L.A.’s Cross-Cultural Clothing Movement

Those attending the Los Angeles Festival’s opening-night gospel concert in Leimert Park last weekend seemed to have taken the city’s multiculturalism to heart when they got dressed.

While some people in the audience chose clothes reflecting their own roots, many borrowed liberally from other cultures, places and eras.

One Mexican-American woman was clad in a flowing dress and woven hat from India. An Anglo woman wearing a ‘40s-style velvet dress carried a brightly colored Guatemalan rucksack. And while some African-Americans wore kufi hats and agbada robes made from the kente and mudcloth of their ancestral land, others came in Indonesian robes, antique skirts, Ikat print shorts, contemporary lace dresses and colorful modern vests.

It looked as if people had traded closets with one another.

“It doesn’t have to be your own--you can experience everyone’s culture,” said Darryle Johnson, costume designer for the films “Poetic Justice” and “Boyz N the Hood,” who attended the event. He said he sees people of all colors in African wear. Johnson’s own outfit was a melange of modern elements: a black linen shirt, black-on-black embroidered Shaka King suit, blue tinted glasses, his signature striking blond hair and an antique-look charm necklace by local designer Jacqueline Johnson.

Another man who substituted eclectic jewelry for a tie was festival artistic director Peter Sellars, who wore a long, beaded Brazilian necklace and a self-administered, hacked-off haircut, as if he’d used a weed whacker. He purchased his electric-blue suit in Chinatown for $35, he said proudly. “I bought three of them, and I thought this was the most dignified. The others are chartreuse and a rust that would take the paint off your car.”