Cloth Makes The City

“My body is like the City of the Sun.
It has no place, but it is from it that all possible places,

real or utopian, emerge and radiate.” Foucault
Page | 1
The close association between cloth and power has gone, but cloth remains an outward expression of friendship, respect, status
and prosperity. Power, Cloth and Currency on the Loango Coast, PM Martin
“My body is like the City of the Sun. It has no place, but it is from it that all possible places,
We discovered innumerable lands, we saw

innumerable people and different languages, and all
were naked.
Amerigo Vespucci,
letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, 1500
Page | 2
'[T]here is much to support the view that it is clothes
that wear us and not we them; we may make them
take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our
hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.'
Virginia Woolf
cloth makes
the city
the business of cloth,
clothing and civilization
also modesty, currency,
gender and identity
compiled by
amma birago
… He wondered why the Africans honor
and clothe the dead better than the living, …
Danish Chaplains On The Gold Coast
H. Debrunner
When Fernandes comes to the Bullom and Temne

of Sierra Leone, he distinguishes between 'men of
good standing' who wear 'cotton shirts and breeches',
and 'poor men' who have to make do with scanty
pieces of bark-cloth.
Slaves and Society, Western Africa, 1445-c. 1700
J. D. Fage
The slave is distinguished from the others by his

nakedness, while the peasant and fisherman wear
loincloths; ... a dignitary clothed in several strips of
European linen.
Reading Pictures - Regula Iselin - On the

"Beschryvinghe" of Pieter de Marees (1602)
The earliest (eleventh-century) reference to woven

strips of cotton (chigguiya) used as currency comes
from Takrur, north of Senegal, a region of extensive
nomadism and early cotton cultivation. Page | 3
Judaic Threads in the West African Tapestry
Labelle Prussin
Johannes Gottleib Christaller … the name atadehyefo

as “people in European dress,” which shows how clothing
becomes part of one’s identity.
Stamping History
Allison Joan Martino
“The skin of the civilized man, is an atrophied organ” …

“it is no less [unreasonable] to expect the delicate skin of
man to keep its health in perpetual darkness”
Rev. Norwood,
1933, Nudism in England
Access to cloth remained an essential attribute of power throughout

the precolonial history of the Loango Coast, perhaps more so than
access to the firearms that were once thought to be the key to
understanding the changing basis of power
within and between African societies.
Power, Cloth and Currency on the Loango Coast
Phyllis M. Martin
Stamping History:
Stories of Social Change in Ghana’s Adinkra Cloth
Johannes Gottleib Christaller … He contrasted this expression
to wearing “European dress,” atadee. … the name atadehyefo
as “people in European dress,” which shows how clothing
becomes part of one’s identity.
The Function of Clothing and of Bodily Adornment

The American Journal of Psychology, Jan., 1927,
Herbert C. Sanborn
Clothing proper at first sight seems to indicate absolute nudity, …
When the Portuguese first came to Portendick and Arguin, they imported cotton cloth
made in India, which they called bayempos. They traded it for gum arabic, and soon it Page | 4
became a kind of currency in West Africa. When the French took over Portendick and
Arguin, they replaced the bayempos with a similar piece of cloth from Pondicherry, to
which they gave the name guinée.
La Tourrasse, A French Merchant in Senegal in the late 19th Century,
(La Tourrasse 1897; translated by Toyomu Masaki)
Naked In Nature:
Naturism, Nature And The Senses In Early Twentieth Century Britain,
Nina J Morris
As far as he was concerned, civilization had effectively 'descended into darkness'.
What is interesting about the discourse of both Simmel and Surén, however, and
perhaps what distinguishes their ideas from those of Heidegger, is their belief in
the redemptive properties of nature,
For both Surén and Thoreau such close encounters with nature
symbolized 'the antithesis of culture' and promised to 'provide
westerners weary of the sophistry of civilization with what seem [ed]
like a welcome retreat into untutored sensation'.
Naked in nature: … early 20th century Britain
Nina J. Morris
… the blasé attitude was a metropolitan phenomenon which resulted from the 'rapidly changing and closely
compressed contrasting stimulations of the nerves' experienced by city dwellers. … agitated the metropolitan body's
nerves to their strongest reactivity for such a long time that eventually they ceased to react at all rendering the body
incapable of reacting to new sensations with the 'appropriate' energy.
Surén believed that city life restricted the variety of human experience and he lamented that the modern-day urban
population was tied not only by the ‘merciless conventions’ of a ‘short-sighted and pernicious morality’ and ‘morbid
prudery’ ... , but also by a dulling of the senses similar to the ‘neurasthenia’ or ‘blasé attitude’ witnessed by German
sociologist Georg Simmel (1858-1918).
Surén stated that Man and Sunlight arose from his desire to call attention to the fundamental facts of national
existence and development, and in this respect one might argue that he shared Heidegger’s iconoclastic outlook.
Surén believed that decay in the strength of the individual body, regardless of the highest achievements of the spirit
or most profound scientific knowledge, would eventually lead to national decline and death.
Surén was particularly concerned with the extent to which twentieth-century civilisation had become synonymous
with the urban and, throughout Man and Sunlight, he promoted a moral geography of landscape in which the
contemporary city was considered to be an unsuitable environment for humans; ‘like slaves, they totter under the
heavy fetters of drudgery for their daily bread, far from sunlight, far from Nature (sic) in the dungeons of the town’
Stamping History: Stories of Social Change in Ghana’s

Adinkra Cloth Allison Joan Martino
Johannes Gottleib Christaller included the following Twi expressions: He first
said that hye fura conveys “to put on, to wear (of clothes fitting to the body or
parts of the body)”. … to put on, or to wear clothes (cf. fura tama)”, which he
identified as “to wear a negro dress”. He contrasted this expression to wearing Page | 5
“European dress,” atadee. … the name atadehyefo as “people in European
dress,” which shows how clothing becomes part of one’s identity.
Funerals are still times of enormous expense as even the poorest families struggle to give the deceased an honorable
burial, but most people are now buried in a wooden coffin and the consumption of cloth on such occasions has
declined. Yet cloth still changes hands on important occasions, for example, at the conclusion of a marriage contract.
Births, marriages, the end of the mourning period, the formation of a new association in the city, and a religious or
state festival are all occasions for lavishing resources on new cloths, even by those who can little afford it. The close
association between cloth and power has gone, but cloth remains an outward expression of friendship, respect, status
and prosperity.
Power, Cloth and Currency on the Loango Coast,
PM Martin
Judaic Threads in the West African Tapestry: No More Foreever?

Labelle Prussin
Another major medium of currency in Africa was cloth. While the use of gold (and silver) currencies in both Europe
and the Muslim world depended on the minting and handling of money, African cloth currencies involved silk,
indigo, and strip-weaving traditions in cotton and wool all intimately linked to the nomadic presence, the trans-
Saharan trade, and the virtual Jewish trade monopoly over silk and spices (which subsumed indigo) in North Africa,
the Mediterranean Basin, and beyond.
European merchants initially used the guinée as a means of exchange for

African commodities such as slaves and gum arabic in West Africa.
… France built the industry to manufacture guinée cloth in Pondicherry, which
was required by the Moors as a means of exchange for gum arabic and presented
that the ‘West African consumer taste for quality textiles shaped a pattern of
global trade’ (Kobayashi 2019, 203).
Colonialism and imperialism as agents of globalization

Toyomu Masaki
While a commodity that functions as money should have certain conditions

that someone always wants to accept, the commodity does not need to be
a quality product. Otherwise, people would have preferred to keep the money
rather than spend it, and the guinée would not have circulated extensively
through West Africa.

Labelle Prussin
Like the belts, indigo dress also assumed a symbolic duality: initially a mark of denigration, it, too, was transformed
into a hallmark of distinction and dignity. The extensive indigo trade is indicated in early Islamic references to the
sub-Saharan preference for blue cloth and in the frequent observations of early European traders throughout the
African trading world … "indigo blues," "guinee cloth," or "guinee cotton" in the context of cloth as a trade
currency.
When Fernandes comes to the Bullom and Temne of Sierra Leone, he Page | 6
distinguishes between 'men of good standing' who wear 'cotton shirts
and breeches', and 'poor men' who have to make do with scanty pieces
of bark-cloth.48 (Much later, in the 1660s, Villault de Bellefond was to
stress this sort of distinction all along the Upper Guinea coast.)
The various kinds of cloth woven from raphia fibre in the Congo-
Angola region were equally marks of social distinction. The best cloth,
said to resemble velvet, was the prerogative of kings and nobles.
Slaves and Society in Western Africa, c. 1445-c. 1700
J. D. Fage
For everyday affairs the king himself wore clothes no different from
those of his peers, but 'the king is always seen as the king'; 'he is bathed
with potions of kingship'; 'he has the shadow (personality) of kingship'.
At the climax of the annual ritual of kingship, he appears as Silo, a
creature more powerful than ordinary man, in unique and awesome
costume. …
Costume and Identity

Hilda Kuper
Clothing is a bundle of cultural symbols that has been dealt with somewhat eclectically and indiscriminately in the
anthropological wash. Some writers have speculated on the origins of clothing, stressing such qualities in human
nature as modesty and vanity; others, more materially oriented, have emphasized utility; others again have listed
separate garments, the materials of which they were made, and the techniques employed; and some have paid
attention to broader historical and sociological dimensions.

