Black Yarns: A Decolonial Research into the History of Senegalese’s Fashion & Jewellery Design Practices

This research aims to reveal a decolonial critique of fashion museology by sharing genealogies of creative Senegalese women between 1939 and 1966. In it I reflect on the absence of black women designers in contemporary fashion history in France and Europe coming from my French/Ivorian designer-researcher background. I want to restore missing narratives by re-editing archival garments and jewellery, potentially reattributing designs to their owners by a practice-led research where I  produce objects of memory. Creating archives, crafting garments issued from collective fashion memory will help fill the blanks using speculation and fictions based on Senegalese women who played a role in fashion between France and Senegal.