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https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/DISCERN-J 

 

ISSN 2184-6995 

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 

International License. 

 

  

 

 
 

Drum magazine project: A decolonial shift in teaching fashion theory  
and history 

 
Khaya Mchunu, Kiara Gounder 
 

Published online: May 2024 

 
To cite this article:  

Mchunu, K., & Gounder, K. (2024). Drum magazine project: A decolonial shift in teaching fashion theory  
and history. Discern: International Journal of Design for Social Change, Sustainable Innovation and 

Entrepreneurship, 5(1), 88-101. 

 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 



 

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Drum magazine project: A decolonial shift in teaching fashion theory  
and history 
 
Khaya Mchunua, Kiara Gounderb  

 
aDepartment of Fashion, Faculty of Art, Design, and Architecture, University of Johannesburg. khayam@uj.ac.za. 
bDepartment of Fashion and Textiles, Faculty of Arts and Design, Durban University of Technology. 

kiarag@dut.ac.za. 
 

Abstract 

The Drum Magazine Project is a cross-institutional teaching and research project designed to explore  

a decolonial approach to teaching fashion theory and history. The project used the 1950s and 1960s 

archives of Drum magazine, found at Bailey’s African History Archives (BAHA) in Johannesburg, South 

Africa. Fashion was considered by looking at South Africa’s political, social, and cultural landscape during 

the 1950s and 1960s. Students wrote biographical essays based on individuals who, despite having been 

featured in Drum magazine, were not widely documented in South Africa. Essay writing was followed by 

developing magazine covers designed to capture themes related to these individuals. The text- and visual-

based modes enabled students to deploy historical media archives using fashion and dress to communicate 

narratives of alternative fashion histories and imaginaries. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to 

analyse students’ impressions of the magazine, the individuals they researched and the overall project.  

In some instances, students expressed the view that incorporating this part of South African history into 

fashion curricula can be uncomfortable but that addressing history in its fullness is necessary to achieve 

decolonial imperatives and shifts. For these reasons, this study contributes to the decolonial fashion 

discourse by showing how infusing context-specific examples in teaching and learning offers options for 

renewing, stretching, and decentring the teaching of fashion theory and history. 

 

Keywords: Decolonial fashion discourse, Drum magazine, Fashion history, Fashion theory 

 

Fashion curricula and the decolonial fashion discourse: A reflexive introduction 

What do we, fashion scholars and lecturers of fashion theory and history, owe current students in the 

fashion education system? Does renewing, stretching and decentring our understanding of fashion in the 

African context play a role in teaching fashion theory and history? Fanon (1952/2008) concludes his book, 

Black Skin White Masks, with a final prayer: ‘O my body, make of me always a man who questions!’  

(p. 181). Our self-imposed questions are layered with the tone of this simple yet poignant prayer. As taught 

to us, the content of fashion theory and history was informative but largely encompassed examples far 

removed from our context. The exclusion of locally situated particularities, implicitly and explicitly, situates 

Africa as devoid of any fashion or dress history. By implication, silencing this history from fashion education 

devalues its significance and the potential it holds in designing context-specific curricula. Slade and Jansen 

(2020) point out that reconstructing an understanding of fashion entails ‘recursively revis[ing] our 

understandings and our histories one piece at a time’ (p. 813). Assuming our transitional position (from 

students to lecturers), do we then teach fashion as we were taught, supporting the hegemonic power  

of Euro-Americanism? Or do we shift this hegemony by expanding teaching that incorporates context-

specific examples? 

 



 

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We designed a cross-institutional teaching and research project, the Drum magazine project, to renew 

fashion curricula in a manner that better values South African history. The Drum magazine project was  

a decolonial exercise to introduce an element of context-specificity in our teaching. The student project 

was implemented in two fashion departments of two universities based in Durban and Johannesburg. For 

clarity on nomenclature, as opposed to the widely used terms ‘fashion colleges’ or ‘fashion schools’, both 

universities discussed in this article refer to their fashion divisions as ‘departments’. We remain true to this 

usage and apply the term ‘fashion departments’ throughout this article. 

 

As a student project of the fashion programme, it was incorporated into fashion theory and history 

modules. The project included Drum magazine content as the tools through which fashion theory and 

history might be taught in the context of South African fashion education. Some questions guided our 

project development process. These were: Does Drum magazine, with its history in South African visual 

culture, belong to the corpus of fashion curricula? If Drum magazine does belong to the curricula, how 

might it, through some of its content, renew, stretch and decentre how fashion theory and history  

are taught? 

 

Revaluing and incorporating Drum magazine content involved sourcing alternative archives and renewing 

fashion imaginaries to show the plurality of epistemologies in the university space. Grosfoguel (2013) 

proposes the need to ‘bring epistemic diversity to the canon of thought to create a pluri-verse of meanings 

and concepts’ (p. 89). We viewed revaluing and incorporating Drum content as one way of decolonising 

university knowledge structures. This article focuses on how we renewed, stretched and decentred our 

teaching of fashion history and theory. Our work contributes to the decolonial fashion discourse and shows 

how context specificity in fashion education might contribute to attaining decolonial imperatives and shifts. 

 

Theorising the decolonial fashion discourse 

We begin with a comprehensive view of the concept to start a discussion about decoloniality, specifically  

in fashion. We understand decoloniality to entail confronting and opposing the coloniality of knowledge 

creation being exerted by the Western canon and its inferiorising of non-Western societies’ ways of being, 

doing and knowledge creation (Adams et al., 2018; Grosfoguel, 2013; Maldonado-Torres, 2007). To 

confront and oppose such practices, Maldonado-Torres (2007) suggested a decolonial turn, which is about 

‘making visible the invisible and about analysing the mechanisms that produce such invisibility or distorted 

visibility in light of a large stock of ideas’ (p. p. 261” 

 

Decoloniality has recently attracted attention in the fashion discipline through specially themed journal 

issues, conferences and research projects. Examples include the International Journal of Fashion Studies 

(Cheang et al., 2022), Design and Culture (Schultz et al., 2018), and Fashion Theory (Slade & Jansen, 2020). 

The 2017 Design Education Forum of Southern Africa conference was themed ‘Decolonise!’ (Giloi & Botes, 

2017) in response to South Africa’s 2015 student protests (Fees Must Fall and Rhodes Must Fall). 

