A Sense of

Abundance

POI’m very happy to be speaking with you, Christine. I remember one of the first times we met was at [fashion designer] Tolu Coker’s show.

CCYes! We sat next to each other in the front row.

POThat was a really beautiful show. It touched upon themes like memory and diaspora—things we’ve since gone on to speak about in the context of our work and in relation to other people we admire like menswear designer Foday Dumbuya and [British African fashion brand] LABRUM. It’s always really lovely to reflect on those beginnings.

CCIt is. And I often think that those sorts of beginnings are not accidental. We’d been in dialog online for a while, and then there we were, next to each other, in this space where Tolu was presenting ideas around being in the diaspora, about movement, ancestors, fashion, visual art, and the meeting point between fashion and broader material culture. You’re absolutely right that these elements that we are both drawn to were all present in our very first meeting.

POThinking about your career, it’s been one of movement. Design, academia, curation, writing, art making—these fields inform each other deeply in your work in very intentional ways. How do you see your role evolving as you continue to shape these conversations around fashion, diaspora, and cultural memory?

CCCurator and public historian Aleema Gray’s term, “anti-disciplinarian,” comes to mind. I remember when I first heard her use it I thought, “Well, she’s speaking about me.” I’ve always felt that the different things I am drawn to are almost different tones within one creative voice, and it really depends on what I want to explore that dictates the way in which I explore it, whether it’s through writing, curation, design, or drawing.

POIt’s really nice being here in your office at the V&A. Looking around at all these objects, like this beautiful mannequin head, I can feel the breadth of your interests within this room.

CCThat’s interesting. I’ve not really thought about it in that way. There’s a drawing I did of my grandmother, and the mannequin head is one of the initial 3D-printed mock-ups of the one we used for Africa Fashion. For that exhibition, I devised the color palette for the set works and I’ve got the paint chips here. Then there’s a massive painting on calico rolled up in the corner. So, it sounds a little bit like a bric-a-brac store!

POI couldn’t help but look at the large “c” in the corner.

CCIt’s the “c” from the “Africa” of Africa Fashion. I was asked if I wanted anything as they were pulling the show apart and I said, “Can I have the ‘c’?” And I also have the “foreword” from the exhibition in the office, as a kind of reminder of how it all began, and where the team and I went, inserting many Black and African voices into a V&A show and into that central fashion space. I always feel that the fashion space here—located in the octagon court at the center of the museum—is a hub. The fashion exhibitions are always among the most visited.

POTell me more about the “foreword.”

CCTo have global Africa represented in the heart of the V&A for that ten-month period and to pass the mic to the designers, makers, and wearers that were included, was a collective feat, a collaborative process. We had an intergenerational focus group of people who self-identified as Black, as being of African heritage, and loving fashion. In one particular session, we were speaking to them about voice, because of course, the museum voice is not objective. It has never been neutral. So we wanted to put to them how they would like to experience the story we were writing about the African fashion scene. The woman sitting next to me in the splinter group was getting a little bit agitated and then she said, “Well, why can’t you just have a foreword like you have in a book, where you discuss the V&A’s past and its collecting of African textiles and fashion, or the absence of ? And you can talk about the fact that you yourself are of African heritage and that you have done the research, you’re leading the team. You also have lived experience, having worked in the industry for all this time.” And that’s where the idea of the “foreword” came from and it’s become really important to me because I think it captured our ethos for the show—this idea of personal stories, multiple voices, but centering Africa and Africanness. And as well as setting the tone for that show, it sets the tone for the work that I do here.

POIt’s coming up to your five-year anniversary at the museum, which is really exciting. I was reflecting on the historic nature of your appointment as senior curator of African and diaspora textiles and fashion. In an institution with such global significance, what were some of the biggest responsibilities you felt in taking on this role?