The American Journal of Psychology, Jan., 1927
Herbert C. Sanborn
The close relationship between clothing and sex is revealed most distinctly through the fact that all important events
sex life go regularly hand in hand with change in dress. In case of most savage tribes clothing is not assumed until
the beginning of puberty; and then a distinction is made in the dress of the sexes, prescribed strictly by custom. With
the advance of civilization, however, and the advent of marriage this stage comes to be considered of less
importance, the emphasis being then laid on the distinction through dress of the married single female members of
the given group. According Schurtz, this fact throws a flood of light on the psychological significance of clothing,
which in many cases is plainly seen to a symbol of the married state. With some races the expression, "he gave her a
dress" means that a man has married a maiden and not a widow,' while on the island of Tahiti the chief ceremony in
the marriage rite consists in the groom throwing the bride a piece of cloth.
(Re)Fashioning Masculinity
Ben Barry
Fashion and appearance are often framed in opposition to hegemonic masculinity - the most exalted configuration of
gender practice that legitimates patriarchy (Connell 1995; Kaiser 2012). … however, fashion and appearance are
principal means by which men’s visible gender identities are established as not only different from women but also
from other men (Edwards 1997). Multiple masculinities result from men’s various social identities. Masculinities are
marginalized by race or class and subordinated by sexuality.
… that men across identities and contexts use dress to secure social domination and support an unequal gender Page | 7
system. Despite different constellations of privilege, all of the participants enacted practices which shored up
hegemonic masculinity when they adopted or rejected dominant masculine dress ideals because doing so would
personally and/ or professionally benefit them by securing their gender privilege. As such, scholars should be
cautious not to overstate the significance of men in feminine clothes.
Ben Barry

… a symbol of the married state. With some races the expression, "he gave her
a dress" means that a man has married a maiden and not a widow,' while on the
island of Tahiti the chief ceremony in the marriage rite consists in the groom
throwing the bride a piece of cloth.
Herbert C. Sanborn
Bare feet. They often go without shirts, thus, fully exposed, they usually paint
their [upper] bodies with white colouring, drawing all manner of figures on their
necks, shoulders, arms, breasts and backs.”
Euro-African Families in a Slave-Trading Town
Pernille Ipsen
George Basden, a missionary and ethnographer who lived with the Igbo
people of Nigeria published two volumes of photographs in the 1920s and
1930s. The book described images of unclothed but elaborately decorated Igbo
women as indicating their high status as eligible brides who would not have
thought of themselves as naked.
Nudity, Wikipedia
Dressing Africans in European clothes to cover their nakedness was part of converting them to Christianity.[48] In the
19th century, photographs of naked Indigenous peoples began circulating in Europe without a clear distinction
between those created as commercial curiosities (or erotica) and those claiming to be scientific, or ethnographic
images. Given the state of photography, it is unclear which images were posed, rather than being representative of
everyday attire. Nudity, Wikipedia
African slaves were common in southern Italy, especially Naples and Sicily from early in the century, and were
frequent in the northern courts of Ferrara and Mantua by the 1440s. They are documented in Florence from 1461,
but were probably present before this. …
African slaves were both clothed and baptized by their European owners, and so could be understood as having been
saved both from their errant paganism and ‘beastly’ way of life.
Rethinking the Italian Renaissance Nude

Jill Burke
It is likely that this account (and, potentially, similar news from other travellers) would have been available at this Page | 8
time, due to the Florentines’ keen financial interest in the Portuguese voyages. Florentines had a key role as
investors in Portuguese expeditions to the Atlantic coast of Africa. There had long been a Florentine presence in
Lisbon – the Bardi family were given a licence to trade there as early as 1338 – and by 1500, Florentines were the
most important and numerous group of foreign merchants in the Portuguese capital, dealing in goods such as sugar,
leather, dyes and silks as well as Guinean slaves.
The earliest (eleventh-century) reference to woven strips of cotton (chigguiya) used as

currency comes from Takrur, north of Senegal, a region of extensive nomadism and early
cotton cultivation.

Labelle Prussin
currency.
When the Portuguese first came to Portendick and Arguin, they imported cotton cloth
made in India, which they called bayempos. They traded it for gum arabic, and soon it
(La Tourrasse 1897, 79; translated by Toyomu Masaki)
… this guinée was used as money in the Sahel. In this context, African agents should be recognized not only as
consumers of guinée but also as its users. While a commodity that functions as money should have certain
conditions that someone always wants to accept, the commodity does not need to be a quality product. Otherwise,
people would have preferred to keep the money rather than spend it, and the guinée would not have circulated
extensively through West Africa. Stated otherwise, for a commodity to be used as currency, the quality has to be
such that people will not hesitate to give it up as payment. Simultaneously, as issuers of money who always seek
seigniorage profits, the European merchants must have been motivated to supply cheap cotton cloth, as the value of
cloth as a commodity should not surpass its value when functioning as money. In this regard, Marion Johnson (1980,
196) mentions that the cheapest cloth was usually used as currency in Sahel.
Indian guinée cloth, West Africa, and the French colonial empire 1826–1925:

Toyomu Masaki
John Langdon-Davies, for example, satirized the explorer Henry Morton Stanley (of “Dr Page | 9
Livingstone, I presume” fame), whose unashamed project was to enrich the British textile
industry by clothing “naked Africa.” Langdon-Davies sarcastically called him “a noble
figure worthy of imitation, a hero if ever there was one, an empire builder, a pioneer”
John Langdon-Davies’s 1929, The Future of Nakedness
cited in “Regaining what Mankind has Lost through Civilisation:”
Early Nudism and Ambivalent Moderns
Ruth Barcan
A dearth of supplies necessitated actions such as "An Act that no Cloath be sould to the
Indians," passed in Virginia on August 16, 1633, which stipulated that no settler could
"trade or trucke any such cloathe, cotton or bayes, unto any Indians which is or shall be
bought into this colony, as marchandize intended to be sould to the planters here.
"He would not goe naked like the "Indians",

but cloathed just as one of our selves": Disguise
and "the Naked Indian" in Massinger's
"The City Madam"
Gavin Hollis
They also would wear "the English apparel" when meeting with the English, but "pull
of[f] all, as soone as they come againe into their owne Houses, and Company."
… "the men of this kingdom make a good store of palm cloth of sundry sorts, very fine
and curious. They are never idle for they make fine caps of needlework as they go in the
street."
The Strange Adventures of Andrew Battell
in Angola and the Adjoining Regions -
E. G. Ravenstein, 1901
The earliest (eleventh-century) reference to woven strips of cotton (chigguiya) used as

currency comes from Takrur, north of Senegal, a region of extensive nomadism and early
cotton cultivation.