ZoneModa organised a conference in 2023 under the theme ‘Fashion in 3D: Decolonizing, Deconstructing 

and Decentring’. UAL’s London College of Fashion has been conducting a research project called 

‘Decolonising Fashion and Textiles’ led by Francesco Mazzarella. With an ever-expanding focus on the 

notion of fashion, Jansen (2020) stated that the decolonial fashion discourse framework: 

 

“[P]roposes a radical redefinition of fashion by delinking it from modernity—the very core of its 

constitution—and therefore from coloniality by redefining it as a multitude of possibilities—in and 



 

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outside of modernity—rather than a normative framework falsely claiming universality. It critiques 

the denial and erasure of a diversity of ways to fashioning the body due to unequal global power 

relations based on modern-colonial order, the Euro–American canon of normativity and the 

exploitation and abuse of culture, human life and Earth” (p. 817) 

 

While the word decoloniality may not have been included in prior studies, the discourse on non-European 

fashion systems has been ongoing for years within fashion studies; see Mustafa (2001), Rabine (2002), 

Allman (2004), Gott and Loughran (2010), and Rovine (2015). Nevertheless, the inclusion of decoloniality in 

fashion discourse has seen a significant growth in diversifying and showing how fashion is understood. 

 

Decoloniality, the fashion curriculum and fashion history are the focus of studies by Gaugele and Titton 

(2019), Cheang and Suterwalla (2020) and Ahmed (2022). Cheang and Suterwalla (2020) and Ahmed (2022) 

warn against superficially revisiting and replacing fashion students’ reading lists as a decolonial educational 

practice. Cheang and Suterwalla (2020) instead promote ‘making the space for experimentation and 

recognising the emotional costs involved in new developments are all part of designing decolonial 

pedagogies, in a continuous rethinking of what knowledge is and what learning looks like’ (p. 881).  

In contrast, Ahmed (2022, pp. 11-12) writes about imagining and undertaking new non-European teaching 

and learning methods that engage with local knowledge. Gaugele and Titton (2019) observe the need for  

a ‘revision of fashion history and globalisation of fashion and dress histories, inspired by postcolonialism 

and world history’ (p. 120. 

 

Drum magazine has enjoyed much attention as representative of a particular era in South Africa. Its pages 

have visually and textually recorded dress and fashion styles in the South African context. Nevertheless, 

from our search, Drum magazine has largely been excluded from local fashion curricula. Fashion history 

forms part of fashion education; therefore, it is crucial to diversify the telling of fashion history, and the 

incorporation of Drum magazine in our study played this role. Furthermore, appreciating and valorising 

Drum magazine and its place in South Africa develops and renews pedagogical practices using locally 

relevant resources. 

 

What is Drum magazine? 

Drum magazine was founded by Robert Crisp and Jim Bailey and first published in March 1951 as African 

Drum. It emerged just three years after the inception of administrative apartheid. In its earlier issues, Drum 

had a low circulation and failed to attract a sizeable black readership. The reason for the failure was 

because African Drum, at the time, presented the African as ‘rural, tribal, Edenic, unspoiled, exotic’ 

(Guldimann, 2019, p. 261), a white person’s fantasy of what Africa was – the kind of material the targeted 

black urban reader was uninterested in. The magazine was transformed after the newly appointed editor-

in-chief, Anthony Sampson, and Henry ‘Mr. Drum’ Nxumalo researched a potential Drum reader and their 

attempt to determine the sort of material that that individual might be interested in reading. Their research 

drastically changed the look, image, approach and subsequently, name of the publication – from African 

Drum to simply Drum. 

 

Fleming and Falola (2005) wrote that the magazine went from its paternalistic writing and printing of 

‘”know yourself” stories to articles on crime syndicates, American styled jazz music, shebeen life, and other 

happenings in Cape Town, Durban and on the Reef’ (pp. 136-137). Its coverage and exposé of specific issues 

were of interest to its readership, which saw a significant increase in circulation. So large was its circulation 



 

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that Drum started publishing East and West African issues distributed to Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, 

Uganda, Tanganyika and the Central African Federation. By 1956, Drum had become the largest-selling 

magazine on the continent. 

 

The magazine’s photography of cover girls was another contributing factor that increased its visibility, 

popularity and consumption. Nigerian and Ghanaian readers were unfamiliar with Sophiatown and District 

Six (reported about in the magazine) and consumed Drum primarily ‘to find out about South African news 

and to gawk at the magazine’s cover girls’ (Fleming & Falola, 2005, p. 141). The cover imagery was used to 

articulate and express black urban cosmopolitanism. Through images, the urban black population fashioned 

an identity and a worldview ‘contrary to that envisioned for them by either the white government or the 

older black elite’ (Allen, 2008, p. 22). 

 

With its rich history, Drum has served as a fount of inspiration in South African visual culture. The early 

2000s saw the emergence of some fashion designers who contributed to the development of South Africa’s 

fashion industry. Amongst these is the lifestyle brand Stoned Cherrie, established in 2000. In 2001, the 

brand collaborated with Bailey’s African History Archives (BAHA), the digital and physical space that houses 

thirty years of Drum magazine’s archives, when the magazine was under Bailey’s control. The collaboration 

saw what would emerge as Stoned Cherrie’s classic item, the Drum t-shirt, which incorporated some iconic 

covers. Drum covers continue to emerge in visual culture. In 2021, Mercy Thokozane Minah, a 

multidisciplinary artist, re-imagined and re-interpreted some Drum covers by re-painting them as 

commentary about queer existence and body positivity. These two examples indicate how Drum magazine 

continues to be used in the arts and, by extension, fashion to communicate social issues. It is a result of 

such a history and background that we re-inscribed Drum into the public imagination by infusing it in our 

modules as a resource to renew, stretch and decentre our teaching of fashion history and theory. 

 

Research context 

Our methods entailed visual and textual analysis of 1950s and 1960s Drum magazine content. These were 

accessed from those kept at BAHA in Johannesburg. To ensure compliance with research ethics, we sought 

ethical clearance for the study from our respective institutions. Once approved, we provided detailed 

explanations of the study to the students through information letters with accompanying consent forms for 

signing. By agreeing, the students consented to attend lectures, write essays, develop a magazine cover and 

participate in semi-structured interviews. 

 

The Drum magazine project started with a two-part lecture, focusing first on South Africa’s 1950s and 

1960s social and political environment through Drum reports that were linked to certain apartheid 

legislation. The second part of the lecture focused on fashion between the 1950s and 1960s as featured in 

the Drum archives. The students were also introduced to two seminal readings: Ford’s (2015) Liberated 

Threads: Black Women, Style and the Global Politics of Soul and Tulloch’s (2016) The Birth of Cool: Style 

Narratives of the African Diaspora. An argument that could be levelled against the project is its use of two 

seminal readings penned by fashion writers from other locales. We chose these readings because they 

speak directly to Drum, and we appreciated how the texts linked the magazine to fashion. Showing the 

value of diasporic discourse for African studies, in this instance, African fashion and dress history. Ford 

(2015) wrote that “Drum … was adamant about making the style accessible to ordinary people. This 

emphasis on democratising fashion demonstrates how central issues of social consciousness and black 

liberation were to the politics of style’ (p. 166). 



