Plus Sizes - African Dashiki

Bold and Sensible

Another colorful and bold look for the plus size woman is the dashiki. A dashiki is a loose-fitting, pullover top sewn from colorful, African-inspired cotton prints or from solid color fabrics, often with patch pockets and embroidery at the neckline and cuffs.        

This Afrocentric dress uses a number of textiles.  Authentic Ghanaian kente cloth, batik, mud cloth, indigo cloth, and, to a lesser extent, bark cloth are the traditional fabrics used.  Dashikis are now also made in plain cottons, polyesters, and glittery novelty fabrics and tiger, leopard and zebra prints. 

 “Dashiki” is a loanword from the West African Yoruba term danshiki, which refers to a short, sleeveless tunic worn by men. The Yoruba borrowed the word from the Hausa “dan ciki” (literally “underneath”), which refers to a short tunic worn by males under larger robes. Similar tunics found in Dogon burial caves in Mali date to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Yoruba danshiki, was a work garment, originally sewn from hand-woven strip cloth. It has deep-cut armholes with pockets below.  Such tunics of hand- or machine-woven textiles (with or without sleeves) are worn with matching trousers as street clothes.  

In the 1960s, the dashiki appeared in the American ethnic fashion inventory, along with other Afrocentric clothing styles, possibly from the example of African students and African diplomats at the United Nations in New York.  In the United States the term “dashiki” entered American English circa 1968 (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 2000). Following the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the popularity of Afrocentric clothing grew along with pride in racial and cultural heritage among Americans of African descent. First worn as an indicator of black unity and pride, the dashiki peaked in popularity when white counterculture hippies, who set the tone for many of the fashion adaptations of the late sixties, included the colorful shirts and dresses in their wardrobes.

Worn by increasing numbers of young white Americans attracted to the bright colors and ornate embroidery, the dashiki lost much of its black political identity and epitomized the larger scene of changing American society. By the late 1960s, American retailers imported cheap dashikis manufactured in India, Bangladesh, and Thailand. Most of these loose-fitting shirts and caftans were sewn from cotton “kanga” prints, a bordered rectangle printed with symmetrical bold colorful designs, often with central motifs.

A unisex garment, the American dashiki varies from a sleeveless tunic to the more common pullover shirt or caftan with short or dangling bat sleeves. Both sexes wear the shirt, and women wear short or full-length dashiki tops.   Worn with carefully selected ethnic jewelry, the dashiki outfit is a knockout.