Abstract

This photographic essay, which is part of my research project “Black Yarns: Fashion and Women’s Resistance in the Parisian Afropea (1939–1966)” started in 2021. Here I investigate the life of Raby Diop, my Senegalese aunty, who at 29 years old travelled to Paris in January 1939, following her husband Galandou Diouf, my then 64-year-old great-great-grandfather. Throughout the research in my family archive, I uncovered many photographs of Raby—a Wolof woman from Rufisque—whom I never met. I was able to trace her journey at a time when France remains reluctant to confront its colonial history and voices like hers, along with those of other African women living in Paris, are crucial to recovering that Afropean Parisian past.

Insisting on wearing her Senegalese garment instead of assimilating, Raby stood out as one of the very few African women in the city then, raising curiosity and sometimes mockery from journalists. Recovering the story of my family and making her presence and voice matter is essentially a practice of radical kinship. It allows the hidden potential story of a French Senegalese woman—who was considered “illiterate”—to be told through textiles.

In this text I imagine the twenty days before her journey on the vessel Medie II from Dakar to Paris. Meanwhile, relying on a practice of stitch-resist dyeing technique using indigo, together with Atelier Tesss’ Binta Gaye and Maï Diop in Saint-Louis in Senegal we reproduced the garment Raby proudly wore during her layover in Casablanca. “No, I won’t wear European style,” she asserted in a French newspaper, while wearing her indigenous dress.

Prologue

We are delving into the material itself, the “cultural biographical possibilities of the thing”, the bazin being prepared and tinted by the indigo pigment, narrating the structure of the cloth and imagining it at a close-up scale.[1] This process rethinks Raby Diop’s presence within her attire, as she awaits the completion of her dress and dreams of her trip to Paris before boarding the ship. As a press article states, she has never been to Paris. She is eager to discover the city. The narrative captures her heady mix of excitement, anticipation and fear, while also documenting the hands-on labour of recreating her dress.

Raby’s story, a fabulated, potential history, employing Saidiya Hartman’s notion of critical fabulation and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s idea of the re-enactment of muscular memory, is intercut with present-day moments and technical interventions, which are rendered in italics.[2] This potential history gives Raby a speculative voice and makes room for my own body in the process of making in textiles, embodying a praxis that Hartman would articulate in words and Azoulay into jewellery making. These two parallel storylines are woven into a single text that incorporates sculptures, textiles and clay work, paying close attention to the act of touch while remembering. It uses a speculative tone as a potential in the making.

Day 20: Raby’s Dress in the Making

Raby Diop may have unconditionally admired this attitude of the women of Dakar, their proud and dignified bearing that gave the impression of being invincible.[3]

This dress could have been her protection for the journey that excited her, for seeing the Eiffel Tower and all those monuments she had dreamt of for so long. Warnaa tukki te amnaa yaakar muurloo ko! She may have implored Allah to protect her. The blue of the indigo, the blue of the sky and of the Atlantic… She would have wished for a safe journey, Allah willing.

Perhaps Raby also implored Maamekumba Bang for protection, the spirit of the Senegal River. The marabout may have told her that her future would be bright. Paris, he would have said, would be challenging, but ultimately life-changing. Raby may have poured milk into the river as an offering, praying that the water goddess would pardon her sins.[4] At the market, the young servant would have bought the bazin fabric on that roasting day. She may have crossed the Faidherbe bridge to find better quality for a better price. As Yétou would likely have assisted Raby in selecting her dress, having been to Paris herself, she would have bragged and recommended packing dresses like those Parisians wear. Galandou may have also told her about Josephine Baker. Sometimes, he would play her songs. Perhaps, she would have used her wheedling tone, batting her eyelashes for effect. Raby wouldn’t have had to convince him that the women from Senegal possessed their own elegance and needed to wear nothing other than the style of Dakar or Saint-Louis. The water carrier would have told her the weather would be fine on the day of her departure. She would have been ready for the fitting; the tailor would have taken her measurements. The textile merchant would have brought out the bazin riche, the base fabric for the dye. Then, the dyers would have had their work cut out for them—they had to recreate the dress Raby had admired on Fatimata, the merchant’s wife. What Raby might have loved most was the way the colour deepened into a richer, more intense shade at the hem of the dress.

