The inspiration of the AFFASO designs comes from vintage African wax prints. Each and every one of them come with a positive message.
Each design and colour can reflect local traditions and symbols, such as the wearer’s tribe, marriage and social status.
Around the world, textiles have always provided a means of conveying the most subtle and complex messages through colour, design, materials, inscriptions, and the way they are worn or otherwise displayed. But only on the African continent, with its extraordinary diversity of people and cultures, has the practice of communicating through fabric become such a refined and subtle art form.
How nice is it when someone asks you why you are wearing this particular shirt!
Look for example at AFFASO’s Abstract Apple:
An apple evokes associations with health: you are aware of what you eat, you want to radiate vitality and being fit.
Or our shirt Exotic Africa:
The pineapple stands for luxury and prosperity, but can also be related to happiness, as in the past in the East. Or for ‘being welcome’, which is why you see it regularly in architecture.
And then Mosaic Circles, in two color variations: green and red/blue.
Circles with a halo, you think of the sun and the earth. In this day and age it’s associated with commercial flights into space, you would want to wear such a shirt just for that reason.