University of Fashion’s lesson on West African textiles of Cote d’Ivoire – specifically the Vlisco Group. (Image credit (University of Fashion)

This new lesson examines the Vlisco Group and its powerful role in the textile industry of Côte d’Ivoire, as well as throughout much of West Africa. As a leading supplier of commercially produced, nontraditional African wax-print textiles, Vlisco has had a far-reaching influence on the visual culture, fashion economy, and consumer textile market of the region.

Although Vlisco’s fabrics have become closely associated with West African dress and identity, the company’s relationship to African textiles is also complex and controversial. Its Dutch-produced wax prints draw upon techniques and aesthetics shaped by global trade, colonial history, Indonesian batik, and generations of African consumers, merchants, designers, and dressmakers who have given these textiles their distinctive cultural meanings.

In this lesson, you will explore Vlisco’s significant financial and creative impact on the African textile industry, with particular attention to Côte d’Ivoire. You will also consider how commercial wax prints have evolved into an important medium for personal expression, fashion, status, and cultural communication across West Africa.

UoF’s West African Textile Series

Mina Dia-Stevens and her other lessons in the series on the textile traditions of Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal and, coming soon…Ghana.

Origin of “African Prints”

African fashion on display at the Perelman Building 2016. (Image credit:  Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Did you know that the textiles commonly called “African prints” today are industrial wax-print fabrics with roots in the much older batik tradition? Batik—created through hand-drawn or hand-blocked wax-resist dyeing—has early precedents in China and India as far back as the eighth century. By the thirteenth century, artisans on the Indonesian island of Java had refined the technique into the highly sophisticated visual and technical tradition now most closely associated with Africa.

During the nineteenth century, Dutch textile entrepreneurs adapted and industrialized Javanese batik methods. Although these textiles were initially intended for markets in Indonesia, they found an especially enthusiastic audience in West and Central Africa. Over time, African consumers, traders, and dressmakers made the fabrics their own, assigning distinctive names, meanings, and social significance to individual patterns. The result is the vibrant wax-print tradition recognized around the world today.

Haarlem Cotton Company

One of the earliest Dutch firms credited with imitating Javanese batik—the technical and visual precursor to the textiles later known as African wax prints—was the company founded by Jean Baptiste Théodore Prévinaire. Prévinaire established a textile enterprise in Haarlem, the Netherlands in 1835 and developed La Javanaise, a mechanized process for reproducing Javanese-style wax-resist cloth. His firm later became the Haarlemsche Katoen Maatschappij (HKM), or Haarlem Cotton Company.

The factory ceased production in 1917 as a casualty of World War I. The following year, its facilities were auctioned. Van Vlissingen, later known as Vlisco, purchased several of HKM’s printing machines and engraved copper rollers. These historic tools continued to be used in the production of designs that remain among the classic patterns associated with the wax-print technique.

Zoba-Zoba: “Children Are Better Than Money”

Early Haarlem Cotton Company cotton wax block pattern designed as a zoba zoba, (associated with fertility). (Image credit: Philadelphia Museum of Art)

This textile is designed as a zoba-zoba, a patchwork-style composition combining several distinct patterns. At its center is an early Haarlem Cotton Company motif associated with fertility. The design is named after the proverb l’enfant vaut mieux que l’argent — “children are better than money”— and reflects the central importance of children and family within many African communities.

 Vlisco

Vlisco was founded in 1846 in Helmond, the Netherlands, by Dutch entrepreneur Pieter Fentener van Vlissingen. Originally established as P. F. van Vlissingen & Co., the company later became known as Vlisco. Vlisco found a market in West Africa around 1867. Since then, their prints have caught on and been made popular by African vendors who assign meaning and value to the prints. In fact, when printed cloth is sent to Africa from Vlisco, it leaves only with a stock number. Once it arrives, African vendors name the fabric based on proverbs, current events, politics, religion and material culture. One design can have many interpretations depending on where it is used. It is through naming that the prints acquire social meaning, status, and value and become culturally assimilated into African society.

Cotton wax print named Love, Bomb and Dynamite designed by Cor van den Boogaard for Vlisco 2002. (Image credit: Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Assorted Vlisco textile patterns. (Image credit: Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Vlisco-inspired Fashion Designs

Assorted Vlisco textile patterns for fashion design. (Image credit: Philadelphia Museum of Art)