On 14 May 2022, Binta Gaye, Maï Diop, and I went to the market in Ndar to buy the bazin textile.[5] We chose this particular fabric quality for its texture, matt appearance and subtle motif, which was neither too shiny nor too thick. This allowed us to execute all the pleats we wanted, using the photograph as our model. Raby’s dress featured stripes created using a stitch-resist dye technique.

Binta’s hands gently assess the amount of fabric we will need for both Raby’s scarf and dress. She carefully applies pins and pushes the folds with the pressure of her fingers. I follow her lead. We both remain silent.

A cat crawls on the table. Birds tweet outside.
Andy Shauf’s “Early to the Party”’ plays on my smartphone.
Fatima Fall sends me a translation in Wolof via WhatsApp.

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Figure 1. Binta Gaye’s hand folding the bazin textile [6]

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Figure 2. Working documents, sketches
Figure 3. The author’s hands and textiles

Day 17: The Dance

One could imagine Raby Diop in the days following Mawlid, her feet still aching from the celebrations. Perhaps, she suffered in the heavy December heat, the dusty Harmattan wind a constant breath from the Sahara. Her days before her departure were likely spent at home, in prayer, in the careful selection of her jewellery, in the meticulous perfection of her looks. Later, there would be Rokhaya’s wedding at the Mosque, and Raby may have held the necklace, the one Rokhaya was so fond of when they were children. Perhaps she felt a pang of her own past greed, having kept it from her sister, but now judged it to be the right time to offer it: a talisman for good luck and for protection in her impending absence. Raby may have thought her sister Rokhaya to be inconsiderate, a woman whose comfort always came first. She may have recalled nursing Rokhaya for an entire week after a mild flu, managing all her chores, and yet not having her sister’s help just last Saturday, when she herself was overwhelmed with packing for her journey. Galandou would have been telling her of the marvels of Paris, insisting she would find incredible textiles there. He probably spoke of the Lafayette stores as holding gorgeous treasures, wonders unavailable to them in Dakar.[7]

And at Rokhaya’s wedding, Raby would have danced. Even as her shoes constricted her toes, she would dance until she could no longer stand. Raby may have taken great pride in her marriage to Galandou a few weeks before. The rhythm of the drums, the claps of the gathered hands, the shimmering sound of the jewels, all of it may have conspired to make her forget, for a few precious hours, the deep-seated anxiety about her forthcoming journey.

At Villa Ndar, Binta and I worked to put the finishing touches on the pleated fabric. Following three long days of preparation, we finally achieved the desired result, securing the pleats with additional stitches along their edges to ensure they remained perfectly defined and crisp. My fingers had grown sore, keeping time with every stitch. We use a thick needle to match the heavy thread, which must be pulled taut, stretched tightly to block the indigo dye from penetrating the cloth. With each pass, the needle bites into our flesh, leaving its mark on our hands.

Day 11: Remembering Paulette Nardal

Raby Diop may have spoken of being accompanied by her birds; their presence would have been her guide.[8] Along the journey, she may have imagined their chirps echoing the songs her mother used to sing back in Rufisque. Her maid would have promised to pack her luggage with amulets and gris-gris for protection. Yet, she would still be nervous. Would she be alone there? Would she find women of her “own race” to share stories with? —a concern she would have subsequently expressed in her letter describing the desire to be repatriated from Paris to Senegal in 1944. She may have recalled Hawa telling her how Abdoulaye, Hawa’s brother, had a child with a white woman, a thought that would have lingered uncomfortably in her mind. In Paris, would they even find her pretty? Would her beauty even seduce them? She would have noticed the look in the French administrator’s eyes, a glance that saw straight through her dress, as if everything were possible for them. She would have wanted neither their looks nor their validation. In his memoir À Rebrousse-Temps, Raby’s younger friend Birago Diop, four years her junior, looked back and sketched a picture of her loneliness: “Rabi Diop,” as he refers to her, “living a reclusive existence in Paris, stepping out solely for errands or to accompany her husband to the horse races.”[9] When Raby possibly spoke with Paulette [Nardal] over a shared dish of shrimp, Paulette may have told her to be careful.[10] She would have said Paris had deceived her, and that the rules of white men were filled with cruelty and dishonour. Then, perhaps out of the blue, she may have commented on the beauty of Raby’s dress and asked her to buy one like it in Paris. Maybe Raby would have missed Paulette. She may have hoped to see her in Paris, so she wouldn’t have to feel entirely alone.

