Aesthetic Authority
Fashion has long been seen as an arbiter of taste—but whose taste are we talking about?
Aesthetic authority—the ability to define what is tasteful, desirable, or forward-thinking—has cultural, political, and economic consequences. It determines who gets funded, who gets published, who walks the runways, and who ends up in museums.
These standards are reinforced by fashion houses, art institutions and media empires that rarely reflect the diversity of human expression. “Global taste” often reflects a Western lens, shaped by colonial histories and Eurocentric ideals of beauty, proportion, and sophistication.
The result is a global aesthetic hierarchy in which certain features, fabrics, silhouettes, and skin tones are celebrated, whilst others are exoticised, or dismissed entirely.
The illusion of beauty relies on exploitation. Fabrics are harvested, hands toil, histories are erased—all to produce prestige for institutions that refuse to recognise their source. Global taste is not universal; it is colonial, selective, and violently curated.
To question beauty is to question power. Who decides what is worth seeing, preserving, or aspiring toward? Who determines which cultures are innovative and which are derivative?
Beauty has never been theirs to give.
The irony is that African fashion has always been ahead—centuries ahead—in its integration of storytelling, sustainability, community, and identity. Yet it is only when these ideas are reinterpreted through Western brands that they become “visionary.”
The West is not the axis of creativity. The true architects of innovation have always existed elsewhere. Until the global gaze is redirected, until authority is returned to those who created it, the world will continue to worship shadows while the original light remains unseen.