This exhibit is created by students who were enrolled in HIST 2452/6452 – Dress, Cloth and Identity in Africa and the Diaspora with Professor Judith Byfield and in collaboration with the Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection. It builds on the insightful scholarship produced by Joanne B. Eicher and Sandra Lee Evenson who argue that dress is more expansive than clothing. Dress they argue is anything we do to the body and the things we put on the body (Eicher and Evenson 2015: 3). Eicher and Evenson’s expansive definition of dress and their classification system is especially important as we study African dress systems. African societies held different concepts about modesty and what constituted appropriate attire. Clothing was constructed from a variety of item – animal skins, bark cloth, or woven fabrics. Travelers to the continent from other world regions and religious communities imposed their cultural biases on the African cultures they encountered and their dress systems. This was especially the case after European colonizers divided the continent among themselves in the nineteenth century. Dress was a significant feature in the imposition of colonial rule. The course and this exhibit provides a different lens through which to explore and encounter African societies, their histories and dress cultures.