“These Girls’ Fashion is Sick!”: An African City and the Geography of Sartorial Worldliness

They are the noble savages, staring out from coffee table books. Africa Adorned. The Last Nomads. Backdrops and extras for Vogue fashion shoots. Stock ingredients for tourist brochures … They are the myth of tribal splendour. Everything about them is foreign … Their “timeless culture” is the stuff of children’s books, of Western fantasies. They are everyone’s dream of people untouched by modernity. (Patel, 2010: 45; emphasis in original)