CCComing almost five years ago into this inaugural role and seeing how it has grown and how I’ve grown, has been quite remarkable. When I was offered the job, I remember there was a moment when I wasn’t sure. I didn’t really understand the shape of this potential new era because for my entire career to that point, I’d worked as a designer. I was used to being in a design studio, I had no laptop—I was there with paper, pencil, fabric, stand, color chips. That was one of the sticking points, strangely. I kept thinking, I don’t know if I can function in an office. But then I realized that I had to just bring my whole self to the role. And that maybe that was why they had chosen me—because I wasn’t a sit-in-front-of-a-laptop or go-down-into-the-archive-everyday person. I was bringing something else, another sensibility. A diasporic sensibility, having researched Black style, I might have called it then. But also, as a practitioner, I was bringing an artist’s soul or creative mind.

POAnd how did you find it?

CCBecause this was my first museum role, I had no real concept of how things were meant to be done. I joined during lockdown, and with that came freedom. I never really asked for the rule book on setting up a fashion exhibition here. It was more a case of, this is the story, and I think it needs to contain these voices.

With the encouragement and incredible support of the keeper of my department, Christopher Wilk, I was just finding my feet and finding my way. Then a couple of months in, the wonderful Elisabeth Murray came on board, and together they steered me in terms of what happens to create a museum exhibition. Then I drew from my lived experience, the creativity that comes from the designer’s eye. Your life experience makes you behave in a particular way. You’re drawing on various blueprints from past projects, and other industries, and I think all of that weaves together to make me the person I am in this role.

POAfrica Fashion offered a global audience a rich and multilayered history of African creativity. As the exhibition continues to tour internationally, what do you see as its lasting legacy?

CCIt has given people a glimpse of the expansive nature of African creativity, as well as the importance of fashion or fashioning the self across global African cultures. I’ve been amazed by the local reactions to the show, whether that’s in Brooklyn or in Melbourne. It’s now in Chicago [on view at the Field Museum through June 29, 2025]. I think it’s given people a sense of abundance—in opposition to the stereotype of Africa as a monolith and a place of lack. Africa Fashion has broken that narrative in a visual way. We were inspired by people who foreground abundance in other mediums. I’m thinking about publications like Afrotopia [2016, by Felwine Sarr], which was the go-to book for me and the team on this project.

And on an institutional level, it’s opened up possibilities at the V&A; it’s shown other ways of working are possible. I think it’s empowered people in various departments to include African creativity, whatever the topic. And that’s something I love to see—I want people to feel free to have a broader sweep when they do their research for whatever show.

POThat’s great to hear. I imagine this work inspires other institutions to engage on a deeper and more nuanced level with African fashion histories too.

CCAbsolutely, I’ve noticed the incredible work of some of the tour venues. For example, at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon, at the same time as Africa Fashion was on, they staged an exhibition called Black Artists of Oregon, which showed the city’s Black artists from mid-twentieth century to the present day. It echoed the timeline of Africa Fashion, but none of these artists had had their work shown in the museum before. So it was a real moment for the institution to show their commitment to celebrating creativity from artists of African heritage.

POYou’re part of the advisory committee for the Met’s 2025 exhibition tied to the Met Gala, which was cochaired by A$AP Rocky, Lewis Hamilton, Pharrell Williams, and Colman Domingo, with LeBron James as honorary chair alongside Anna Wintour. When I looked at that lineup, I thought about your interests in the Caribbean, and realized the majority of those cochairs have Caribbean heritage.

CCYou know, we’re kind of everywhere!

POWhat drew you to this project? What do you see as its most significant contribution to broader contemporary conversations on Black fashion?

CCI’ve known Monica L. Miller, the guest curator of the show, for many years. We work in the same area, thinking about fashioning Black masculinities. I knew about the project when it was just a seedling in the mind of Andrew Bolton. I was really delighted when Monica reached out and said that they would love for me to be part of the advisory group. I think that they’ve absolutely got the right person in charge. If anyone can take on this topic and do it well, it’s Monica. She’s adopted a collaborative approach, but the underpinning story is drawn from her book, Slaves to Fashion (2009).

It’s a topic that I’ve written about and thought about for the last twenty-five years. Before my PhD, it was the subject of my MA, which was inspired by my dad and his four brothers, who I always remember being nattily dressed. It’s also the topic of my latest book, which will be published by Bloomsbury next year.