 

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Following the lecture, the students were required to work in groups and use an allocated folder with  

a Drum archival image and readings related to an individual featured in Drum magazine during the 1950s 

and 1960s. Using the folder content, the students wrote a biographical essay about their allocated 

individual. Lindsay (2017) sees potential in biographies to understand history. Thus, our inclusion of 

biographical essays introduced a focus on an individual to understand a portion of South African history 

through an individual. 

 

The information gleaned from the essay-writing exercise was used to style and visually communicate  

a contemporary look through a re-imagined Drum magazine cover. The cover needed to be informed by (a) 

students’ findings about their allocated individual and (b) the Drum magazine photograph of that individual 

included in their folders. Each magazine cover needed to be accompanied by a design statement through 

which the students explained the concept behind it. To support this task, we prepared a secondary folder 

with a resource package that included a magazine cover template, specially selected fonts and page 

texturing images in case students wanted to age the final photograph by giving it a nostalgic effect akin to 

1950s and 1960s Drum covers. We then created an instructional video in which we demonstrated applying 

these functions using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. In some instances, the students used 

themselves as models; in other cases, they asked friends and family members to model. The biographical 

essays and magazine covers were then publicly exhibited at university galleries in both Johannesburg  

and Durban. 

 

Biographical essays as narratives of alternative histories and fashion imaginaries 

Cheang and Suterwalla (2020) wrote about deepening teachers’ and students’ intellectual curiosity and 

manifesting ‘greater cultural sensitivity to redress the many social inequalities embedded in histories’  

(p. 881). Inequalities manifest when there is an imbalance in whose history gets told. We concur with de 

Greef (2020, p. 914), who propounded filling the public imagination by ‘writing of forgotten and disavowed’ 

histories. We understand the writing of disavowed histories to be about finding alternative archives, 

implemented as a critical expansion of imaginaries in the fashion context (Gaugele & Titton, 2019, p. 25). 

Before viewing the archives, we associated Drum magazine with individuals like jazz vocalists Miriam 

Makeba and Dolly Rathebe, as well as activist Steve Biko. Their photographs were featured in iconic Drum 

covers and some well-known issues. Indeed, we showed the students some of these celebrated imageries. 

These individuals and their contributions to South Africa remain inscribed in public memory. Although we 

were careful not to take away from the students’ contributions, we promoted a deliberate exercise of 

expanding the number of individuals with whom Drum magazine may be affiliated. 

 

Lindsay (2017) argued that ‘history is made by a wider range of people than literate elites, and that 

historical forces and ordinary people act reciprocally on one another’ (p. 15). Therefore, we introduced the 

students to individuals whose stories and lives had not been widely captured and circulated, yet whose 

participation had some impact on South African society. These individuals included Dottie Tiyo, Doreen 

Madombo, Patricia Jobodwana, Viccie ‘Busi’ Mhlongo, Amaranee Naidoo, Constance Molefe, Khabi 

Mngoma, Sewsunker Sewgolam, Sonny Pillay, Gertie Williams, Jean Hart and Hazel Futa. These individuals 

were associated with music (Mhlongo, Masuka, Mngoma, Pillay and Hart), sports (Molefe, Naidoo and 

Sewgolam), film (Futa, Tiyo and Madombo), education (Jobodwana) and the queer community (Williams). 

While Sewgolam, Mngoma, Dorothy Masuka and Williams have been the subjects of a biography, a PhD 

study, journal articles and a book chapter, respectively, the lives of the rest were minimally documented, 



 

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often in texts that focused on a different subject altogether. Furthermore, where the lives of these 

individuals were recorded, the information was excerpted from Drum magazine (i.e., Jobodwana, Williams 

and Molefe), meaning that there was a regurgitation of information. 

 

Despite this minimal information, some students showed creativity, inventiveness and a willingness to learn 

about their subjects. For instance, because of her romantic relationship with Can Themba and the attention 

this relationship stirred in 1950s South Africa, the student group that wrote Hart’s essay relied on a 

scholarly article about Themba and his short story, Crepuscule, to find information on Hart. Set in 1950s 

Sophiatown, Crepuscule tells the story of a relationship between a black man and white woman. The short 

story was included in Themba’s book, The Will to Die (1972). Still unsatisfied with the information they 

found, the group read this article closely, even going through the reference list. The reference list led them 

to Hart’s interview posted on YouTube. The discovery of the interview provided the students with much-

needed information, which resulted in a multi-themed essay. 

 

Hart’s tweed skirt and polo-neck were analysed through the frame of the kofifi style. Kofifi is another name 

for Sophiatown, and when linked with the word style, it pays homage to fashion that echoes the style 

heritage associated with 1950s Sophiatown. The students’ writing included topics on the African American 

jazz movement, the 1950s multiculturalism of Sophiatown and the criminalisation of interracial 

relationships in South Africa at the time. The linkages in the students’ essays show that ‘one cannot capture 

the whole past, but we have access to remnants of it held in archives’ (Tulloch, 2016, p. 179). 

 

Archives can, however, also bring forth troubling questions. The information available on some individuals 

only captured celebratory moments published in Drum magazine. The students had remaining nagging 

questions about their assigned individuals since they could not find further information on their subjects. 

These included the absence of events in their lives after Drum’s publication. Eismann (2019, p. 66) pointed 

out that postcolonial archives disturb the very notion of the archive by opening questions of ‘what 

constitutes an archive? What is in it? Who put it there?’. This quality of postcolonial archives in the context 

of the Drum Magazine Project was the students’ self-imposed question of ‘What happened to her?’ raised 

while writing Jobodwana’s essay. The frustration continued to be articulated in the essay’s mood, an 

excerpt from which we present below: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image 1: Screenshot of students’ essay on Patricia Jobodwana. Credit: K. Mchunu. 

 

One of the students in this group expressed frustration in the interview:  

“She was the first black woman undergraduate student at Fort Hare doing medicine. I just wished 

that I had more information on her because she sounds like a very important woman. I just wish, 



 

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maybe, her children. I just want a little bit more”. (9 September 2022, interview)  

 

The students’ analysis of Jobodwana through the lens of the scientific laboratory coat and its symbolic 

meaning led them to study her and the participation of other black girls and women in STEM fields (i.e. 

