Who Gets To Be Timeless?
Who decided which styles, icons, and aesthetics become part of the global cultural memory?
In the world of fashion and art, “timeless” is a word spoken with reverence. It signals permanence, a kind of aesthetic immortality. But behind the elegance of the term lies a question rarely asked: who decides what becomes timeless, and who gets left behind?
Timelessness is about power. It’s about whose stories are remembered, whose garments are preserved in museums, whose images are studied in textbooks, and whose designs are cited as “influential” decades later. More often than not, it is the West that names the timeless, and the rest of the world that merely “inspires.”
Across the African continent, there are garments that have endured generations, silhouettes rich with symbolism, and artisans whose techniques carry the memory of entire civilisations. Yet these are rarely seen as “classics” in the global canon. Why does a Chanel suit become timeless, but the Agbada or the Shúkà remain ethnic or exotic?
To be timeless, in the world’s eyes, is to be validated. And validation often comes from institutions rooted in colonial histories and narrow standards of taste. But what if we rejected that system altogether? What if we decided that timelessness is not given, it is claimed?
What if we declared that the Kaftan, the Gele, and Maasai beadwork are not trends, but testaments? Testaments to cultures that never needed outside validation to be profound. What if we recognised that our mothers, grandmothers, artists, weavers, tailors, and designers are already timeless?
What if timelessness was not an inheritance from institutions, but a practice? An intentional commitment to protect and honour the creative lineages that have survived erasure, adapted across generations, and continued to inspire without recognition. To be timeless is to see ourselves beyond Western approval, and to refuse their validation as the measure of our worth.