African Style Archive

In 2020, Tosin founded African Style Archive — a platform dedicated to documenting African fashion history through archival images, footage, magazines and ephemera. Tosin has curated a thoroughly researched and referenced educational platform for educators, students, and general enthusiasts to learn and engage with — by researching and writing about — sartorial practices of African background.

Through African Style Archive, Tosin has collaborated with researchers and curators globally and commissioned educational collaborations with institutions such as the London College of Fashion and Arts University Bournemouth.

It was an honour for African Style Archive to conduct research for the @ahluwalia ‘Africa is Limitless’ SS23 collection. A super refreshing, bold and stunning collection, merging multi layered influences, symbolism, history, and textiles
Miss Selby Thomas, the Cover Girl for the May 1968 edition of DRUM East Africa. Selby Thomas wears a thin-strapped romper in the larger image, and a short-sleeved, high neck shift dress in the smaller image. Both styles are exemplary of fashion tre
Threaded hairstyles from Esi Sagay’s ‘African Hairstyles’ book.
Two men wearing matching short sleeve striped shirts and bell-bottom trousers - truly reflecting the 70s fashion trend. The tailoring of their outfits is exquisite, my guess is that it was probably locally made by a tailor. This photograph was taken
A magazine cover and article page from Zonk! Magazine in 1951. The cover features Miss Ida ‘Funi’ Kopo who was a singer residing in Johannesburg, South Africa. Little is known about Miss Ida or her music but how brilliant is the cover a
A brilliant album cover from 1983 of Nigerian musician King Sunny Ade and his band members with their different instruments. They wear different outfits ranging from agbada’s (flowing, wide-sleeved robes worn by men) kaftan’s, bell-botto
‘South Africa Now’ Anchors Carolyn Craven, Mweli Mzizi, and Fana Kakana in 1988. They appear smartly dressed, reflecting the fashion in the late 80s for their television broadcast. Image courtesy: Yale University Library #fashionhistory
A clipping from The Mirror newspaper of Kofi Ansah’s Sikaprint catwalk in Ghana in 1997. ⠀ ⠀ Kofi Ansah was a Ghanaian couture designer who received his formal education in Ghana and then proceeded to study Fashion Design at the Chelsea Sc
Final post in the Into the Archives research series in collaboration with @wer_jokenya 💫 A new genre of music became popular in early 1970s Nigeria after the Nigerian Civil War ended. With the infusion of rock, funk and psychedelia, Nigerian Rock b
The second post in the Into the Archives series in collaboration with @wer_jokenya focuses on Nigerian twin sisters, and musicians The Lijadu Sisters. Taiwo and Kehinde Lijadu were some of the most popular musicians in the Nigerian music scene in th