With the cloth tightened and fully reduced, we will soon dip it into an indigo vat made by our guide Maï Diop. She used Michel Garcia’s “1-2-3” method, which combines indigo powder (sourced from India), pickling lime and fructose. Maï explained that despite efforts to revive local Senegalese indigo, it’s not yet profitable. The ancient method required macerating the plant matter to extract the pigment. The true wonder is watching the cloth emerge in a yellowish color and then slowly oxidise into a spectrum of vibrant blues.[11]

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Figure 4. Tightening of cloth before the dyeing process
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Figure 5. The dyed fabric hung up after the tightening threads were cut

Day 5: The Boat

Raby Diop may have recounted how Galandou had to file administrative papers for their journey. The boat would have been prepared as they spoke. Yétou may have come back the day before, screaming that a griot had told her the boat would sink. She would have been running and crying, as if possessed. Raby would have told her not to say such things, perhaps remembering the story about the liner Afrique from when she was ten years old, where Senegalese soldiers had drowned and were said to have been eaten by whales.[12] From that day, a deep trepidation may have settled in her at the thought of boarding boats, save for those local occasions of celebration and reception foe whch she could adorn herself in her finest jewels.

She would have packed her beautiful necklaces from Thiam, the jeweller in Dakar, including the ostentatious piece from her wedding panié, complete with its matching earrings and libidors. She may have run her hands over her braids, which Yétou had so kindly helped her untie, and thought of the wig Mariama would bring the next day. Mariama would help her secure the headpiece on the day of her departure. She would also have been preparing to collect her dress; the indigo dye would then have been set, and the final stitches would have been placed.

The dress took a few extra days to complete. After the indigo fabric was delivered to Ahmed, the tailor on Rue Khalifa Ababacar Sy, and the jewellery was finished by Cheikh Guèye’s shop. The final touch was the embroidery, a gold-thread motif that shone in stark contrast with the deep blue fabric. For the hairstyle, I used plastic ropes bought at the Ndar market, the kind normally used to mend fishing nets. The salesman must have thought I was going fishing. Weaving this plastic cord into braids and then stitching those into a snail-like form was a wonderfully meditative process. My fingers indulged in the rhythmic work, which was soothing; it transported my mind elsewhere. As I suffer from hyperacusis, the piercing call to prayer from the mosque near the French Institute was the only noise potent enough to break the spell of my peaceful concentration. This led me to think that, to quote Anna Laura Stoler, moving beyond the “guarded frame of the archive” through acts of remembrance is to hack a system of memory.[13] It is a process of making while contesting the very framework of the museum. Similarly, Azoulay describes how

my muscles and nerves memorize things I have not experienced,
and my body surprises me with them, as I do nothing to bring the
memories from my ancestors’ deep sleep and into my life [14]

This process will not produce an active object. My hands move with an instinct of their own, tracing the patterns of an ancestral practice. Meanwhile, Cheikh’s hands are handling the bracelets, which will be polished and plated with a gold finish, for the last time.