Labelle Prussin
currency.
When the Portuguese first came to Portendick and Arguin, they imported cotton cloth Page | 10
made in India, which they called bayempos. They traded it for gum arabic, and soon it
(translated by Toyomu Masaki)
… this guinée was used as money in the Sahel. In this context, African agents should be recognized not only as
consumers of guinée but also as its users. While a commodity that functions as money should have certain
conditions that someone always wants to accept, the commodity does not need to be a quality product. Otherwise,
people would have preferred to keep the money rather than spend it, and the guinée would not have circulated
extensively through West Africa. Stated otherwise, for a commodity to be used as currency, the quality has to be
such that people will not hesitate to give it up as payment. Simultaneously, as issuers of money who always seek
seigniorage profits, the European merchants must have been motivated to supply cheap cotton cloth, as the value of
cloth as a commodity should not surpass its value when functioning as money. In this regard, Marion Johnson (1980,
196) mentions that the cheapest cloth was usually used as currency in Sahel.
Toyomu Masaki
John Langdon-Davies, for example, satirized the explorer Henry Morton Stanley (of “Dr
Livingstone, I presume” fame), whose unashamed project was to enrich the British textile
industry by clothing “naked Africa.” Langdon-Davies sarcastically called him “a noble
figure worthy of imitation, a hero if ever there was one, an empire builder, a pioneer”
cited in “Regaining what Mankind has Lost through Civilisation:”
Ruth Barcan
A dearth of supplies necessitated actions such as "An Act that

no Cloath be sould to the Indians," passed in Virginia on
August 16, 1633, which stipulated that no settler could "trade
or trucke any such cloathe, cotton or bayes, unto any Indians
which is or shall be bought into this colony, as marchandize
intended to be sould to the planters here.
"He would not goe naked like the "Indians", but cloathed just
as one of our selves":
Disguise and "the Naked Indian" in Massinger's
"The City Madam"
Gavin Hollis
They also would wear "the English apparel" when meeting

with the English, but "pull of[f] all, as soone as they come
againe into their owne Houses, and Company."
Page | 11
… "the men of this kingdom make a good store of palm cloth of sundry sorts,
very fine and curious. They are never idle for they make fine caps of needlework
as they go in the street."
The Strange Adventures of Andrew Battell
in Angola and the Adjoining Regions -
E. G. Ravenstein, 1901

Labelle Prussin
Another major medium of currency in Africa was cloth.25 While the use of gold (and silver) currencies in both
Europe and the Muslim world depended on the minting and han dling of money, African cloth currencies involved
silk, indigo, and strip-weaving traditions in cotton and wool all intimately linked to the nomadic presence, the trans-
the Medi terranean Basin, and beyond. Given similar restraints on the wearing of silk within the Malekite tradition
and the intimate relation between producer and merchant that characterized Jewish involvement elsewhere, what
then was the relation between weaving per se and the silk trade along both the trans-Saharan and coastal routes? In
whose hands did the trans-Saharan trade in indigo and silk reside, and what were its design implications for the sub-
Saharan cultural aesthetic? One might also ask: To what extent did literacy and its varied visual resources influence
the conceptualization of design formats by the practicing artisan?
… Another cloth, less elaborate but with a similar design, also had restricted
circulation since only the wealthy could afford to buy it or have it made.

Phyllis M. Martin
Clothing itself was a visible reminder of a person's place in society.

The display of prestige cloth whose production involved considerable
investment of labor was part of what has been called
the "politics of costume."
Decline in the use of raphia cloth started in the seventeenth century with the importation of cloth from Europe and
the Indies. The same Portuguese ships which sailed from Angola to buy raphia cloth brought foreign cloth to the
Loango Coast. The trickle became a flood with the arrival of Dutch traders, who had no interest in raphia cloth and
who exchanged European and Indian cloth for ivory, copper, and slaves. These foreign prestige goods were quickly
adopted by the Loango Coast notables.

Phyllis M. Martin
Several mbongo could be produced in a day once the loom was set up; fifteen or sixteen days were necessary to
complete the finest royal cloths. The basic cloth was a plain weave, but a variety of colors could be achieved by
exposing the fibers in the sun for different periods of time or through coloring them with takula (redwood), charcoal,
and chalk.
In Loango only the ruler, or one to whom he had granted the favor, could wear the most beautiful cloths and any
attempt to sell these without royal permission was punishable by execution. The Loango ruler also displayed his Page | 12
wealth by receiving visitors while seated in a chair which was placed on a large carpet made from a "velvet" cloth
about thirty yards in circumference, and the heads of important lineages when summoned to a royal audience would
arrive at the royal court preceded by servants who carried a large cloth which would be spread out as a carpet for
their master. … Another cloth, less elaborate but with a similar design, also had restricted circulation since only the
wealthy could afford to buy it or have it made.

Phyllis M. Martin
Decline in the use of raphia cloth started in the seventeenth century with the importation of cloth from Europe and
the Indies. The same Portuguese ships which sailed from Angola to buy raphia cloth brought foreign cloth to the
Loango Coast. The trickle became a flood with the arrival of Dutch traders, who had no interest in raphia cloth and
who exchanged European and Indian cloth for ivory, copper, and slaves. These foreign prestige goods were quickly
adopted by the Loango Coast notables. In Loango, by the mid-seventeenth century, the king and his administrators
were dressing in European cloth while continuing to wear the distinctive animal furs and jewelry which were the
more traditional marks of their status. … By 1826, it was reported from Cabinda, the Ngoyo port, that only slaves
and those who lived in the interior wore raphia cloth and that such people were despised by coastal communities.
Although the use of raphia cloth declined, the conspicuous consumption of cloth and its association with power
persisted.
Indian Guinée cloth, West Africa, and the French colonial empire 1826–1925:
On the other hand, Charles Cerisier describes how guinée cloth functioned as currency in a paper published in 1885:
Buying a cow requires a number of guinée, but the locals are paid by the cubit (elbow to hand, about 50 cm). An
ounce of gold was equivalent to one guinée, about ten francs. Ivory costs three-quarters of guinée, or about 7 francs
50; a cow costs seven to ten guinée or 70–100 francs; a horse costs 50 to 100 guinée. (Cerisier 1885, 75)
According to Richard Roberts, after the French conquered inland West Africa, freed slaves became weavers and
dyers at the beginning of the twentieth century, …
… users of guinée as money and several different types of merchants, such as Métis, African, North African, and
Moroccan Jewish merchants, were involved in the guinée cloth business. While these African agents were also
colonized, it should not be forgotten that some also helped the French colonizers.49
Toyomu Masaki
… a life of self-sufficiency in harmony with nature has divided views. Despite this, the
above quote embodies a dilemma that is as salient in the current crisis of our
unsustainable model of fashion consumption as it was in the nineteenth century, when the
stark contrast between the sweated labor of garment and textile workers in the
industrializing world and the extravagance of those who could indulge in fashion’s
luxuries was first more widely recognized.
Fashion in Utopia, Utopia in Fashion

Mila Burcikova
Colonialism's Clothing:
Africa, France, and the Deployment of Fashion Page | 13
Victoria L. Rovine
"... our natives, adopting the manners and habits of Europeans, are beginning more and more, especially in important
urban centers, to dress in the European manner? in short, to follow our fashions" (from a pamphlet promoting the
French Syndicate of Artificial Textile Manufacturers, Exposition Coloniale Internationale, Paris, 1931).
Access to cloth remained an essential attribute of power throughout the

precolonial history of the Loango Coast, perhaps more so than access to
the firearms that were once thought to be the key to understanding the
changing basis of power within and between African societies.

Phyllis M. Martin
… The end of the cloth as a means of reckoning came with the monetary economy and the spread of wage labor in
the colonial period. The history of cloth among the societies of the Loango Coast is, like so many other African
stories, one of continuity and change. The use of raphia cloth declined, but the significance of cloth did not, as the
transition was made to European imports. Access to cloth remained an essential attribute of power throughout the
precolonial history of the Loango Coast, perhaps more so than access to the firearms that were once thought to be
the key to understanding the changing basis of power within and between African societies. Now in the later
twentieth century, raphia cloth is seldom used on the Loango coast, except in a religious or ceremonial context in
remote villages.
… Aboriginal elders "talk of a time before trousers

and after trousers" … Dress and discipline were
closely related; nakedness figured a chaotic range of
anxieties around sin, immorality, desire, and
resistance.
States of Undress,
Philippa Levine
Clothing is a bundle of cultural symbols that has been

dealt with somewhat eclectically and indiscriminately
in the anthropological wash.

Hilda Kuper
costume. …
the king … a creature more powerful than ordinary man, in unique and awesome costume. Again, while there was
little obvious distinction between the essential outer clothing of all women, the skirts of the queen mother and of two
of the king's own wives were softened with fat from cattle of a sacred herd attributed with supernatural power. When
trade goods-particularly factory manufactured fabrics, and china beads-were incorporated, the king and in some
Page | 14
In this way, the line between being

Portuguese and Kongolese began to blur.
The First Globalization:
Portugal, the Age of Exploration, and Engaging the Other"
in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
Peter Ellerkamp
Describing the post-Christianized Kongolese community a century after the Portuguese arrived, Duarte Lopes
remarked, “the nobles of the court began to dress in the Portuguese fashion, wearing cloaks capes, scarlet tabards
and silk robes…his [the manicongo's] Court was also reformed to some extent in imitation of that of the king of
Portugal.” In this way, the line between being Portuguese and Kongolese began to blur.
The Æsthetics of Dress

The Art Journal, Vol. 6 (1880),
Mrs. Haweis
The science of clothes, which we call dress, is no doubt a legitimate branch of Art, however mismanaged. So surely
does dress, in its broad outlines, betray the measure of Art feeling, and less directly the condition 'of Art knowledge
and culture, and so certain an outcome is it of the conditions of life, that it is almost possible to say, Tell me what
sort of people they are, and I will tell you what sort of dresses they wear."

