I happened to fall on this article last month while shopping for traditional Ethiopian clothing online and forgot to post it. The question that was being investigated was if the British young designer Matthew Williamson had been ‘inspired’ by Ethiopian traditional wear or if he merely copied the exact designs and passed them off as his own. As the article presumptively expounds, officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were not very happy with his deed because the the very dignified Ethiopian culture is threatened to be westernized by such copies. I believe the issue is that the Western model is displaying the cultural Ethiopian clothing in a setting that does not give praise or even refer to Ethiopia and its people save for the design of the dress and the fabric, which I am sure everyone will agree are exact copies of the traditional Ethiopian clothing and are meant to speak for themselves.
What I found most compelling about the whole article is somebody’s comment that followed, and it said:
missbruno says:
January 25th, 2008 at 8:33 am
This is an interesting quandry and it brings up the an age old questions: who owns culture? Culture is transient. Culture is synthesized and disseminated over and over again. Can culture even BE owned or claimed? Well, I think if culture can be co-opted and appropriated then the implication is that it CAN be owned. And Williamson’s work seem like complete carbon copy to me. He is trying to own something that is not his.
Well, this comment really perplexed me because I realized that I do not understand what culture is exactly. Missbruno first argues that “culture is transient. Culture is synthesized and disseminated over and over again.” My understanding of this is that culture cannot be owned in the strictest sense of the word, but then again it is also true that culture is “appropriated”, so what can we make of this comment with respect to the nature of culture, along with but not emphasizing the idea that Williamson shamelessly copied the Ethiopian traditional dress?
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | culture, designers, Ethiopian clothing, fashion, tradition
No way. The sillouettes are entirely different (and I find his much more attractive). He has copied the color schemes of those particular dresses (Do Etheopians only wear white with green and yellow trim?) He might have started from pictures of Ethiopian dress as imspiration, but the differences are plenty.
DJCNOR I am Ethiopian and I assure you there aren’t much differences between the dresses he has used on the runway and traditional Ethiopian clothing down to even the fabric, which if my eyes are not fooling me is exactly the same fabric used in almost all Ethiopian clothing although we do not only wear green and yellow trim. The only difference I see in his runway dress is the one with the yellow trim is much shorter than a traditional dress would be, otherwise it is IDENTICAL.
But you don’t know design. Let me explain using the dress with the design going all the way down the front. The sleeves are entirely different. Even the construction of their connection to the main garment is different. The neckline is distinctly deeper with a border serveral times as wide. The trim is a different design entirely and stops at a different point on the garment. The fit of the garment above the waist is so different that the pattern pieces used to make the two garments would have entirely different shapes and different shaping darts or gathering. The bottom of the designer’s dress is a different length and has a border, almost a ruffle. I doubt that they are the same fabric, since the drape and the sheen of the two fabrics are different. But even if it is, that is not copying. If it were a print, it would be, but choosing the same plain colored fabric, particularly in white, is common. Fabrics go in and out of fashion favor just as shapes and colors do. All of these are significant design choices that make a garment a different design. In any given season, it is common for designers to use similar inspirations because they start with a set of colors and fabrics and shapes that are in and look for things that fit that and because they are concentrated in the same cities and tend to see the same museum exhibits and such.
I also have to say that I don’t think the designs are exactly alike. Yes, it looks as though Williamson (the designer) has borrowed heavily from the Ethiopian culture, but he has definitely put his own spin on it. Like DJCNOR pointed out, the silhouettes are very different.
Also, I’m sure traditional Ethiopian dress was influenced by some outside culture as well and they aren’t necessarily citing their fashion influences.
I don’t like what this designer person did. To be honest a lot of zurias have the same sort of themes-geometric shapes, patterns, crosses, etc , so whatever thing he changed, you would’ve been able to find one that looked similar online or wherever.
Howeverm what bugs me is how he used it for..fashion. Like a celebrity it thing where it’s in season and then out of season. Like it’s a style. It’s a culture and historical thing, not something used/borrowed and then fades away. If it did become popular for a short while, people would stop wearing those dresses outside of Ethiopia/Eritrea, but people back home wouldn’t. It’s an important..thing!! XD
Clothes relfect a culture and life-style.
What our clothes says about us is that we value modesty, chastity, and purity. That designer man made the zuria on the model above knee-height.
Plus the dresses are really low-cut.
Yeah, so that’s what bugs me about it. I don’t know if that’s right to be annoyed my it, but that’s what annoyed me.
there are many types of ethiopian dresses i would know cause im ethiopian so u cant say its different to ethiopian cultural dresses cause there are many types and many designs i personaly luv it but ather people might not that no reason williamson did a great job i hope he keeps designing more dresses
Stealing just like always. It is not fashionable to absorb someone’s culture without paying homage to the origins of items copied. Mathew Williamson is a shameless thief to take something so innocent and drape history on the BONES of white females whom are pimped to the world as the essence of beauty. He would have done more to the line had he placed them on the ebony skin of Ethiopian females whom lineage stems from Sheba herself. For the eyes whom read this i am merely pointing out sticking points, for had the designer been Ethiopian in origins surely the designs would have been dismissed as being too ethnic for mass sales……For the record i am a Louisiana creole native born in America. No more shall i sit idle and watch cultural identity become no more than a seasonal fashion for the rich and famous….
Regards,
mp……houston, tx
I can bring you the same clothes that William used from Ethiopia. We have big market in Addis Ababa called SHEROMEDA MARKET. The shorter ones are Guraga traditional clothes ,… I am sure almost every Ethiopian agree that he stole our culture and sold it and make money.
Addis
I love the dresses that Williamson displayed on the catwalk in 2008. No doubt next time I am in Addis, I’ll go straight over to Shiromeda, buy a look-a-like and cut a keyhole neckline in it to make it “unique”.
djcnor: I understand that you were trying to establish that the Williamson designs are unique and seperate from the designs you’ve seen in Ethiopian dress. You mentioned neckline depth and border width and the obvious difference in hemline. I understand that from your perspective, the dresses are not the same.
However, Ethiopian dress is not like a uniform where each garment is the same as the next. Ethiopian dress also caters to neckline depth, border width and a variety in hemlines. Yet the clothing adheres to a common guideline: an array of traditional fabrics and traditional embroidery shapes. Most garments have very distinct vertical embroidery as used by Williamson as well as an embroidered hem called a “telet”.
What astounds me is when I heard during the course of this arguement that the Ethiopian people are mistaken in assuming that the clothing Williamson produced was Ethiopian traditional wear. Yet it is not Williamson who claimed that he was basing the items on Ethiopia’s traditional dress. People saw it for themselves, and were taken aback. No doubt if they felt it was a “loose interpretation of Ethiopian dress” they would say so. Countless Ethiopians have corrected me on numerous occasions for numerous reasons saying “that’s not pure Ethiopian”.
They are a proud culture and so the objection has been that Williamson has marketed his “creativity”, yet it’s not been that creative at all.
The clothing has been around for hundreds of years.
Visit http://www.lojsociety.org/women.html for a few examples of the variety of Ethiopian clothing.
I understand that Who complaint at her. But I said That Ethiopia people did mistake to willing her show the fashion show in 2009. You can not blame at her. I feel that She love her beautiful ethiopia dress from Ethiopia. Also She may visit to Ethiopia. She just buy the ethiopia store. I do not think that She can not creative her owner design herself. she just buy the dress from Ethiopia. If you are complaint at her now. Why did Ethiopia gov’t stealing big money from world bank and EU. You have to better know. She just got one or two or three dress from Ethiopia. That is not bad. I think that is alright on her. Please let you forget it past time.