Abstract

Dakar garners accolades as a world class fashion center. No wonder, since Senegal reflects a paradigmatic nexus of indigenous and colonial cultural patterns. While its Islamic heritage plays out in both cuisine and couture, the superimposition of French schooling and western habits of mind has fueled an evolution in the construction of feminine identity as well as the ways in which both actual individuals and fictive characters dress themselves. This study analyzes a series of texts beginning with Mariama Ba’s “So Long A Letter” in terms of the interplay of internal and external self-presentation complicated by the confrontation between indigenous cultural scripts and those imposed by the culture of alterity. The resulting constructs establish an inverse relationship between hem lines, coiffures and a (post)colonial crisis of identity that continues to play out in contemporary feminine narratives.