing cultures.”
The New York magazine Paper says: “By highlighting the histories and beauty of the two (cultures), Serge Mouangue creates something glorious and sublime.”


37thstate.com

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    true representation...‘fusion.’ Neither culture diluted; only enhanced.
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    Aside from that weird thing they tried to do with the hair, I dig it.
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