Is fashion eroding Malawi’s identity?

A few years ago, heads would turn if a Malawian were spotting a trendy fashion or clad in designer label. Not anymore.

Many Malawians are proud and supportive of almost anything imported so much so that they have no qualms to sacrifice their hard-earned income to purchase foreign threads.

Yet, it is almost impossible for such people to part away with that same amount of money, even less, to dress themselves in local designer apparels.

In the days of yore, the most important article of clothing a Malawian woman owned was her chitenje won around the waist or chest. Over the years, this everyday piece of clothing has lost its place in society, especially in urban areas. This outer, wrap-around skirt served many purposes, including as an apron, a basket, baby-wrapper and just about anything else you can think of. More importantly, it was a sign of respect for the woman.

Then came the time of chilundu—a piece of cloth woven from a fabric from the waist downwards, together with a blouse and a head wrap locally known as duku.

But everything changed once more. Not so long ago, hundreds of women in Malawi demonstrated against vendors on the streets of Lilongwe and Blantyre, who had attacked several women for for wearing trousers instead of traditional dress.

This is despite the fact that along the way having the likes of Nzika and Khalidwe wear which were responsible for designing clothes one can wear at an engagement, bridal shower or weddings.

At engagement ceremonies, especially, one hardly recognises it as Malawian. Mostly, people are dressed in Nigerian attires and more recently, women are seen adorning Indian attires (sari) accessorised with ornaments like waist chains, foreheads draped with pearl strings, wrists circled with jangling bracelets, fingers and toes in rings as well as anklets.

The example is a tip of the iceberg of how the dress code continues to take a knock from western influence.

Just like in other countries, Malawians belong to a global village and certainly, they move with the times. Along the way, they think that some of the cultures are outdated and ineffective in the modern world, according to Traditional Authority Kachindamoto.

“While moving with the times puts the country at par with other nations, that should not be done at the expense of culture. We have copied a lot from other cultures so much so that I am sure foreigners mistake us with other nationalities because of our dressing. We need to go back to our cultural values in all aspects of life,” said Kachindamoto.

Everywhere in the world, people make daily decisions about what to wear or how to dress. Globalisation is regarded as one of the reasons responsible for transforming Malawi to its current state. However, identity and dress are intimately linked. Clothes display, express and shape identity, imbuing it with a directly material reality.

The communal and cultural ethics of people change with time throughout the world so do the fashion and other aesthetics of their arts also change throughout the ages. These changes come about from both internal and external influences as far as clothing and fashion are concerned.

“Much has been made in the news media and within fashion itself of the lack of ethnic diversity among models, but in many ways, the situation on the runway simply reflects an even more extreme situation in the power structure of the industry itself,” wrote Vanessa Friedman in an article in the New York Times on cultural diversity within the American fashion industry.

Is the lack of identity in Malawians through dressing, a problem of the designers?

“There are so many factors that are causing Malawian identity erosion through clothing. To begin with, it is not clear as to what Malawian identity is in terms of clothing. Some say it is chilundu, others say it is nyakula and yet others say it is the so-called national wear. But, if you look at all these, they all refer to one outfit — chilundu.

“Unfortunately, our descendants did not really embrace the chilundu fashion for some unknown reasons because there is not much content anywhere in the archives about it. This resulted in new generations adopting foreign fashion,” argues Ghana-based Malawian designer, Alinafe Naphu Misomali.

She states that for many years Malawians have been wearing foreign ‘fashions’ at almost every event to an extent that people have almost completely forgotten what really the country’s identity is.

“If we are looking at what is causing identity erosion in terms of clothing, it isn’t just fashion. It is because of lack of what describes us which results in people adopting what they see on television, magazines, newspapers, Internet among others. I believe if we had reference on chilundu, from way back, to our public figures we could be talking of a different story now.

“I don’t think Malawians are fond of copying other people’s way of dressing, Malawian women love dressing really good. And because there’s nothing available locally, we are forced to go outside and copy what others nationals are doing,” she adds.

According to Naphu, fashion designers are the key players to reshape the dressing culture in Malawi as they are looked at as trendsetters.

She explained: “There’s need for us, fashion designers, to find ways of bringing back chilundu but then times have changed. There’s, therefore, need to make the chilundu more interesting, modernise it, so it matches with the times we are in. We have a long way to reshape the dressing culture in Malawi.

“Today Malawi women are wearing saris during engagement ceremonies; it’s embarrassing somewhat because I don’t believe any Indian woman would wear chilundu on their wedding day; unless they’re getting married to a Malawian man maybe. But you can’t blame a Malawian woman for wearing saris. It is because there’s nothing much about ‘Malawian’ available.”

Communications, social and behavioural science specialist Michael Nazombe wonders what Malawi will be like in the next five years if something effective will not happen to reverse the worrying trend.

“The observation that Malawians are no longer identified through dressing is right. This is as result of influences by dominant cultures, which is seeing us slowly losing our culture. Simply put, we are no longer being identified as Malawians when it comes to dressing.

“Our culture has dissolved into other cultures, the Western being one of them, due a number of reason.

“Firstly, we do not have administrative and political will to promote what is known as Malawian culture. This is as result of lack of a principle or policy to support our culture. There is an urgent need to identify that policy in order to arrest the situation.

“Secondly, the mass media has influenced the promotion of culture so much so that you rarely see programmes focusing much on Malawi music for example. If nothing is done, Malawi will be a country without culture,” said Nazombe, who is also a lecturer at the Malawi Polytechnic.