Esther Okade). 

 

The student-penned Sewgolam essay used his wearing of the golfing uniform to present a complex and 

nuanced essay that married topics of poverty, oppression, lack of access, assimilation, culture and 

achievement. The discovery of his death in his early 40s as a pauper with a non-existent golfing career left 

the students disturbed. However, this group refused to leave Sewgolam’s life story with a sad ending. The 

Johannesburg-based student group searched on social media platforms and discovered Rajen Sewgolam, 

Sewsunker Sewgolam’s son, who got into and continues playing golf, a sport his father introduced to him. 

The Durban-based student group gained access to and used the Papwa Sewgolum Golf Course in Durban  

as a site to photograph their magazine cover as a homage to Sewgolam (discussed later in the article). 

 

These instances demonstrate how life is recorded and can sometimes destabilise expectations and the 

linearity of life’s beginning and end. Drum magazine did not promise to record Jobodwana’s, Sewgolam’s  

or any other individuals’ lives in this way. However, we understand students’ inclusion of Oskade and 

Sewgolam in their writings as an attempt to show that time ‘is a fluid concept, and the terms past, present 

and future are not necessarily linear’ (Eismann, 2020, p. 68). These inclusions also indicate making linkages 

to answer questions that archives sometimes fail to answer. 

 

There were moments when Drum magazine archives proved to be frustrating and presented questions that 

held the potential to make students angry at the apartheid regime and its design of a system and 

conditions that rendered black identities as belonging to a doomed future. Writing about the Afrofuturistic 

universe, Eismann (2019,) states that it is a self-fashioned universe that entails ‘alternative histories, 

geographies, and identities, members of the African diaspora imagine themselves … unbound by the chains 

of slavery and racism’ (pp. 67-68). The students excavated stories from the past and analysed the clothing 

by considering the contexts in which these garbs were worn. Through this method, they crafted alternative 

imaginaries that saw their subjects beyond the bounds of apartheid. 

 

The essay-writing exercise showed a text-based technique of narrating visibility, alternative imaginaries, 

and futurity and joining the decolonial fashion discourse through teaching and learning. The second part of 

the project showed the marrying of text-based and visual types – the biography-informed magazine covers. 

 

Imaging alternative fashion histories and imaginaries: Student magazine covers 

Tulloch (2016) views fashion photography as a method to communicate ideas, make social commentary 

and tell stories, further adding that ‘whether that [story] is truth or fiction, nonetheless there is an attempt 

to make a point’ (pp. 178-179). This idea about fashion photography was informative for the project since 

the students needed to communicate a message through imaging. Gaugele and Titton (2019) assert that 

‘fashion media—from fashion magazines to blogs—are important hubs for the dissemination of 

representations and collective narratives on gender, race, class, body, identity, and sexuality; therefore, 

they carry the potential for a decolonising transformation from within the fashion system’ (p. 27). These 

magazine covers emphasised the point of teaching fashion theory and history through imaging alternative 

histories and fashion imaginaries. 



 

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Image 2: Hazel Futa-informed students’ photograph. Photographer: RemyShoots (2022). 

 

Students’ creativity, demonstrated during the essay writing, was also shown in the magazine covers.  

For example, the Hazel Futa-informed photograph (Image 2) used ballet elements to capture delicate 

femininities the group believed Futa embodied. Their tutu-like ballet skirt was made of downloaded 1950s 

and 1960s Drum magazine covers the group printed in black and white, rolled up to form a swirling curl on 

the hem and tucked into an elasticated waistband. 

 

A commonality across many of the students’ covers was a strong leaning toward the symbolic meaning  

of every element in a photograph. Examples include the Constance Molefe- and Sewsunker Sewgolum-

informed photographs. 

 

The Constance Molefe-informed photograph (Image 3) was taken in one of the sports fields of the 

Johannesburg-based university. The students were drawn to Molefe’s white tennis attire and her plaited 

hair, which they understood as the Benny and Betty hairstyle. Benny and Betty is a type of plait hairstyle 

done mainly by black girls during the apartheid period. The name of the hairstyle derives from a book of the 

same title, particularly its main characters. The book was introduced as an English-learning text as part of 

Bantu education. Some people continue doing the hairstyle in contemporary times. Students read Molefe’s 

firm grip on her tennis racket and the smile behind it as symbolic of the: 

 

“[H]ope that she had during the era that she was in. With reference to the oppression that hindered 

many dreams in the 50s and 60s, the model stands behind a rusty chain-link fence. Although she is 

behind this fence, which obscures her view of the future, she maintains a cheerful smile and firmly 

holds onto her tennis racket. In our opinion, the firm grip that she has on the racket speaks to how 

Constance held onto her dreams.” (Student design statement, 2022) 

 



 

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Image 3: Constance Molefe-informed students’ photograph. Photographer, Nawa, L. (2022). 

 

The golf ball (made from crumpled paper), flower petals, green field and black clothes were well-

considered elements in the Sewgolam-informed photograph (Image 4). The golf ball referenced a makeshift 

golf club that Sewgolam’s father made for him growing up. The confetti-style flower petals scattered on the 

grass symbolise the peak of his golfing career and referenced an event in which Sewgolam wore a garland 

around his neck to celebrate after winning the Dutch Open (a story covered in Drum magazine). Similarly, 

their inclusion of the green field has literal and figurative meanings. The literal connotation is the golf 

course’s grass field, which is also ‘a metaphorical grass being greener on the other side’ (Student design 

statement, 2022). 

 

The Durban-based Sewgolam group also highlighted his golfing career through their magazine cover 

focusing on racial tensions (Image 5). The students’ styling choices and magazine cover creative direction 

are a homage to the image of Sewgolam on the golf course with his ‘entourage’. The inclusion of the title 

‘”There goes the neighbourhood” says white residents’ is a reference to post-apartheid societal views of 

young men of colour. The group explained the significance of the cover story: 

 

“’There goes the neighbourhood.’ What does this mean? This is an exclamation after a negative 

change affects someone’s neighbourhood, such as someone undesirable moving in (Privette 2021).  

To the golfing community at the time, we can assume that he [Sewgolum] was seen as someone 

‘undesirable’ moving into this prestigious sport, in his story he was looked down upon due to the 

colour of his skin.” (Student design statement, 2022) 



 

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Images 4 and 5: Sewsunker’ Papwa’ Sewgolum-informed students’ photographs. Photographers from left: 

Pondo, Y. (2022) and Moolman, J. (2022). 