Hilda Kuper
Although operating from a different perspective, the South African press
apparently did not overlook the fact that these innovations in costume had
symbolic and social implications. Given the critical importance of clothing as an
expression of an individual’s social identities, origins, commitments, and
allegiances, it is no wonder that persons should view their clothing almost as an
extension of themselves. In sum, it now becomes intelligible why a person’s
relationship to his clothing is at once different from and more intimate than his
relationship to all other material objects.

Herbert C. Sanborn
the beginning of puberty; and then a distinction is made in the dress of the sexes, prescribed strictly by custom. … a
symbol of the married state. With some races the expression, "he gave her a dress" means that a man has married a
maiden and not a widow,' while on the island of Tahiti the chief ceremony in the marriage rite consists in the groom
Africa, France, and the Deployment of Fashion
Victoria L. Rovine
Clothing has long been an important medium for negotiating differences
across cultural divides. Garments provide a means by which to absorb distant
cultures into familiar frameworks, or to highlight cultural differences, often
in order to reinforce cultural identity through contrast with the "other." Page | 15
Fashion, the realm of clothing that is characterized by self-conscious change,
has long played an important role in the characterization of cultures
and sub-cultures, providing a key means of marking affiliation or
classifying people and cultures.
The World in Dress:

Anthropological Perspectives on Clothing, Fashion, and Culture
Karen Tranberg Hansen
The struggle for souls entailed dressing African bodies in European clothes to cover their nudity and managing these
bodies through new hygiene regimes. European clothes were a popular prestige good preceding the arrival of
missionaries; converts accepted the clothes eagerly and wore them as they saw fit, expressing their personal desires
in a new culture of consumption that the missionaries could not fully control.
Martin (1994) offers urban vistas of vibrant and rapidly changing styles that the culturally diverse African
townspeople integrated into their dress in Brazzaville during the French colonial period. This colonial cosmopolis
was an historical crossroad of trade and exchange where ostentatious body display accentuated long-held cultural
ideas that connected dress and social status. Because of the contingent meanings of the dressed body, clothing
readily becomes a contested issue (Allman 2004a).
The World in Dress:
In Defense of Modesty
Alexander Lowen
People ordinarily assume that clothes are worn as a means of protection against the
elements of nature. Though such protection is obviously needed in arctic climates, it does
not explain the use of clothes in tropic regions or heated homes. Clothes serve two other
important functions, they draw attention to a person's individuality at the same time that
they hide the secret core of his personality.
Nature has endowed many animals, especially the males,

with decorative features which serve this display function.
Among human beings, display is a more conscious activity
which employs many external agents to
enhance the appeal of the individual.
Alexander Lowen
The notion that Native peoples threatened the future of

Christian civilization was strengthened when male and female
settlers captured by Indians refused to return to their

settlements, preferring the Natives’ ways of life over the rigid
patriarchal hierarchy that controlled colonial life
“Sexual Savages:” Christian Stereotypes
and Violence Against North America’s Native Women
Alexandra Pierce
Page | 16

Herbert C. Sanborn
The Psychology of Clothes,

J. C. Flugel
"Nakedness tends to diminish 'sexuality' (i.e. the more directly genital impulses of sexuality). The by now extensive
experience of the Friends of Nature [a nudist organization] would seem to show that this contention is correct, the
chief reason probably being that the increased pleasure of exhibitionism and of skin and muscle erotism have
drained off a certain quantity of sexual energy that might otherwise have found a purely genital channel."
A modest person is not afraid of exposure; he can choose when or where to

express his feelings and he will expose them in appropriate situations. The
person who is ashamed cannot express his feelings even in appropriate
situations. He is afraid to expose himself even when the situation calls for such
exposure. In therapy we deal with people who are ashamed of their feelings.
They cannot express them even in the privacy and intimacy of the therapeutic
situation. Shame is pathological whereas modesty is normal. Prudery may be
defined as the shame of the body.
Alexander Lowen
Man is conscious of his body, especially of its sexual nature, in a way the animal
or the young child isn't. Man has developed an ego which views the body as an
object and is aware of its sexual function. The animal is fully identified with its
body and lacks this awareness and ego development.
Alexander Lowen
The need to maintain an appearance or support an ego image is a restraint that inhibits the joy and spontaneity of the
body. In the privacy of our homes, we all welcome the opportunity to relieve ourselves of this ego burden by
removing some of our clothing. In human beings, the tendency to exhibit and display the body is coupled with a
feeling of modesty about it which derives from an ego consciousness of the body.
Alexander Lowen
To understand the complex role that clothes play in our lives we need to study the antithetical tendencies of bodily
display on the one hand and bodily modesty on the other. The desire to draw attention to the body and to display its
charms reflects an exhibitionistic impulse that is found in all people. Among primitives there is an almost universal
tendency to decorate the body with such devices as paints, ornaments, garlands, etc. This feeling for displaying the
body is common to many animals and man. Among the animals it is closely related to the sexual drive and follows
an instinctive pattern. Nature has endowed many animals, especially the males, with decorative features which serve
this display function. Among human beings, display is a more conscious activity which employs many external
agents to enhance the appeal of the individual.
Psychologists and anthropologists generally agree that the primary function of clothes is to serve this display
function. Display emphasizes the uniqueness and superiority of the individual over the rest of the group. It often Page | 17
takes the form of physical exhibition as in the display of dancing ability or athletic prowess but in daily life the main
reliance is upon decorative devices or clothes. In all primitive societies, the ruler or tribal leader is more elaborately
decorated than his subjects or followers. In civilized societies, organized on a class basis, status and rank are
expressed by the costliness and elaboration of dress. The king's royal robes and the courtiers' ornate costumes
distinguished them from the common man.
Alexander Lowen
These distinctions of dress tend to disappear in democratic societies, where they are displaced by fashion, which
serves as a status symbol. To be dressed in the height of fashion is some indication of social superiority for it often
requires more money and time than the average working person can afford to devote to clothes. Clothes serve,
therefore, to accent the differences between people, socially and sexually.

Hilda Kuper
Unlike Africans in other countries in which traditional rulers had converted to
Christianity and their subjects had become nominal 'clothed' Christians, Swazi
rulers maintained the traditional ancestral religion and the associated costumes
at the same time as they tolerated missionaries and did not interfere with the
conversion of subjects publicized in clothing.

Nudism in England
Rev. Norwood, 1933
… Cadamosto’s stories of King Budomel, and his train of

‘two-hundred blacks’, who gave an audience twice a day,
‘with much ceremony and abasement’, and where ‘no man
would be bold enough to come before him to parley, unless he
had stripped himself naked save for the girdle of leather they
wear’. Nakedness and Other Peoples:
Jill Burke
The various kinds of cloth woven from raphia fibre in the

Congo-Angola region were equally marks of social
distinction. The best cloth, said to resemble velvet, was the
prerogative of kings and nobles.
J. D. Fage
The idea that clothing often serves to accentuate rather than diminish
the erotic appeal of the body is a key plank in the nudist claim that total
nudity is more chaste than many forms of clothing - indeed, in the words
of one lady nudist, “the most modest dress ever invented”.
“Regaining what Mankind has Lost through Civilisation:” Page | 18
Ruth Barcan
West Africa in Global Trade and Empires

