Lexie Moreland/WWD

A mannequin stands with head tilted, a knee jutting from the deep bias chiffon and woven fabric hemline of Papa Oppong’s Takari T, a T-shirt worn as a dress from the Ghanaian-born designer’s celebrated 2021 Yopoo collection, which evokes a Ghanaian woman’s life from birth to marriage to death. A “Ghana Must Go” bag — the ever-present blue, white and red reusable bags which have come to symbolize the forced migration of tens of millions of Ghanaians from Nigeria — sits on the ground next to the mannequin.

It’s considered one of two looks from Oppong included within the Brooklyn Museum’s iteration of “Africa Fashion,” the blockbuster exhibition that opened last summer at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and which runs Friday through Oct. 22 in Recent York.

“I can’t consider that is my work,” muses Oppong, as he raises his hands to his cheeks. “It doesn’t seem real. Coming from Ghana, I dreamed of making work that may very well be this accessible. So this,” he says, spinning around to soak up the work of fellow designers on display in a big central gallery, “is actually a dream come true.”

Like most of the additional designers included within the Brooklyn Museum exhibit, Oppong’s pieces evoke the heritage but in addition the political and socioeconomic realities of the African diaspora; from political satire and adherence to traditional weaving, hand-dyeing and beading techniques to collaborations with other African artists, from illustrators to weavers to photographers and musicians.

Organized thematically, the exhibition features garments, textiles, photography, books, music and catwalk footage from greater than 40 designers and artists from 20 of Africa’s 54 countries, including pioneering Twentieth-century designers Kofi Ansah (Ghana), Naima Bennis (Morocco), Shade Thomas-Fahm (Nigeria), Chris Seydou (Mali), and Alphadi (Niger) within the “Vanguard” section. “The Cultural Renaissance” section explores the independence era, from the Nineteen Fifties through the Nineties, a period of dramatic political, social and cultural upheaval reflected within the Pan-African fashion and art scene. “Politics and Poetics of Cloth” surveys the rise of Indigenous cloth as a political act; textiles from the museum’s Arts of Africa collection complement the V&A’s wax prints, commemorative cloth, àdìrẹ, kente cloth and bògòlanfini. “Capturing Change” chronicles the independence years through artists akin to Seydou Keïta (Mali) and Malick Sidibé (Mali), from the museum’s collection, in addition to fashion photography by James Barnor (Ghana). “Cutting Edge” is organized around concepts including “Afrotopia,” “Artisanal,” “Co-creation,” “Provocation,” “Minimalist,” and “Mixologist” and showcases a latest generation of fashion designers and creatives, including South Africa–based designer Thebe Magugu, winner of the 2019 LVMH Young Fashion Designer Prize. “Through the Photographer’s Lens” examines the ability of latest photography with a series of images of intricate African hairstyles from Nigerian photographer J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, and work from Recent York native Kwame Brathwaite, the daddy of the Seventies “Black is Beautiful” movement who died last April. The exhibition concludes with “Global Africa,” which explores how the digital world accelerated the expansion of Africa’s influence in the style industry.

Additional latest contemporary pieces also include Brother Vellies designer Aurora James’ Mother Nature gown with a raffia skirt and basket bodice, which the Ghanaian-Canadian designer wore to the 2019 Met Gala; a basket bag from Sudanese-American designer Eilaf Osman; and a shirt and skirt ensemble from Studio One Eighty Nine that includes a pineapple husk belt and dried raffia straw hat.

“High fashion, notions of the handmade and luxury, slow fashion, using dyes or materials which might be non-invasive to the environment, this conversation around sustainability has at all times been a part of the African continent,” says Ernestine White-Mifetu, the Brooklyn Museum’s Sills Foundation Curator of African Art, who adapted the exhibition with Annissa Malvoisin, the museum’s postdoctoral fellow within the Arts of Africa.

“And the contemporary designers from the continent have continued those traditions while taking the making and design of African textiles to a latest level that’s extremely exciting,” continues White-Mifetu. “And that is a possibility for audiences in North America to get to know what that appears like.”

The exhibit includes greater than 50 items from the museum’s collection, including Egyptian jewelry from B.C.E. through 1st century C.E. and nineteenth and Twentieth century jewelry from Niger, Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burkina Faso. Most of the items haven’t preciously been on view. (The museum’s African galleries are currently undergoing a significant renovation with a reinstallation slated for 2025.)

“African regions and culture and art isn’t stuck in a particular time period,” says Malvoisin. “The African fashion scene has at all times been vibrant, even 3,000 years ago. It was really vital for us to incorporate our collection because our collection highlights the cultural continuity and technological and manufacturing production that has continued for hundreds of years and that are still getting used today by the designers featured within the show.”

The contributions of African-born designers is already obvious in the style industry, however the exhibit is arguably the primary comprehensive recognition of that legacy.

“We do fashion shows loads [at the Brooklyn Museum], but to concentrate on African fashion in an expansive way, and to bring something like this to North America and in Recent York, which is considered one of the style capitals of the world, is absolutely vital. These shows are quite commonplace for European and North American designers,” says Malvoisin, invoking the Brooklyn Museum’s recent retrospectives of Christian Dior and Thierry Mugler. “That is placing African fashion designers on the identical level as all of those other luxury fashion houses and designers. I feel prefer it’s only the start. Perhaps this can even lay the inspiration and groundwork for something like that occuring for an African clothier.”

Standing within the exhibit’s large central hall, Oppong — dressed head-to-toe in black Balenciaga, right right down to his kitten-heeled shoe socks — takes within the designs from his contemporaries. “I do know so many individuals in here,” he says, raising an arm toward a mannequin draped in Christie Brown’s She is King gold and black gown.

“I did art direction at Christie Brown for a yr,” he says. “I like Kenneth Ize, Imane Ayissi. This hall is just magical.”