Lunchtime Lecture: Making Africa Fashion

Africa Fashion consciously celebrates the vitality and innovation of key creatives at the heart of the scene during the 20th century post-independence era and now in this contemporary moment. Giving a platform to designers, stylists, photographers and wearers from over twenty-five countries across a broad spectrum of aesthetics, this exhibition is part of the V&A’s ongoing commitment to foreground work by African heritage creatives. Join exhibition curator Christine Checinska for a behind the scenes look at the making of the exhibition.

Dr Christine Checinska is the V&A’s inaugural Senior Curator of African and African Diaspora Fashion and Lead Curator of the Africa Fashion exhibition, July 2022 – April 2023.

Prior to joining the V&A, Christine worked as a womenswear designer, academic, artist and curator. Her creative practice and research explore the relationship between fashion, culture and race. Christine’s recent exhibitions include an intervention for Makers Eye: Stories of Craft, July-October 2021, Crafts Council Gallery, and Folded Life February 2021, Johanne Jacobs Museum, Zurich, Switzerland. Her recent publications include ‘Re-Fashioning African Diasporic Masculinities’ in Fashion and Postcolonial Critique, Elke Gaugele and Monica Titton (eds.), 2019. In 2016 she delivered the TedxTalk Disobedient Dress: Fashion as Everyday Activism.

In industry for over thirty years, Christine has created womenswear collections for iconic British brands such as Margaret Howell, where she was a Senior Designer, during the late 1990s.

To see our full Spring 2023 Lunchtime Lecture Programme, click 'Download Programme' on the right of this screen.