POAnd how about the timing?

CCIt’s a significant moment for the Costume Institute to have a show like this. If we look at the history of the institute, there’s a fabulous photograph from the early 1970s of André Leon Talley with Diana Vreeland. I feel like we were always meant to be there as Black and African creators. So it feels right that a show like this is finally there. Rather like Africa Fashion, it’s been told from many Black and African perspectives, and that’s the only way to do it. It comes on the back of decades of research that Monica’s now fueling with new input: working with contemporary designers, setting fashion in a broader context of material culture and visual art. I’m so excited for it, because I think surely, there’s no turning back after a show like this.

POAbsolutely not.

CCMonica has a wonderful team with her. Kai Toussaint Marcel has been working at the Costume Institute as a research assistant for a number of years and prior to that, they were working for the Fashion and Race Database. Together, with the wider team, they bring a rootedness and soul to the project.

POI can feel your excitement and see how this exhibition intersects with your research over the years. There’s an inherent performance to how we dress—a knowing exchange between the wearer and the gaze of the world. You once told me about someone you’d interviewed who said the sensibility of dressing is a bit like dancing and I thought that was such a beautiful way to frame it.

CCYes, he was wonderful. His name was Hervin, and he was one of the Caribbean elders I interviewed for my PhD, which was inspired by the suits and clothing in general of the Windrush generation and their entry point into the world of British fashion. He was very adamant that dressing was like dancing—it was performative and you had to be good at both. He spoke about choosing a light blue shirt in a soft rayon fabric based on how it would move when he danced and how it would catch the light of a kerosene lamp. The title of my forthcoming book is Fashioning Black Masculinities, and it’s rooted in the idea “I know you’re looking at me”—“Society at large might treat me as though I’m invisible, but I know you can see me and I’m going to give you something to look at.” And so that’s really what Hervin was speaking about—how he flirts with the viewer.

POIt allows for that softness that I think often Black men don’t get to experience or share with the world. I wanted to briefly touch on the work of Tyler Mitchell, who is also involved in Superfine. He creates a striking visual language around Black joy and leisure and a kind of utopian image. How do you see his type of photography intersecting with the themes of the exhibition?

CCI think Superfine and Africa Fashion are as much about self-representation as they are about self-fashioning and the meeting point between those two things. In Mitchell’s work, the whole spectrum of Black masculinities is on view. There’s space for vulnerability, joy, and sensuality, as much as there is for sexuality. And I think all too often with Black men, these ideas are missing. That, for me, is the power of Mitchell’s work. I think that’s what you’ll find throughout Superfine and that’s what I try to bring to my work on Black masculinities, and it’s certainly something that’s going to be very present within my book.

POI suppose I really do see you as being a custodian of all of these narratives around African fashions, Caribbean aesthetics, and Black masculinities, and I feel that you’re shaping how future generations will engage with these histories. After all these years designing, writing, and curating, what is one thing you still want to explore that you haven’t yet pursued?

CCThe thing that I want to explore further, and I don’t even really want to say going back to, but is rediscovering what my own personal creative language is now. When I did my MA, I created the installation Arrivants (2016), which the curators of The Missing Thread [Somerset House, London, 2023–24] discovered and asked if they could include one of the pieces in their show. I felt very moved by that and I’ve often wondered what would happen if I returned to making. It’s something I feel drawn to do, almost called to, and I’m not interested if other people see it or not. After my MA, I couldn’t really produce my own work. I’d lost my father and other things were happening in my life that prevented me. So now I’ve been nurturing my growing drawing practice and my desire to play with fabrics. In the next phase of my life, I want to really honor the creative spirit that lives within me. I’ve become the person that spotlights other people, that encourages other people. I’m quietly team orientated.

POYou’re an advocate.

CCYeah, I’m very much the person who will say, “Come on, let’s do this together.” And I feel I’m at a point in my life where I want to see how I can use my own creativity for others. I think there’s an element of wanting to see where my pencil takes me.