With an Americanized society taking over the majority of Africa through mass media, TV shows and programmes, news and even the internet, only the remote towns of Africa seem unaffected and able to preserve their culture and traditions without being completely influenced to change their lifestyles and adapting to accommodate this Western culture. This Western culture has, in fact, made its impact in large cities across Africa, instilling new lifestyles, new values as well as a new fashion sense and styles across the populations, thereby instilling a new ‘norm’ amongst society. This has forced individuals living in these affected societies to push their personal cultures and traditions aside in order to blend in with the crowd of people, who are changing their ways of being to adapt to this newly portrayed ‘norm’.
This is quite sad, though. So many cultures and traditions have been lost throughout the generations due to this need to adapt to a more Westernized culture. With this loss of culture, there have also been losses of languages, forgotten roots, and traditional African clothing have been put aside to blend in to a new culture of branded clothing and jeans.
ANTG Ekasi has considered all of these meaningful and detrimental impacts of Westernized cultures on African cultures, and have slowly been trying to restore the true meaning of culture amongst African populations. They have been slowly trying to integrate traditional African print apparel and African outfits, in hopes of promoting a healthier and accepting attitude in society towards traditional African attire.
ANTG Ekasi have established themselves with the motivation to remind African societies of the value of their cultures and, ultimately, the cultures’ impacts on their identities, which have been forced to be put on the side-lines. They try to promote a society with strong cultural values, and to separate individuals from the influenced mainstream society.
ANTG Ekasi is highly knowledgeable in different cultures and their unique styles of clothing, and so try and help each and every client that walks through their doors to bring out a side to them that expresses their unique individualities whilst promoting their own unique cultures through clothing. They try promote confidence amongst people integrated into mainstream society through integrating African print apparel into modern clothing and fashions, so individuals do not necessarily stand out above the crowd, but are still unique in the sense of promoting their individual unique cultures without completely falling subject to the Westernized influence of fashion.
Fashion doesn’t have to necessarily be in line with a particular designer or in line with a particular culture- it is more of an individualized statement of personality and an expression of one’s personality, their background, and ultimately their cultural roots. Most people do not realize this, and so lose themselves to the influences of someone else’s fashion sense. ANTG Ekasi tries to remove individuals from influential patterns, and instead, allow them to re-discover themselves and their own unique styles and fashionable clothing lines through the expressing their own unique cultures and personalities created through those cultures.
ANTG Ekasi Bags and Apparel
‘For the love of fashion, design and colour’