Swahili Man in Flamboyant Cotton Robe

Swahili Man in Flamboyant Cotton Robe

Gomes & Co.
Albumen print
Zanzibar, c. 1900

Seated Swahili male in a flamboyant cotton robe and wearing an extravagantly coiled turban at a jaunty angle. After 1897, newly freed people, many of whom had come from the east and central African mainland, immediately embraced new fashions that reflected their shifted status.