 

In a 1950s Drum photograph of Sonny Pillay, he wears a white shirt and cardigan shot with his slightly 

angled face. Students took the white shirt element worn underneath a denim jacket to ‘strongly mimic the 

focal point of the referenced photograph and bring out the same soft and clean aesthetic’ (Student design 

statement, 2022). The students used their findings about Pillay’s immigration, first to the UK and later to 

the USA, to inform the inclusion of the face mask in their magazine cover (Image 6). The group wrote that: 

 

“ ...the mask is muted and hidden even though in the foreground, which resembles how Sonny 

appears facially concealed right in front of the viewer. This can be seen as a commentary on how Mr 

Pillay, as a black artist, was censored by the apartheid regime. Drum magazine deserves its critical 

acclamation for being able to promote silenced creatives and untold stories ...” (Student design 

statement, 2022) 

 

A limited and limiting engagement with Drum magazine archives, such as reliance on Google searches 

solely, could have resulted in teaching fashion theory and history through the widely circulated narrative  

of Sophiatown and its kofifi style. Such reliance could have restricted the magazine’s wide range of stories. 

Avoiding teaching solely through the Sophiatown canon allowed for the ‘recognition of a plurality of 

epistemologies concerning fashioning the body [and] to revalue a diversity that has been rendered 

invisible, erased, discriminated and de-futured’ (Jansen, 2020, p. 817). We ultimately argue that accessing 

these wide-ranging stories allowed us to renew, stretch, and decentre fashion education. 



 

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Image 6: Sonny Pillay -informed students’ photograph. Photographer, Makubele, H. (2022). 

 

The students’ interpretations of Drum’s historical photographs ranged from queer politics, diverse forms of 

femininities and expressions of black excellence, among others, showing the students’ expanding narratives 

that formed new meanings. Additionally, their exploration of these themes coincided, to some extent, with 

the vast scale and plurality of this historically significant magazine in covering a diverse range of individuals. 

The records were sometimes fragmented, and their residues led to more questions than answers. However, 

the students formed alternative histories and imaginaries through imagination, creativity, writing and 

imaging.  

 

Conclusion 

We asked ourselves whether Drum magazine, with its history in South African visual culture, belongs to the 

corpus of fashion curricula. We recognise that Drum magazine may not be considered a fashion magazine 

by global standards, but it is essential to question the context in which we focused on Drum. Decoloniality 

values ‘a multitude of possibilities’ (Jansen, 2020, p. 817) and by implication appreciates different 

perspectives. In this sense, Drum magazine’s significant role in South African visual culture and its 

contribution to existing knowledge in this field is undeniable. The Drum magazine project was a space to 

celebrate and validate this contribution by the magazine. Given that we considered fashion as context-

sensitive and -specific, this project also expanded and challenged notions of what can be considered  

a fashion magazine. 

 

Fanon (1952/2008) wrote that ‘every human problem must be considered from the standpoint of time. 

Ideally, the present will always contribute to the building of the future. And this future is not the future of 

the cosmos but rather the future of my century, my country, my existence’ (pp. 5-6). While Fanon’s quote  

is about time, it also addresses aspects of identity and context. This statement urges us to go back to 

questions of what we think we owe fashion students existing in the fashion education system and our 

endeavour to renew and decentre the teaching of fashion theory and history. As South African fashion 

lecturers, we cannot speak to another geography or context. We aimed to speak to our specific reality and 

expand teaching by using context-specific resources. As we questioned whether we should teach fashion as 

we were taught, we grappled with how to view the future of fashion education. We cannot project how we 

see the future of teaching fashion theory and history, but we know that we cannot wait for the future to 

solve its problems. 



 

100 

 

 

We acknowledge that this project had its limitations and did not cover the comprehensive fashion history 

of South Africa. Expanding beyond the 1950s and 1960s as periods can be considered for future research, 

with a more fashion-focused approach as an alternative to the biographical lens that this project adopted. 

We also reflected on the students’ question of ‘What happened to her?’ and how it speaks to the limitation 

of relying on only one archival source like Drum magazine. South Africa’s past events and, by extension, its 

fashion histories, have been covered in multiple sources. To ease the answering of such questions, future 

studies could look at the combined use of multiple archival resources to record people’s histories as 

broadly as possible. 

 

The scope of the decolonial fashion discourse is too large to be fulfilled by an undergraduate assignment 

like the Drum magazine project. However, if we are subsumed and intimidated by the scope of an extensive 

exercise, contributions (no matter how large or small) to the process will never be recorded or started.  

If the decolonial imperatives and shifts are to be seriously addressed, our incorporation of archives and 

alternative histories, as chronicled in Drum magazine, addressed these imperatives in the now. Our task 

was to join the decolonial fashion discourse, and we believed in the role of education in this conversation. 

Nevertheless, the journey in decoloniality and fashion is ongoing. As we conclude this first phase of the 

Drum magazine project, we enter a new one with a set of new questions expressed in a Fanonian way. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

101 

 

References 
Adams, G., Estrada-Villalta, S., Gómez-Ordóñez, L. H. (2018). The modernity/coloniality of being: Hegemonic 

psychology as intercultural relations. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 62, 13-22. 

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2017.06.006 
Ahmed, T. (2022). Towards a decolonial feminist fashion design reading list. Art Libraries Journal, 47(1), 9-13. 

https://doi.org/10.1017/alj.2021.26  

Allen, L. (2008). Music, film, and gangsters in the Sophiatown imaginary: Featuring Dolly Rathebe. Scrutiny2: Issues in 

English Studies in Southern Africa, 9(1), 19-34. https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC101008 

Allman, J. (Ed.). (2004). Fashioning Africa: Power and the politics of dress. Indiana University Press. 
Cheang, S., & Suterwalla, S. (2020). Decolonising the curriculum? Transformation, emotion, and positionality in 

teaching. Fashion Theory, 24(6), 879-900. https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2020.1800989 

Cheang, S., Rabine, L., & Sandhu, A. (2022). Decolonising fashion studies. International Journal of Fashion Studies, 9(2), 

247-255. https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00070_2 

de Greef, E. (2020). Curating fashion as decolonial practice: Ndwalane’s mblaselo and a politics of remembering. 
Fashion Theory, 24(6), 901-920. https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2020.1800990 

Eismann, S. (2019). Afrofuturism as a strategy for decolonising the global fashion archive. In E. Gaugele and M. Titton 

(Eds.), Fashion and postcolonial critique (pp. 64-73). Sternberg Press. 

https://doi.org/10.21937/9783956794650.4 

Fanon, F. (2008). Black skin, white masks. Pluto Press. (Original work published 1952). 