Rebecca Shumway
Whether by caravan, canoe, or dhow, trade brought West African goods and people into direct contact with the far
corners of the Old World prior to the proliferation of the transatlantic slave trade. Long-distance trade drew West
African elites across the Sahara Desert into the heartland of medieval Islam, to the Renaissance Vatican, and to the
best universities in early modern Europe. As an integral part of the formation of the Atlantic world, West Africa’s
worldwide commercial ties expanded even further. … Kriger demystifies this topic by drawing on her expertise in
the history of textile production and trade and by studiously mining the records of the Royal African Company. She
highlights the variety of linen, wool, and cotton textiles produced in India, northern and eastern Europe, and West
Africa to meet the ever-changing demands of West African consumers who sought particular imported fabrics for
both formal and common dress.
European merchants initially used the guinée as a means of exchange for African
commodities such as slaves and gum arabic in West Africa.
… Stated otherwise, for a commodity to be used as currency, the quality has to be such that people will not hesitate
to give it up as payment. Simultaneously, as issuers of money who always seek seigniorage profits, the European
merchants must have been motivated to supply cheap cotton cloth, as the value of cloth as a commodity should not
surpass its value when functioning as money. In this regard, Marion Johnson (1980, 196) mentions that the cheapest
cloth was usually used as currency in Sahel.
Toyomu Masaki
Clothes can be considered, therefore, as a mechanism

of genital arousal, and modesty promotes this aim,
for by hiding the prize, its allure is intensified.
Alexander Lowen
One simple principle, I believe, explains the behavior of organisms -the search for excitement and pleasure.
Excitement is life. The lack of excitement is boredom and death. Since Adam and Eve, the excitement of life has
centered around the mystery of sex. Clothing intensifies this mystery. It cloaks the biological response with the aura
of personality (persona = mask) and adorns it with the unique characteristics of the individual ego.
Nudity as a Costume in Classical Art

Larissa Bonfante
Though it does not serve as a protection against the weather, nakedness, like clothing or armor, was used to
distinguish social groups, in life and in art. Clothing, in fact, distinguishes human society, civilized people, from Page | 19
animals and wild beasts, which are naked. Humans wear clothes, animals do not. In a clothed society, however,
nakedness is special, and can be used as a "costume." As it developed, Greek nudity came to mark a contrast
between Greek and non-Greek, and also between men and women. The latter distinction is connected with the most
basic connotation of nakedness, the sense of shame, vulnerability and exposure it arouses in person, and the related
sense of shock provoked by its sight. Clothing is designed to avoid such powerful emotions by covering the body,
especially the male genitals, the phallus, and female genitals and breast.
… “a man who has at length found something to do will not

need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that
has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period.”
Walden, or Life in the Woods,

Henry David Thoreau
“Kings and Queens who wear a suit but once . . .cannot know
the comfort of wearing a suit that fits. ... Every day our
garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the
impress of the wearer’s character.”
… on the Algarve in August 1444, a group of around 250 captive black Africans
‘virtually or completely naked, and in chains’ screaming and crying as their
families were split up.
Nakedness and Other Peoples:

African slaves were common in southern Italy, especially Naples and Sicily from early in the century, and were
frequent in the northern courts of Ferrara and Mantua by the 1440s. They are documented in Florence from 1461,
but were probably present before this. …
African slaves were both clothed and baptized by their European owners, and so could be understood as having been
saved both from their errant paganism and ‘beastly’ way of life.

Jill Burke
One Florentine buyer, Giovanni Guidetti, explained that he

needed extra money to buy clothes for his three young slave
girls in 1461 as they were naked when he bought them.

Jill Burke
It is likely that this account (and, potentially, similar news from other travellers) would have been available at this
time, due to the Florentines’ keen financial interest in the Portuguese voyages. Florentines had a key role as
investors in Portuguese expeditions to the Atlantic coast of Africa. There had long been a Florentine presence in
Lisbon – the Bardi family were given a licence to trade there as early as 1338 – and by 1500, Florentines were the
most important and numerous group of foreign merchants in the Portuguese capital, dealing in goods such as sugar,
leather, dyes and silks as well as Guinean slaves. Page | 20
A dearth of supplies necessitated actions such as "An Act that no Cloath be

sould to the Indians," passed in Virginia on August 16, 1633, which stipulated
that no settler could "trade or trucke any such cloathe, cotton or bayes, unto any
Indians which is or shall be bought into this colony, as marchandize intended to
be sould to the planters here.
"He would not goe naked like the "Indians", but cloathed just as one of our
selves": Disguise and "the Naked Indian" in Massinger's "The City
Madam"
Gavin Hollis
They also would wear "the English apparel" when meeting with the English, but
"pull of[f] all, as soone as they come againe into their owne Houses, and
Company."
These [Indians] were clothed in beasts skins, … and in their demeanor

like to brute beastes, whom the King kept after a time. Of the which
upon two yeeres after, I saw two apparelled after the maner of Englishmen
in Westminster palace, which that time I could not discern from Englishmen,
till I was learned what they were, but as for speech,
I heard none of them utter one word.
- Robert Fabian,
"Of the Savages which Cabot brought home presented into the King
in the foureteenth yere of his raigne,"
in Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations (1589)
cited by Gavin Hollis in Disguise and "the Naked Indian"
in Massinger's "The City Madam"
They also would wear "the English apparel" when meeting with the English, but "pull of[f] all, as soone as they
come againe into their owne Houses, and Company." It is important that Williams notes the difference in behavior
of the Narragansett in English homes and when they left English homes: while his observations suggest that the
Narragansett held English clothing in high esteem (their word for "Englishmen" literally translated as "Coat-men, or
clothed"), in a sense they also suggest that the Narragansett displayed a flair for performance and for dressing up.
This ability to dress up (rather than wear clothes) was especially significant in Virginia in 1622.
John Langdon-Davies, for example, satirized the explorer Henry Morton Stanley
(of “Dr Livingstone, I presume” fame), whose unashamed project was to enrich
the British textile industry by clothing “naked Africa.” Langdon-Davies
sarcastically called him “a noble figure worthy of imitation, a hero if ever there
was one, an empire builder, a pioneer”
cited in “Regaining what Mankind has Lost through Civilisation:” Page | 21
Ruth Barcan
A dearth of supplies necessitated actions such as "An Act that no Cloath be

sould to the Indians," passed in Virginia on August 16, 1633, which stipulated
that no settler could "trade or trucke any such cloathe, cotton or bayes, unto any
Indians which is or shall be bought into this colony, as marchandize intended to
be sould to the planters here.
"He would not goe naked like the "Indians", but cloathed just as one of our
selves": Disguise and "the Naked Indian" in Massinger's "The City
Madam"
Gavin Hollis
Furthermore, the play seems to rebuff claims that the Indians and the English
shared bodily similarities - that underneath it all they were all the same - by
deracinating the Indian to reveal a dominant English presence beneath. Sir John
washes off his Indianness, and thus washes away the Indians; …

but cloathed just as one of our selves": Disguise and
"the Naked Indian" in Massinger's "The City Madam"
Gavin Hollis
Commentators and observers regularly compared Indian and English behavioral patterns and appearance, and they
used the Indian as a yardstick against which the civility (or lack therein) of their own countrymen and women could
be measured. The Indian was savage, but then so were the English; the Indian was heathen, but then so were many
English (either Catholic or Protestant, depending on the writer's denomination); like their English forebears, Indians
colored and darkened their skin; Indians were simple people, but in many ways this was preferable to the ostentation
of many English who wore outlandish clothing. We see these points of comparison at work in Massinger's The City
Madam, in which the fashion-crazed citizens of London are shown up by the Virginian visitors, who, although
conforming to stereotypes about devil-worshipping Indians, stand in relief to the sartorial excesses of their English
counterparts. Furthermore, the employment of alterity-as-disguise draws attention to the items of apparel by which
transformation is achieved, prostheses such as darkening cosmetics or masks and arm/chest pieces, hairpieces,
headdresses, and clothing.
Sir John's taking off of his Indian disguise could thus be seen to parody the various beliefs about the possible
relationships between Indians and English (past, present, and future), which were enthusiastically floated by
prominent colonialists ... Furthermore, the play seems to rebuff claims that the Indians and the English shared bodily
similarities - that underneath it all they were all the same - by deracinating the Indian to reveal a dominant English
presence beneath. Sir John washes off his Indianness, and thus washes away the Indians; indeed, they were never
really there in the first place. By doing so he reclaims his rightful position, removing the Indians' threat from his
own small plantation and placing in their stead a rightful, white, and now appropriately attired master.
but cloathed just as one of our selves": Disguise and

"the Naked Indian" in Massinger's "The City Madam"
Gavin Hollis
… Swazi rulers maintained the traditional ancestral religion and the Page | 22
associated costumes at the same time as they tolerated missionaries and
did not interfere with the conversion of subjects publicized in clothing.
Hilda Kuper
The reaction of Swazi to Western styles of clothing was complex, depending in part on the situation and in part on
various status components, more particularly pedigree and education. …
The attitude of whites towards Swazi wearing Western clothing was ambivalent. On the one hand traditional 'native
clothing' was denigrated, on the other there was a reluctance to have Africans appear in the more fashionable of
Western clothing. Whites who were not prepared to see blacks as equals used clothing as a symbol maintaining
inequality."
Alexander Lowen
The need to maintain an appearance or support an ego image is a restraint that inhibits the joy and spontaneity of the
body. In the privacy of our homes, we all welcome the opportunity to relieve ourselves of this ego burden by
removing some of our clothing. In human beings, the tendency to exhibit and display the body is coupled with a
feeling of modesty about it which derives from an ego consciousness of the body. Man is conscious of his body,
especially of its sexual nature, in a way the animal or the young child isn't. Man has developed an ego which views
the body as an object and is aware of its sexual function. The animal is fully identified with its body and lacks this
awareness and ego development.
westerners weary of the sophistry of civilization with what
seem [ed] like a welcome retreat into untutored sensation'
Naked In Nature:
Nina J Morris
.... Whilst Surén commented that his powers of observation, instinct for nature and capacities for insight had all been
marvellously increased since first shedding his clothes and that, when naked, his self-awareness and senses of touch,
smell, hearing and taste became inflamed. When roving naked in the natural environment he stated that one could
feel the breathing of nature; 'every tree and every shrub whisper deep slumbering wisdom into our souls [it] awakens
in us the deep intuitive knowledge of true humanity and all of the transitoryness of our school learning'.
Clothing is a bundle of cultural symbols that has been

dealt with somewhat eclectically and indiscriminately
in the anthropological wash.

