You won’t find them on the front row or posing for the street style photographers during fashion week, but in my mind, these are the real heroes of fashion…
1.
Khampa lady resplendent in traditional headdress adorned with amber chunks at Litang Horse Festival’s costume parade.
Photo via Flickr.
2.
South Africa in the early 1970s. Jean Broster and Alice Mertens collaborated on African Elegance, a book which set out to ‘describe in photographs and words the beauty of the tribal people of the Transkei’. The Transkei was a former independent territory of South Africa during Apartheid.
3.
A Kuna lady, also spelled Cunas, of Panama who lives on a tropical paradise known as “the San Blas Islands” off the northeast coast of Panama since the nineteenth century. The Kunas are of the most important native groups in Panama that contribute substantially to his Economy and offer the most beautiful work of arts.
The Kunas are well known for their molas, the term molas means “blouse” “dress” or “clothing”.
4.
Pharrell Williams wishes he sported them first. Portrait of two Hadhramis women from Yemen dressed in black. Photo by Claude Goulay.
5.
Mayan men, 1975 by David Alan Harvey/Magnum Photos.
6.
Kazimir Ostoja Zagourski (1880-1941) was a pioneering photographer of Central African peoples and customs.
7.
Miao, China: Instead of throwing away their hair when they comb it, women of the Long-horn Miao minority save the strands and add them to their collection of hair that allows them to create spectacular headdresses. The hairpieces are passed down to daughters as more and more hair from each generation is added. The tradition allows the women to create spectacular headdresses.
Every wig is passed down from mother to daughter and includes not just yarn and twine but also the hair from a line of female ancestors which the owners of the headdresses claim go back hundreds of years. Every time a woman combs her hair, she collects it, and she hands it to her daughter when her daughter marries.
8.
An Ethiopian girl photgraphed by Jaime Ocampo-Rangel
9.
A woman at the Inti Raime Festival, Peru Cusco Machu Picchu.
Via Pinterest
10.
South Africa in the early 1970s, from the book African Elegance.