Fleming, T. & Falola, T. (2005). Africa’s media empire: Drum’s expansion to Nigeria. History in Africa, 32, 133-164. 
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20065738 

Ford, TC. (2015). Liberated threads: Black women, style, and the global politics of soul. University of North  

Carolina Press. 

Gaugele, E., & Titton, M. (Eds.). (2019). Fashion and postcolonial critique. Sternberg Press. 

Giloi, S., & Botes, H. (Eds.). (2017). #Decolonise: Design educators reflecting on the call for the decolonising of 

education. Proceedings of the 14th national design education conference of the design education forum of 

Southern Africa. Design Education Forum of Southern Africa. https://tinyurl.com/hwthmz3u 

Gott, S., & Loughran, K. (2010). Contemporary African dress. Indiana University Press. 

Grosfoguel, R. (2013). The structure of knowledge in westernised universities: Epistemic racism/sexism and the four 

genocides/epistemicides of the long 16th century. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-
Knowledge, 11(1), 73-90. https://tinyurl.com/bdznhp7k 

Guldimann, C. (2019). Against the law: Arthur Maimane’s pioneering hard-boiled black detective fiction in Drum 

magazine. Safundi, 20(3), 259-276. https://tinyurl.com/msm7t9cs   

Jansen, M. A. (2020). Fashion and the phantasmagoria of modernity: An introduction to decolonial fashion discourse. 

Fashion Theory, 24(6), 815-836. https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2020.1802098 

Lindsay, L. A. (2017). Biography in African history. History in Africa, 44, 11-26. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/665277 

Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On the coloniality of being: Contributions to the development of a concept. Cultural 

Studies, 21(2-3), 240-270. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162548 

Mustafa, H. (2001). Ruins and spectacles: Fashion and city life in contemporary Senegal. NKA: Journal of Contemporary 

African Art, 15, 47-53. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/422657 

Rabine, L. (2002). The global circulation of African fashion. Berg. 

Rovine, V. (2015). African fashion, global style histories, innovations, and ideas you can wear. Indiana University Press. 

Schultz, T., Danah, A., Ansari, A., Canlı, E., Keshavarz, M., Kiem, M., de O. Martins, L. P., & Vieira de Oliveira, P. J. S. V. 

(2018). Decolonizing design: Editors’ introduction. Design and Culture, 10(1), 1-6. 

https://tinyurl.com/5ddaaas4  

Slade, T., & Jansen, M. A. (2020). Letter from the editors: Decoloniality and fashion. Fashion Theory, 24(6), 809-814. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2020.1800983 

Themba, C. (1972). The will to die. Heinemann. 

Tulloch, C. (1998). “Out of many, one people”: The relativity of dress, race and ethnicity to Jamaica, 1880–1907. 

Fashion Theory, 2(4), 359-382. https://doi.org/10.2752/136270498779476154 

Tulloch, C. (2016). The birth of cool: Style narratives of the African diaspora. Bloomsbury. 

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2017.06.006
https://doi.org/10.1017/alj.2021.26
https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC101008
https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2020.1800989
https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00070_2
https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2020.1800990
https://doi.org/10.21937/9783956794650.4
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20065738
https://tinyurl.com/hwthmz3u
https://tinyurl.com/bdznhp7k
https://tinyurl.com/msm7t9cs
https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2020.1802098
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/665277
https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162548
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/422657
https://tinyurl.com/5ddaaas4
https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2020.1800983
https://doi.org/10.2752/136270498779476154

