V&A Friday Late - Africa

This month's Friday Late at V&A features Africa, including Fashion In Motion (V&A's free catwalk show) by three African designers.

On the way from the School to V&A I felt a bit sick. Maybe I caught cold as the temparature in London was much lower than in Italy this week. But as soon as I watched West African drums and dance performance (by a group called Kaago) taking place as part of tonight's friday late opening event, I got upbeat. The V&A Cafe served African dishes tonight. I had Cameroon vegetable soup and Tanzanian coconut milk curry. The Cameroon soup had lots of pumpkins in it. Not too bad - certainly better than English soup. The Tanzanian curry was marvelous, making me feel like going to Tanzania.

And Fashion In Motion - the main attraction of tonight's Friday Late. (See pictures at the V&A website). The designers featured were Xuly Bet, Joel Andrianomearisoa, and Hassan Hajjaj - all Africans. The most interesting - I believe this was a consensus among the viewers - was the one by Hajjaj, a Moroccan designer. All the models wore a colourful burka made of Bedouin textile mixed with European one (a football player's t-shirt, for example). They appeared on the catwalk dancing and dancing - in Arabic style - instead of model-walking. The background music began with Arabic-flavoured dancable tunes and gradually turned into Sean Paul's Gimme Da Light - not the original one but the remixed version featuring Busta Rhymes. Crazy.