SO SOCAL: The Best...The Beautiful...And The Bizarre : CULTURAL COUTURE : Woman of the (Mud)Cloth

Though she holds the honorary title of queen in Burkina Faso, West Africa, there is no need to address Ahneva Ahneva, who owns an eponymous boutique in Leimert Park, as “Her Majesty.”

The clothing designer’s career began, appropriately enough, making African-style crowns, intricately woven out of beading, embroidery and twills, in the early 1970s. “People started saying, ‘I don’t have anything to go with the crowns,’ ” she says, so Ahneva inlaid pieces of textiles from Mali, Nigeria and Senegal into and onto her own western-style gowns, tuxedos and resort-wear fashions.

“I’m not a designer,” Ahneva says. “I’m redesigning. I’m marrying the American with the traditional standard of Africa. I’m trying to connect people with their culture and their heritage via fashion.” She calls the look “cultural couture,” combining mudcloth from Mali, for example, with European wool gabardine to make tailored suits.

Ahneva, once a fashion model in Chicago, studied at that city’s Art Institute before moving to Los Angeles in the 1980s. She has lectured about Kente cloth at the UCLA Fowler Museum and been featured designer for the past decade at the annual Congressional Black Caucus fashion show in Washington, D.C., and this weekend she’ll create nuptial clothing for the winner of the “Egyptian wedding” giveaway at the Black Business Expo at the L.A. Convention Center. Her client list covers royalty, dignitaries and celebrities from Africa and the United States, including Michael Jordan, Maya Angelou, Alfre Woodard, Winnie Mandela and U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters. She even fashioned a tuxedo with hand-woven fabric from Senegal for President Clinton. Prices start at $55 for a simple crown and at $2,500 for an elaborate wedding dress.

For her art and innovation--and also, one suspects, for the economic and publicity benefits her clothes bring to West Africa through the purchase of textiles-- Mme. Chantal Compoare, Burkina Faso’s first lady, honored Ahneva with her royal title in 1993.

Traditional African fabrics are still spun, woven and dyed by hand--and Ahneva is concerned about their extinction as the process becomes more mechanized. “There are whole villages that make nothing but mudcloth,” she says. “When you use the cloth, you feed the people.”

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Ahneva Ahneva, 3419B W. 43rd Place, (323) 291-2535.