Hilda Kuper
In this way, the line between being Page | 23

Portuguese and Kongolese began to blur.
The First Globalization:
Portugal, the Age of Exploration, and Engaging the Other"
in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
Peter Ellerkamp
Describing the post-Christianized Kongolese community a century after the Portuguese arrived, Duarte Lopes
remarked, “the nobles of the court began to dress in the Portuguese fashion, wearing cloaks capes, scarlet tabards
and silk robes…his [the manicongo's] Court was also reformed to some extent in imitation of that of the king of
Portugal.” In this way, the line between being Portuguese and Kongolese began to blur.

Hilda Kuper
The attitude of whites towards Swazi wearing Western clothing was
ambivalent. On the one hand traditional 'native clothing' was
denigrated, on the other there was a reluctance to have Africans appear
in the more fashionable of Western clothing.
Unlike Africans in other countries in which traditional rulers had
converted to Christianity and their subjects had become nominal
'clothed' Christians, Swazi rulers maintained the traditional ancestral
religion and the associated costumes at the same time as they tolerated
missionaries and did not interfere with the conversion of subjects
publicized in clothing.
The notion that Native peoples threatened the future of Christian

civilization was strengthened when male and female settlers captured
by Indians refused to return to their settlements, preferring the Natives’
ways of life over the rigid patriarchal hierarchy that controlled colonial
life
“Sexual Savages:” Christian Stereotypes
and Violence Against North America’s Native Women
Alexandra Pierce
Beads And Money:

Notes Toward A Theory Of Wealth And Power
David Graeber
A woman in this situation cannot act simply for the sake of acting, and herself is constantly doubled into an
implicitly male surveyor and female surveyed. It is easy to see how dress codes reinforce this. Formal male dress is
designed to hide the body. Its sobriety seems intended to efface not only a man's physical form but his very
individuality, rendering him abstract and, in a certain sense, invisible. Clothing for women, on the other hand, not
only reveals more of the body (or at least hints at revealing it): it transforms what is revealed into one of a collection
of objects of adornment-body parts becoming equivalent, as such, to clothing, makeup, and jewelry-which together
define the wearer as a sight, and, by extension, as relatively concrete and material.
The constant transformation of the visible into the invisible, and back again, might provide an answer to the question Page | 24
with which I began this article: Why beads? Why, in so many societies, should money, too, consist of objects of
adornment? Recall that, at the time, I contrasted money to the sort of objects of adornment that played so central a
role in Mauss's writings on the gift, and in anthropological exchange theory in general. These, I said, were unique
treasures, and, as such, entirely different from money. But Mauss himself remarks that the rarest and most valuable
of them - Maori axes and cloaks, Kwakiutl coppers, and kula armshells and necklaces-were all seen as having a
personality, will, and intelligence of their own. It is almost as if the very fact of an object's having an individual
identity - a unique form, a name, a history - implied the presence of some sort of hidden life-force or agency behind
it, just as, in Tylor, the inner life-soul always lies hidden behind a person's unique exterior "image."
The Deceit of Dress:

Utopian Visions and the Arguments against Clothing
Richard Martin
Some Utopian speculations have, of course, associated clothing with the need for warmth, originating in Thomas
More's onomastic text of 1516. In his consideration of clothing in Book II under the rubric of "Economy and
Occupations," he cites loose-fitting leather clothing, but additional wool cloaks for "going out," thus implying chilly
weather and that mandate for clothing. But clothing exists in societies without such a mandate; tropically warm
civilizations nonetheless choose to dress themselves.
Those societies that have denied clothing have done so as a cultural expression and they have been vivid in the
collective imagination. Sparta encouraged, at least according to legend, frequent nudity and the nudity of the young.
The exotic noble savages of eighteenth-century fantasies and explorations were seldom nude, but were admired for
their proclivity to nudity. The twentieth century has yearned for ideal, nude societies as if to recreate the condition of
Eden before the fall and before the fig leaf. The Golden Ages depicted by artists, whether Botticelli, Giorgione, or
even Degas, Pu vis de Chavannes, and Gauguin might be fulfilled in real places where the human body is not
encumbered by clothing. The hypothesis of functional nudity is a characteristically twentieth century one, informed
by a secularism that circumvents the arguments of modesty and by a rational inquiry into the evolution and nature of
human beings.
Africa, France, and the Deployment of Fashion
Victoria L. Rovine
"... our natives, adopting the manners and habits of Europeans, are beginning more and more, especially in important
urban centers, to dress in the European manner? in short, to follow our fashions" (from a pamphlet promoting the
French Syndicate of Artificial Textile Manufacturers, Exposition Coloniale Internationale, Paris, 1931).
This colonial cosmopolis was an historical crossroad of trade

and exchange where ostentatious body display accentuated
long-held cultural ideas that connected dress and social status.
The World in Dress:

Anthropological Perspectives on Clothing, Fashion, and Culture
Martin (1994) offers urban vistas of vibrant and rapidly changing styles that the culturally diverse African
townspeople integrated into their dress in Brazzaville during the French colonial period. This colonial cosmopolis
was an historical crossroad of trade and exchange where ostentatious body display accentuated long-held cultural
ideas that connected dress and social status. Because of the contingent meanings of the dressed body, clothing Page | 25
readily becomes a contested issue (Allman 2004a). Recent works focus on dress to examine struggles over class,
gender, and generation, investigating attempts to create "national dress" before and after independence.

Rev. Norwood,
Complaints about unwilling natives were plentiful, and their reluctance to pose for the camera returned them to the
timelessness of non-modernity, unappreciative of the beneficent marvels of modern science. What prompted
observers, photographers, artists, and others to such ardency in depicting and capturing the naked form of
indigenous people? It was palpably not the same aesthetic as that which animated the nude of high art in the same
period. Indigenous people, with some notable exceptions, were widely regarded as ugly.
States of Undress:
Nakedness and the Colonial Imagination
Philippa Levine

Herbert C. Sanborn
Clothing proper at first sight seems to indicate absolute nudity, … view that clothing originates in a desire to protect
body from cold will not hold for races living beneath the tropics and those who wear the articles in question at
present do usually regard them as protection. Moreover, we have drawings in the caves of Perigord which show that
man was not forced even by the cold of the Diluvial Period to put on warm clothing.
the beginning of puberty; and then a distinction is made in the dress of the sexes, prescribed strictly by custom. … a
symbol of the married state. With some races the expression, "he gave her a dress" means that a man has married a
maiden and not a widow,' while on the island of Tahiti the chief ceremony in the marriage rite consists in the groom
George Basden, a missionary and ethnographer who lived with the Igbo
people of Nigeria published two volumes of photographs in the 1920s and
1930s. The book described images of unclothed but elaborately decorated Igbo
women as indicating their high status as eligible brides who would not have
thought of themselves as naked.
Nudity, Wikipedia
Page | 26
In a letter accompanying the watercolor, Wulff described Malm’s dress in detail: “The part drawn in ink shows gold
[ornaments] or doubloons; marks on the face are painted on with chalk or white colouring. . . . I have seen Mulatinder
[Mulatresses] wearing gold to a value of 100 lod [c. 15 grams]. Bare feet. They often go without shirts, thus, fully
exposed, they usually paint their [upper] bodies with white colouring, drawing all manner of figures on their necks,
shoulders, arms, breasts and backs.”
A Danish Jew in West Africa: Wulff Joseph Wulff Biography and Letters, 1836–1842
“The Christened Mulatresses”:
Pernille Ipsen
Dressing Africans in European clothes to cover their nakedness was part of converting them to Christianity.[48] In the
19th century, photographs of naked Indigenous peoples began circulating in Europe without a clear distinction
between those created as commercial curiosities (or erotica) and those claiming to be scientific, or ethnographic
images. Given the state of photography, it is unclear which images were posed, rather than being representative of
everyday attire.
Nudity, Wikipedia
Naturism, Nature And The Senses In

