Woke up this morning with a thought on my mind

17 Oct 2011

I woke up this morning with a thought on my mind, a seed of inspiration. A seed from the tree of my culture. A seed that  was planted a long time ago, but nothing ever developed from it.

Now the time has come for me to nurture this seed, to help it on it's journey to maturity.

In our culture many of us are in touch with our African heritage one day of the year, Emancipation Day. We don our African style clothing  and wrap our heads with African printed fabrics on this one day, this day we are proud of our heritage, proud to represent where our ancestors came from, this one day we a proud to represent with clothing. But as soon as the day is over we discard our clothing and head wraps to the back of the closet, never to be worn again till the next Emancipation celebration.

I think its about time we (or at least I) put a stop to that.

Within the last year or two, a local designer, Christian Boucaud introduced clothing lines made from African printed fabric (Afrocentric, the Carnival 2011 collection and Reuse Recycle Recreate collection), pieces which could be worn to the beach, the next Carnival fete or even a night out to dinner.

I was elated when she introduced us to the versatility of African prints.

I, wanting to represent that part of my heritage in clothing, sprung from bed, did the necessities and headed out the door into the rainy weather which awaited me. I went in search some African printed fabric and the other tools required to make me........hmmmm.......I'm not sure what I'll be making yet but I know would be something I would be able to incorporate into my every day wardrobe.

Stay tuned for whatever I decide to create from this.