	https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/DISCERN-J
	ISSN 2184-6995
	This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
	Drum magazine project: A decolonial shift in teaching fashion theory  and history
	Khaya Mchunu, Kiara Gounder
	Published online: May 2024
	To cite this article:  Mchunu, K., & Gounder, K. (2024). Drum magazine project: A decolonial shift in teaching fashion theory  and history. Discern: International Journal of Design for Social Change, Sustainable Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 5(1), ...
	Drum magazine project: A decolonial shift in teaching fashion theory  and history
	Khaya Mchunua, Kiara Gounderb
	aDepartment of Fashion, Faculty of Art, Design, and Architecture, University of Johannesburg. khayam@uj.ac.za.
	bDepartment of Fashion and Textiles, Faculty of Arts and Design, Durban University of Technology. kiarag@dut.ac.za.
	Abstract
	The Drum Magazine Project is a cross-institutional teaching and research project designed to explore  a decolonial approach to teaching fashion theory and history. The project used the 1950s and 1960s archives of Drum magazine, found at Bailey’s Afric...
	Keywords: Decolonial fashion discourse, Drum magazine, Fashion history, Fashion theory
	Fashion curricula and the decolonial fashion discourse: A reflexive introduction
	What do we, fashion scholars and lecturers of fashion theory and history, owe current students in the fashion education system? Does renewing, stretching and decentring our understanding of fashion in the African context play a role in teaching fashio...
	We designed a cross-institutional teaching and research project, the Drum magazine project, to renew fashion curricula in a manner that better values South African history. The Drum magazine project was  a decolonial exercise to introduce an element o...
	As a student project of the fashion programme, it was incorporated into fashion theory and history modules. The project included Drum magazine content as the tools through which fashion theory and history might be taught in the context of South Africa...
	Revaluing and incorporating Drum magazine content involved sourcing alternative archives and renewing fashion imaginaries to show the plurality of epistemologies in the university space. Grosfoguel (2013) proposes the need to ‘bring epistemic diversit...
	Theorising the decolonial fashion discourse
	We begin with a comprehensive view of the concept to start a discussion about decoloniality, specifically  in fashion. We understand decoloniality to entail confronting and opposing the coloniality of knowledge creation being exerted by the Western ca...
	Decoloniality has recently attracted attention in the fashion discipline through specially themed journal issues, conferences and research projects. Examples include the International Journal of Fashion Studies (Cheang et al., 2022), Design and Cultur...
	“[P]roposes a radical redefinition of fashion by delinking it from modernity—the very core of its constitution—and therefore from coloniality by redefining it as a multitude of possibilities—in and outside of modernity—rather than a normative framewor...
	While the word decoloniality may not have been included in prior studies, the discourse on non-European fashion systems has been ongoing for years within fashion studies; see Mustafa (2001), Rabine (2002), Allman (2004), Gott and Loughran (2010), and ...
	Decoloniality, the fashion curriculum and fashion history are the focus of studies by Gaugele and Titton (2019), Cheang and Suterwalla (2020) and Ahmed (2022). Cheang and Suterwalla (2020) and Ahmed (2022) warn against superficially revisiting and rep...
	Drum magazine has enjoyed much attention as representative of a particular era in South Africa. Its pages have visually and textually recorded dress and fashion styles in the South African context. Nevertheless, from our search, Drum magazine has larg...
	What is Drum magazine?
	Drum magazine was founded by Robert Crisp and Jim Bailey and first published in March 1951 as African Drum. It emerged just three years after the inception of administrative apartheid. In its earlier issues, Drum had a low circulation and failed to at...
	Fleming and Falola (2005) wrote that the magazine went from its paternalistic writing and printing of ‘”know yourself” stories to articles on crime syndicates, American styled jazz music, shebeen life, and other happenings in Cape Town, Durban and on ...
	The magazine’s photography of cover girls was another contributing factor that increased its visibility, popularity and consumption. Nigerian and Ghanaian readers were unfamiliar with Sophiatown and District Six (reported about in the magazine) and co...
	With its rich history, Drum has served as a fount of inspiration in South African visual culture. The early 2000s saw the emergence of some fashion designers who contributed to the development of South Africa’s fashion industry. Amongst these is the l...
	Research context
	Our methods entailed visual and textual analysis of 1950s and 1960s Drum magazine content. These were accessed from those kept at BAHA in Johannesburg. To ensure compliance with research ethics, we sought ethical clearance for the study from our respe...
	The Drum magazine project started with a two-part lecture, focusing first on South Africa’s 1950s and 1960s social and political environment through Drum reports that were linked to certain apartheid legislation. The second part of the lecture focused...
	Following the lecture, the students were required to work in groups and use an allocated folder with  a Drum archival image and readings related to an individual featured in Drum magazine during the 1950s and 1960s. Using the folder content, the stude...
	The information gleaned from the essay-writing exercise was used to style and visually communicate  a contemporary look through a re-imagined Drum magazine cover. The cover needed to be informed by (a) students’ findings about their allocated individu...
	Biographical essays as narratives of alternative histories and fashion imaginaries
	Cheang and Suterwalla (2020) wrote about deepening teachers’ and students’ intellectual curiosity and manifesting ‘greater cultural sensitivity to redress the many social inequalities embedded in histories’  (p. 881). Inequalities manifest when there ...
	Lindsay (2017) argued that ‘history is made by a wider range of people than literate elites, and that historical forces and ordinary people act reciprocally on one another’ (p. 15). Therefore, we introduced the students to individuals whose stories an...
	Despite this minimal information, some students showed creativity, inventiveness and a willingness to learn about their subjects. For instance, because of her romantic relationship with Can Themba and the attention this relationship stirred in 1950s S...
	Hart’s tweed skirt and polo-neck were analysed through the frame of the kofifi style. Kofifi is another name for Sophiatown, and when linked with the word style, it pays homage to fashion that echoes the style heritage associated with 1950s Sophiatown...
	Archives can, however, also bring forth troubling questions. The information available on some individuals only captured celebratory moments published in Drum magazine. The students had remaining nagging questions about their assigned individuals sinc...
	Image 1: Screenshot of students’ essay on Patricia Jobodwana. Credit: K. Mchunu.
	One of the students in this group expressed frustration in the interview:
	“She was the first black woman undergraduate student at Fort Hare doing medicine. I just wished that I had more information on her because she sounds like a very important woman. I just wish, maybe, her children. I just want a little bit more”. (9 Sep...
	The students’ analysis of Jobodwana through the lens of the scientific laboratory coat and its symbolic meaning led them to study her and the participation of other black girls and women in STEM fields (i.e. Esther Okade).
	The student-penned Sewgolam essay used his wearing of the golfing uniform to present a complex and nuanced essay that married topics of poverty, oppression, lack of access, assimilation, culture and achievement. The discovery of his death in his early...
	These instances demonstrate how life is recorded and can sometimes destabilise expectations and the linearity of life’s beginning and end. Drum magazine did not promise to record Jobodwana’s, Sewgolam’s  or any other individuals’ lives in this way. Ho...
	There were moments when Drum magazine archives proved to be frustrating and presented questions that held the potential to make students angry at the apartheid regime and its design of a system and conditions that rendered black identities as belongin...
	The essay-writing exercise showed a text-based technique of narrating visibility, alternative imaginaries, and futurity and joining the decolonial fashion discourse through teaching and learning. The second part of the project showed the marrying of t...
	Imaging alternative fashion histories and imaginaries: Student magazine covers
	Tulloch (2016) views fashion photography as a method to communicate ideas, make social commentary and tell stories, further adding that ‘whether that [story] is truth or fiction, nonetheless there is an attempt to make a point’ (pp. 178-179). This ide...