Early Twentieth Century Britain
…the importance of sensory perception to, and the embodied geographies of, naturism and the particular ways in
which early twentieth century naturists conceptualised, valued and attached meaning to the relationship between the
body and nature. … the ways in naturist practice reflected contemporary European-wide debates on urbanism,
nationhood, health, and nature, and highlights some of the connections between early naturist philosophy and
contemporary phenomenological theory.
Naked In Nature:
Nina J Morris
As far as he was concerned, civilization had effectively 'descended into darkness'.
What is interesting about the discourse of both Simmel and Surén, however, and
perhaps what distinguishes their ideas from those of Heidegger, is their belief in
the redemptive properties of nature,
westerners weary of the sophistry of civilization with what seem [ed]
like a welcome retreat into untutored sensation'.
Naked In Nature:
Nina J Morris
… the blasé attitude was a metropolitan phenomenon which resulted from the 'rapidly changing and closely Page | 27
compressed contrasting stimulations of the nerves' experienced by city dwellers. … agitated the metropolitan body's
nerves to their strongest reactivity for such a long time that eventually they ceased to react at all rendering the body
incapable of reacting to new sensations with the 'appropriate' energy.
Surén believed that city life restricted the variety of human experience and he lamented that the modern-day urban
population was tied not only by the ‘merciless conventions’ of a ‘short-sighted and pernicious morality’ and ‘morbid
prudery’ ... , but also by a dulling of the senses similar to the ‘neurasthenia’ or ‘blasé attitude’ witnessed by German
sociologist Georg Simmel (1858-1918). According to Simmel, the blasé attitude was a metropolitan phenomenon
which resulted from the ‘rapidly changing and closely compressed contrasting stimulations of the nerves’
experienced by city dwellers.29 He believed that prolonged exposure to the urban milieu agitated the metropolitan
body’s nerves to their strongest reactivity for such a long time that eventually they ceased to react at all rendering
the body incapable of reacting to new sensations with the ‘appropriate’ energy.
According to Simmel, the blasé attitude was a metropolitan phenomenon which resulted from the 'rapidly changing
and closely compressed contrasting stimulations of the nerves' experienced by city dwellers. He believed that
prolonged exposure to the urban milieu agitated the metropolitan body's nerves to their strongest reactivity for such
a long time that eventually they ceased to react at all rendering the body incapable of reacting to new sensations with
the 'appropriate' energy. There are many parallels between the philosophies of Simmel and Surén and I highlight
their shared views on intellectualism later in the paper, however, it is their common perspective on the social
meaning of money and the qualitative values of things which offers the greatest insight into Surén's naturist theory.
As far as he was concerned, civilization had effectively 'descended into darkness'. What is interesting about the
discourse of both Simmel and Surén, however, and perhaps what distinguishes their ideas from those of Heidegger,
is their belief in the redemptive properties of nature, that it was possible to escape the passive, desensitized, and
ultimately degenerative existence endured by the 'metropolitan body'. As sociologist Lewis notes, they believed that
'there could be found aspects of life (or more precisely leisure) that could elude the grasp of modern consumer
capitalism'… Surén promoted Man and sunlight as an antidote for a misguided civilization. In addition to making
one feel (and look) physically fit and radiant, he advocated that exposing the body to the natural environment would
also improve one's character, spiritually and morally. To be naked in nature was an educational experience,
important not only to personal development but to the development of society. As a result of spending more time in
close contact with nature, individuals would become attuned to their instinctive bodily rhythms and would be better
equipped to form a more cohesive and less decadent and corrupt society.
Naked In Nature:
Nina J Morris
… Surén's desire to immerse himself in nature is reminiscent of that expressed by 19th century American naturalist
and 'simple life' advocate Henry Thoreau. Like Surén, Thoreau actively sought out sensuous experiences; nature was
'a living thing, like himself, which he want [ed] to respond to with his whole being, not just with the sense of sight
but with the other senses as well'. Both men viewed going naked in nature as a form of education which could
develop an individual's 'natural' capacity for perception. .... Whilst Surén commented that his powers of observation,
instinct for nature and capacities for insight had all been marvellously increased since first shedding his clothes and
that, when naked, his self-awareness and senses of touch, smell, hearing and taste became inflamed. When roving
naked in the natural environment he stated that one could feel the breathing of nature; 'every tree and every shrub
whisper deep slumbering wisdom into our souls [it] awakens in us the deep intuitive knowledge of true humanity
and all of the transitoryness of our school learning'. For both Surén and Thoreau such close encounters with nature
symbolized 'the antithesis of culture' and promised to 'provide westerners weary of the sophistry of civilization with
what seem [ed] like a welcome retreat into untutored sensation'.
Surén and his fellow naturists believed that an increased intimacy with nature through nudity developed individual
character, strength and self-discipline, which in turn, could restore health, vitality and morality to the nation. By
combining the best parts of 'civilization' and the 'primitive' it was assumed that individuals would discover and Page | 28
experience their 'true' selves. This discovery of one's 'true self would, in turn, necessitate and later sustain, a more
harmonious being, balanced in body and mind.
Naked In Nature:
Nina J Morris
The need to maintain an appearance or support an ego image

is a restraint that inhibits the joy and spontaneity of the body.
In the privacy of our homes, we all welcome the opportunity
to relieve ourselves of this ego burden by removing
some of our clothing.
Alexander Lowen
People ordinarily assume that clothes are worn as a means of protection against the elements of nature. Though such
protection is obviously needed in arctic climates, it does not explain the use of clothes in tropic regions or heated
homes. Clothes serve two other important functions, they draw attention to a person's individuality at the same time
that they hide the secret core of his personality. To understand the complex role that clothes play in our lives we
need to study the antithetical tendencies of bodily display on the one hand and bodily modesty on the other.

Hilda Kuper
Although operating from a different perspective, the South African press apparently did not overlook the fact that
these innovations in costume had symbolic and social implications. Given the critical importance of clothing as an
expression of an individual’s social identities, origins, commitments, and allegiances, it is no wonder that persons
should view their clothing almost as an extension of themselves. In sum, it now becomes intelligible why a person’s
relationship to his clothing is at once different from and more intimate than his relationship to all other material
objects.
Clothes can be considered, therefore, as a mechanism

of genital arousal, and modesty promotes this aim,
for by hiding the prize, its allure is intensified.
Alexander Lowen
One simple principle, I believe, explains the behavior of organisms -the search
for excitement and pleasure. Excitement is life. The lack of excitement is
boredom and death. Since Adam and Eve, the excitement of life has centered
around the mystery of sex. Clothing intensifies this mystery. It cloaks the
biological response with the aura of personality (persona = mask) and adorns it
with the unique characteristics of the individual ego.
Page | 29
Moreover, European factory textiles and their framework of fashion capitalism
did not suppress the stylistic development of other peoples, but intensified it.
Fashion capitalist culture went on, however, to generate ideologies in
glorification of itself. A pervasive ideology holds that Europe was historically
on the move when all other places were stagnant so that in their expansion
Europeans encountered not style dynamics but unchanging "traditions" which
they then destroyed.
Fashion as Fetish: The Agency of Modern Clothing and
Traditional Body Decoration among North Mekeo of Papua New Guinea
Mark S Mosko
Alexander Lowen
Clothes serve, therefore, to accent the differences between people, socially and sexually. Nakedness is the great
leveler of social distinctions for it reduces all persons to the common bodily or animal level on which they came into
this world. Nudity strips the individual of his ego pretensions and, sometimes, of his ego defenses.
Man has developed an ego which views the body as an object and is aware of its sexual function. The animal is fully
identified with its body and lacks this awareness and ego development. Man, as opposed to the animal and the young
child, has become self-conscious. Modesty is an expression of this self-awareness, a mark of personality, and a sign
of individuality. Covering part of the body, particularly the genital area, reflects a sense of privacy which is the basis
of modesty.
We discovered innumerable lands, we saw innumerable

people and different languages, and all were naked.1
(Amerigo Vespucci, letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’
Medici, 1500)

