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Suno, design label

Dress, 2009

Description

Maker

Title

Dress

Year

2009

Medium

Cotton plain weave, wax-resist printed

Materials/Techniques

Materials

Techniques

Dimensions

Center back length: 96.5 cm (38 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Suno; [size] XS (sewn along the inside of the center back neckline
Paper tag pined to garment:
Suno
Spring/Summer 2009
This first limited collection of 1000 unique pieces from SUNO was produced using vintage kangas collected in Kenya. Kangas are large colorful rectangles of printed cotton that have been worn by the women of East Africa since the 19th century. There may be slight imperfections in the fabrics that come from their years of use, but every piece in this collection was chosen for its quality of design, overall condition, and feel.
Each garment is one of a kind.

196 or 1000

Place

Kenya

Type

Credit

Museum Purchase

Object Number

2009.65

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

“Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass"

June 10, 2014 - March 8, 2015

This limited-edition dress by the New York label Suno showcases a wax-resist-printed kanga fabric collected in Kenya by the firm’s founder, Max Osterweis. Kanga fabrics are rectangular lengths made to be wrapped around the body and designed with a border, a central pattern, and often a Swahili saying. Made and sold for decades in East Africa, they were originally fabricated by machine in the Netherlands in imitation of Javanese hand-drawn wax prints.

The Swahili phrase forming part of the floral border—“Wewe ndiye dawa yangu” or, roughly, “You are my medicine”—was popularized by Tanzanian musician Remmy Ongala.

Related

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Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is Dress with the accession number of 2009.65. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.