Sexuality and Fashion Designing in the 21st Century - Culture and Dating Patterns in Africa

Fashion is one of the most visible features of social life, and in Africa dress has long been woven into the cultural rules that govern sexuality, courtship and marriage. In the twenty-first century, these rules are being reshaped by urbanisation, mobile phones, social media, global fashion markets and changing understandings of gender and sexuality, so that the ways in which young Africans dress, meet, court and form relationships are changing rapidly. Yet fashion design education and professional practice in Africa have tended to treat design as a matter of creativity, technique and commerce, with limited engagement with the sociological and anthropological knowledge that explains why people dress as they do. There is a dearth of integrated scholarship that examines sexuality, fashion designing, culture and dating patterns in Africa. The article draws on secondary data analysis of peer-reviewed journal articles, books, ethnographies, policy documents and legal instruments. Symbolic interactionism provides the theoretical lens of the article. The analysis reveals five themes: dress as a cultural language of sexuality and courtship in African societies; the shift from kin-mediated courtship to urban and digital dating; the moral regulation of bodies, especially women's bodies, through dress; money, material exchange and the commodification of sexuality in fashion and dating; and shifting gender and sexual identities and the design response. Drawing from symbolic interactionism, the article argues that clothing is a medium through which sexual and romantic identities are proposed, read and negotiated. The negotiation takes place within African cultural systems and within structures of gender, class, religion, law and global markets that shape who may dress how, and at what cost.