A Fashion Statement : Brightly colored Afro-centric clothes, ornate jewelry and fabric crowns make the show during Ancestral Adornment

“Armani who?” asked Phyllis Stickney, the fashion show emcee. The fashion-savvy crowd roared in response.

Indeed, at the Ancestral Adornment fashion show--part of Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza’s 11th annual Artists’ Salute to Black History Month--the clothes on the runway were the polar opposite of Georgio Armani’s quiet, tailored designs.

Brilliantly colored Afro-centric robes and dresses were made up in textured raw silks, mudcloth and ancient-looking handwoven cottons. Both male and female models wore lavish jewelry and richly detailed fabric crowns.

The crowd was as interesting as the show. Men and women came to last weekend’s event dressed in vibrantly colored Kente- and batik-fabric dresses and “agbadas,” the shirt, pants and long poncho combination that audience member Henry L.N. Anderson described as a “West African three-piece business suit.”

“For the past year, these are all I’ve worn,” said Anderson, a teacher, who was sporting a velvet and Kente-cloth agbada that he had made for his daughter’s wedding.

Other regal-looking outfits, like the one worn by artist and jewelry designer Sekou Ra, were patterned after clothing and crowns favored by Nigerian kings. Cwolde Kyte, a doctor of holistic medicine, donned an exquisite gold-and-silver handwoven agbada and crown from West Africa that were embroidered with cowry shells, symbols of “fertility and prosperity.”

Lorraine Burns wore a brightly colored dress she made from fabric imported from Senegal. It’s the kind of outfit she wears every day to her investment banking job.

Her bosses “respect the individuality, so they don’t have a problem with it,” she says of her departure from banker’s gray pin stripes.

Kreative Kuisine caterer Hanan Islam bridged the gap between ancestral and corporate worlds by topping her bright saffron Jones New York suit with a yellow and green prayer cloth she’d purchased at Inspired by Africa, a Compton shop.

Newlyweds Nzinga and Balozi Heru went all out in outfits by Litina Egungun, an Oakland designer who’d done their wedding clothes and was showing his new designs in the fashion show.

Nzinga Heru says she wears elaborate dresses and crowns on special occasions as a “celebration and a cultural expression.” In her work in the computer field, she tones it down a touch by mixing Kente cloth scarves, blouses and shoes with traditional suits.

“Kente cloth has become the symbol of Africans born in America,” says Anderson. “By wearing it, psychologically, you’ve returned to Africa.”