Nudism in England
Rev. Norwood, 1933
The earliest (eleventh-century) reference to woven strips of

cotton (chigguiya) used as currency comes from Takrur, north
of Senegal, a region of extensive nomadism and early cotton
cultivation.
Labelle Prussin

Labelle Prussin
into a hallmark of distinction and dignity. The extensive indigo trade is indicated in early Islamic references to the Page | 30
currency.
… Aboriginal elders "talk of a time before trousers

and after trousers" … Dress and discipline were
closely related; nakedness figured a chaotic range of
anxieties around sin, immorality, desire, and
resistance.
States of Undress,
Philippa Levine
We discovered innumerable lands, we saw

innumerable people and different languages, and all
were naked.
Amerigo Vespucci,
letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici,
1500
'[T]here is much to support the view that it is clothes

that wear us and not we them; we may make them
take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our
hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.'
Virginia Woolf
… He wondered why the Africans honor

and clothe the dead better than the living, …
Notable Danish Chaplains On The Gold Coast
H. Debrunner

Rev. Norwood,


Phyllis M. Martin
Stamping History:
Stories of Social Change in Ghana’s Adinkra Cloth Page | 31
Johannes Gottleib Christaller included the following Twi expressions: He first
said that hye fura conveys “to put on, to wear (of clothes fitting to the body or
parts of the body)”. … to put on, or to wear clothes (cf. fura tama)”, which he
identified as “to wear a negro dress”. He contrasted this expression to wearing
“European dress,” atadee. … the name atadehyefo as “people in European
dress,” which shows how clothing becomes part of one’s identity.
‘The dress of savage women’; and, finally, a couple of ‘Domesticated Tapuias’.

The captions also mention the clothing of the ‘nhonhas’ and ‘chinas’ of Macau,
the ‘gentiles’ and the ‘baye’ of Goa.
Customs and Costumes: Carlos Julião and
the Image of Black Slaves in Late Eighteenth-Century Brazil
Silvia Hunold Lara

Labelle Prussin
Another major medium of currency in Africa was cloth. While the use of gold (and silver) currencies in both Europe
and the Muslim world depended on the minting and handling of money, African cloth currencies involved silk,
indigo, and strip-weaving traditions in cotton and wool all intimately linked to the nomadic presence, the trans-
the Medi terranean Basin, and beyond.
European merchants initially used the guinée as a means of exchange for

African commodities such as slaves and gum arabic in West Africa.
… France built the industry to manufacture guinée cloth in Pondicherry, which
was required by the Moors as a means of exchange for gum arabic and presented
that the ‘West African consumer taste for quality textiles shaped a pattern of
global trade’ (Kobayashi 2019, 203).

Toyomu Masaki
While a commodity that functions as money should have certain conditions

that someone always wants to accept, the commodity does not need to be
a quality product. Otherwise, people would have preferred to keep the money
rather than spend it, and the guinée would not have circulated extensively
through West Africa.
When Fernandes comes to the Bullom and Temne of Sierra Leone, he

distinguishes between 'men of good standing' who wear 'cotton shirts
and breeches', and 'poor men' who have to make do with scanty pieces
of bark-cloth. (Much later, in the 1660s, Villault de Bellefond was to Page | 32
stress this sort of distinction all along the Upper Guinea coast.)
The various kinds of cloth woven from raphia fibre in the Congo-
Angola region were equally marks of social distinction. The best cloth,
said to resemble velvet, was the prerogative of kings and nobles.
J. D. Fage
costume. …

Hilda Kuper
Clothing is a bundle of cultural symbols that has been dealt with somewhat eclectically and indiscriminately in the
anthropological wash. Some writers have speculated on the origins of clothing, stressing such qualities in human
nature as modesty and vanity; others, more materially oriented, have emphasized utility; others again have listed
separate garments, the materials of which they were made, and the techniques employed; and some have paid
attention to broader historical and sociological dimensions.

Herbert C. Sanborn
the beginning of puberty; and then a distinction is made in the dress of the sexes, prescribed strictly by custom. With
the advance of civilization, however, and the advent of marriage this stage comes to be considered of less
importance, the emphasis being then laid on the distinction through dress of the married single female members of
the given group. According Schurtz, this fact throws a flood of light on the psychological significance of clothing,
which in many cases is plainly seen to a symbol of the married state. With some races the expression, "he gave her a
dress" means that a man has married a maiden and not a widow,' while on the island of Tahiti the chief ceremony in
the marriage rite consists in the groom throwing the bride a piece of cloth.
Ben Barry
Fashion and appearance are often framed in opposition to hegemonic masculinity - the most exalted configuration of
gender practice that legitimates patriarchy (Connell 1995; Kaiser 2012). … however, fashion and appearance are
principal means by which men’s visible gender identities are established as not only different from women but also
from other men (Edwards 1997). Multiple masculinities result from men’s various social identities. Masculinities are
marginalized by race or class and subordinated by sexuality.
… that men across identities and contexts use dress to secure social domination and support an unequal gender Page | 33
system. Despite different constellations of privilege, all of the participants enacted practices which shored up
hegemonic masculinity when they adopted or rejected dominant masculine dress ideals because doing so would
personally and/ or professionally benefit them by securing their gender privilege. As such, scholars should be
cautious not to overstate the significance of men in feminine clothes.
Ben Barry

… a symbol of the married state. With some races the expression, "he gave her
a dress" means that a man has married a maiden and not a widow,' while on the
island of Tahiti the chief ceremony in the marriage rite consists in the groom
Herbert C. Sanborn
Pernille Ipsen

Rev. Norwood,

Phyllis M. Martin

Cloth Makes The City

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Cloth Makes The City

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“My body is like the City of the Sun.

It has no place, but it is from it that all possible places,

We discovered innumerable lands, we saw

When Fernandes comes to the Bullom and Temne

The slave is distinguished from the others by his

Reading Pictures - Regula Iselin - On the

The earliest (eleventh-century) reference to woven

Johannes Gottleib Christaller … the name atadehyefo

“The skin of the civilized man, is an atrophied organ” …

Access to cloth remained an essential attribute of power throughout

The Function of Clothing and of Bodily Adornment

Stamping History: Stories of Social Change in Ghana’s

Judaic Threads in the West African Tapestry: No More Foreever?

European merchants initially used the guinée as a means of exchange for

Colonialism and imperialism as agents of globalization

While a commodity that functions as money should have certain conditions

Judaic Threads in the West African Tapestry

Costume and Identity

The Function of Clothing and of Bodily Adornment

Clothing proper at first sight seems to indicate absolute nudity, …

Rethinking the Italian Renaissance Nude

The earliest (eleventh-century) reference to woven strips of cotton (chigguiya) used as

Judaic Threads in the West African Tapestry

Colonialism and imperialism as agents of globalization

"He would not goe naked like the "Indians",

The earliest (eleventh-century) reference to woven strips of cotton (chigguiya) used as

Judaic Threads in the West African Tapestry

A dearth of supplies necessitated actions such as "An Act that

They also would wear "the English apparel" when meeting

Judaic Threads in the West African Tapestry: No More Foreever?

Power, Cloth and Currency on the Loango Coast

Clothing itself was a visible reminder of a person's place in society.

Power, Cloth and Currency on the Loango Coast

Power, Cloth and Currency on the Loango Coast

Fashion in Utopia, Utopia in Fashion

Access to cloth remained an essential attribute of power throughout the

Power, Cloth and Currency on the Loango Coast

… Aboriginal elders "talk of a time before trousers

Clothing is a bundle of cultural symbols that has been

Costume and Identity

In this way, the line between being

The Æsthetics of Dress

Costume and Identity

The Function of Clothing and of Bodily Adornment

The World in Dress:

Nature has endowed many animals, especially the males,

The notion that Native peoples threatened the future of

settlers captured by Indians refused to return to their

The Function of Clothing and of Bodily Adornment

The Psychology of Clothes,

A modest person is not afraid of exposure; he can choose when or where to

Costume and Identity

“The skin of the civilized man, is an atrophied organ” …

… Cadamosto’s stories of King Budomel, and his train of

The various kinds of cloth woven from raphia fibre in the

West Africa in Global Trade and Empires

Clothes can be considered, therefore, as a mechanism

Nudity as a Costume in Classical Art

… “a man who has at length found something to do will not

Walden, or Life in the Woods,

Nakedness and Other Peoples:

Rethinking the Italian Renaissance Nude