	Image 2: Hazel Futa-informed students’ photograph. Photographer: RemyShoots (2022).
	Students’ creativity, demonstrated during the essay writing, was also shown in the magazine covers.  For example, the Hazel Futa-informed photograph (Image 2) used ballet elements to capture delicate femininities the group believed Futa embodied. Thei...
	A commonality across many of the students’ covers was a strong leaning toward the symbolic meaning  of every element in a photograph. Examples include the Constance Molefe- and Sewsunker Sewgolum-informed photographs.
	The Constance Molefe-informed photograph (Image 3) was taken in one of the sports fields of the Johannesburg-based university. The students were drawn to Molefe’s white tennis attire and her plaited hair, which they understood as the Benny and Betty h...
	“[H]ope that she had during the era that she was in. With reference to the oppression that hindered many dreams in the 50s and 60s, the model stands behind a rusty chain-link fence. Although she is behind this fence, which obscures her view of the fut...
	Image 3: Constance Molefe-informed students’ photograph. Photographer, Nawa, L. (2022).
	The golf ball (made from crumpled paper), flower petals, green field and black clothes were well-considered elements in the Sewgolam-informed photograph (Image 4). The golf ball referenced a makeshift golf club that Sewgolam’s father made for him grow...
	The Durban-based Sewgolam group also highlighted his golfing career through their magazine cover focusing on racial tensions (Image 5). The students’ styling choices and magazine cover creative direction are a homage to the image of Sewgolam on the go...
	“’There goes the neighbourhood.’ What does this mean? This is an exclamation after a negative change affects someone’s neighbourhood, such as someone undesirable moving in (Privette 2021).  To the golfing community at the time, we can assume that he [...
	Images 4 and 5: Sewsunker’ Papwa’ Sewgolum-informed students’ photographs. Photographers from left: Pondo, Y. (2022) and Moolman, J. (2022).
	In a 1950s Drum photograph of Sonny Pillay, he wears a white shirt and cardigan shot with his slightly angled face. Students took the white shirt element worn underneath a denim jacket to ‘strongly mimic the focal point of the referenced photograph an...
	“ ...the mask is muted and hidden even though in the foreground, which resembles how Sonny appears facially concealed right in front of the viewer. This can be seen as a commentary on how Mr Pillay, as a black artist, was censored by the apartheid reg...
	A limited and limiting engagement with Drum magazine archives, such as reliance on Google searches solely, could have resulted in teaching fashion theory and history through the widely circulated narrative  of Sophiatown and its kofifi style. Such rel...
	Image 6: Sonny Pillay -informed students’ photograph. Photographer, Makubele, H. (2022).
	The students’ interpretations of Drum’s historical photographs ranged from queer politics, diverse forms of femininities and expressions of black excellence, among others, showing the students’ expanding narratives that formed new meanings. Additional...
	Conclusion
	We asked ourselves whether Drum magazine, with its history in South African visual culture, belongs to the corpus of fashion curricula. We recognise that Drum magazine may not be considered a fashion magazine by global standards, but it is essential t...
	Fanon (1952/2008) wrote that ‘every human problem must be considered from the standpoint of time. Ideally, the present will always contribute to the building of the future. And this future is not the future of the cosmos but rather the future of my ce...
	We acknowledge that this project had its limitations and did not cover the comprehensive fashion history of South Africa. Expanding beyond the 1950s and 1960s as periods can be considered for future research, with a more fashion-focused approach as an...
	We also reflected on the students’ question of ‘What happened to her?’ and how it speaks to the limitation of relying on only one archival source like Drum magazine. South Africa’s past events and, by extension, its fashion histories, have been covere...
	The scope of the decolonial fashion discourse is too large to be fulfilled by an undergraduate assignment like the Drum magazine project. However, if we are subsumed and intimidated by the scope of an extensive exercise, contributions (no matter how l...
	References
	Adams, G., Estrada-Villalta, S., Gómez-Ordóñez, L. H. (2018). The modernity/coloniality of being: Hegemonic psychology as intercultural relations. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 62, 13-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2017.06.006
	Ahmed, T. (2022). Towards a decolonial feminist fashion design reading list. Art Libraries Journal, 47(1), 9-13. https://doi.org/10.1017/alj.2021.26
	Allen, L. (2008). Music, film, and gangsters in the Sophiatown imaginary: Featuring Dolly Rathebe. Scrutiny2: Issues in English Studies in Southern Africa, 9(1), 19-34. https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC101008
	Allman, J. (Ed.). (2004). Fashioning Africa: Power and the politics of dress. Indiana University Press.
	Cheang, S., & Suterwalla, S. (2020). Decolonising the curriculum? Transformation, emotion, and positionality in teaching. Fashion Theory, 24(6), 879-900. https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2020.1800989
	Cheang, S., Rabine, L., & Sandhu, A. (2022). Decolonising fashion studies. International Journal of Fashion Studies, 9(2), 247-255. https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00070_2
	de Greef, E. (2020). Curating fashion as decolonial practice: Ndwalane’s mblaselo and a politics of remembering. Fashion Theory, 24(6), 901-920. https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2020.1800990
	Eismann, S. (2019). Afrofuturism as a strategy for decolonising the global fashion archive. In E. Gaugele and M. Titton (Eds.), Fashion and postcolonial critique (pp. 64-73). Sternberg Press. https://doi.org/10.21937/9783956794650.4
	Fanon, F. (2008). Black skin, white masks. Pluto Press. (Original work published 1952).
	Fleming, T. & Falola, T. (2005). Africa’s media empire: Drum’s expansion to Nigeria. History in Africa, 32, 133-164. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20065738
	Ford, TC. (2015). Liberated threads: Black women, style, and the global politics of soul. University of North  Carolina Press.
	Gaugele, E., & Titton, M. (Eds.). (2019). Fashion and postcolonial critique. Sternberg Press.
	Giloi, S., & Botes, H. (Eds.). (2017). #Decolonise: Design educators reflecting on the call for the decolonising of
	education. Proceedings of the 14th national design education conference of the design education forum of Southern Africa. Design Education Forum of Southern Africa. https://tinyurl.com/hwthmz3u
	Gott, S., & Loughran, K. (2010). Contemporary African dress. Indiana University Press.
	Grosfoguel, R. (2013). The structure of knowledge in westernised universities: Epistemic racism/sexism and the four genocides/epistemicides of the long 16th century. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 11(1), 73-90. https:/...
	Guldimann, C. (2019). Against the law: Arthur Maimane’s pioneering hard-boiled black detective fiction in Drum magazine. Safundi, 20(3), 259-276. https://tinyurl.com/msm7t9cs
	Jansen, M. A. (2020). Fashion and the phantasmagoria of modernity: An introduction to decolonial fashion discourse. Fashion Theory, 24(6), 815-836. https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2020.1802098
	Lindsay, L. A. (2017). Biography in African history. History in Africa, 44, 11-26. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/665277
	Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On the coloniality of being: Contributions to the development of a concept. Cultural Studies, 21(2-3), 240-270. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162548
	Mustafa, H. (2001). Ruins and spectacles: Fashion and city life in contemporary Senegal. NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, 15, 47-53. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/422657
	Rabine, L. (2002). The global circulation of African fashion. Berg.
	Rovine, V. (2015). African fashion, global style histories, innovations, and ideas you can wear. Indiana University Press.
	Schultz, T., Danah, A., Ansari, A., Canlı, E., Keshavarz, M., Kiem, M., de O. Martins, L. P., & Vieira de Oliveira, P. J. S. V. (2018). Decolonizing design: Editors’ introduction. Design and Culture, 10(1), 1-6. https://tinyurl.com/5ddaaas4
	Slade, T., & Jansen, M. A. (2020). Letter from the editors: Decoloniality and fashion. Fashion Theory, 24(6), 809-814. https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2020.1800983
	Themba, C. (1972). The will to die. Heinemann.
	Tulloch, C. (1998). “Out of many, one people”: The relativity of dress, race and ethnicity to Jamaica, 1880–1907. Fashion Theory, 2(4), 359-382. https://doi.org/10.2752/136270498779476154
	Tulloch, C. (2016). The birth of cool: Style narratives of the African diaspora. Bloomsbury.