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Figure 6. Detail of Raby Diop’s dress, with black stitch on the side
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Figure 7. Atelier de Cheikh Guèye in Saint-Louis, his hands finishing the bracelet
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Figure 8: The headpiece adorning the hairstyle: a headscarf and jewellery

D Day: The Departure

Raby Diop may have noted that the boat was scheduled to depart from Dakar at noon; it would have arrived in Dakar just the night before. This left her only enough time to embrace her dear Hawa, who would have insisted on giving her grig-gris for good luck. Yétou would likely have done the same. When she eventually opened her suitcase, she would undoubtedly have discovered all kinds of amulets tucked inside it by her friends. She would have prayed for their safety.

She may have described how they embarked with their suitcases and their birds. The birds would have been as anxious as she was, tweeting and chirping wildly. She would not have been able to tell if they were trying to warn her of danger or were themselves chasing it away.

After a layover in Casablanca, they would have boarded the Medie II. She would have been eager to see the metropole and to discover what beautiful things they might be able to achieve for their dear Senegal. The first thing she may have planned to do was to get a sewing machine and make herself a fancy dress from a light blue velvet, one that would imitate the blue of the sky and the blue of the indigo.[15]

The dress is finally stitched and ironed, ready to be displayed. For the opening of the exhibition “Fils Noirs” at villa Ndar in Saint-Louis, I had commissioned two cabinets to be made by Adou Diallo, a carpenter in Saint-Louis, whose atelier on Quai Roume is always busy and full of furniture in progress. This installation employs the visual language of the museum display, specifically the vitrine; not as an act of endorsement, but as a critical gesture. The glass serves a pragmatic, protective function for the object’s brief status as a “museum piece”. This is a deliberate, transient fiction, highlighting the museum’s power to assign value and context. Not enshrined but mobile, the ultimate intent is to liberate the object, returning it to the world after its temporary enlistment into this institutional framework. The dresses will later return to my closet, where they will age, be touched, be moved and made kin with. Sometimes birds were seen entering the cabinet containing the dresses.

 

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Figure 9. Prior to the exhibition, the indigo dress was hung in front of the window (a check-printed dress visible behind it)
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Figure 10. This photograph, displayed on the floor, shows Raby Diop and Galandou Diouf in Casablanca during their journey to France in January 1939
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Figure 11. Two display cabinets in the garden of The Villa Ndar, Institut Français in Saint-Louis Senegal
A large ship in the water AI-generated content may be incorrect.
Figure 12. Postcard of the Medie II (1922–52), a ship owned by the Paquet Company linking Dakar-Casablanca-Marseille; personal archive the author
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Figure 13. Galandou Diouf and Raby Diop in Paris, Excelsior, 1939

Footnotes

  1. Kopytoff, Igor, “The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process” [1986]. In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Ed. Arjun Appadurai. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2014. pp. 64-91. ↑
  2. Hartmand, Saidiya. “Venus in Two Acts”. Small Axe. Vol. 12. No. 2. 2008. pp. 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1215/-12-2-1; Azoulay, Ariella Aïsha. The Jewelers of the Ummah: A Potential History of the Jewish-Muslim World. New York: Verso. 2024. ↑
  3. In his 1952 novel, Abdoulaye Sadji states: “Their degree of emancipation astonished Maïmouna and charmed her. They were real women of the world.” Sadji, Abdoulaye. Maïmouna. Paris: Présence Africaine. 1952. p. 80. Translation from French by the author. ↑
  4. Listen to Fall Niang, Fatima. “Maam Kumba Bang: Mythe ou Legende?”. 22 September 2022. Institut International de Recherche sur la Radio et la Magie. Available at: https://archive.org/details/maam-kumba-bang-master-100922 (accessed 2025-10-09). The act of pouring milk in the river Senegal is still in practice today. ↑
  5. See Patricia Gérimont’s research on bazin: “Just like wax fabric, bazin is an industrial textile, designed and manufactured by Europeans, which has paradoxically become an emblem of West African identity.” Gérimont, Patricia and Veirman, Anja. FANI FANI: Une conversation autour des savoir-faire du Mali. Brussels: LUCA School of Arts—Asbl Autres Regards. 2018. p. 84. Translation from French by the author. ↑
  6. Unless indicated otherwise, all images © the author. ↑
  7. Victoria Rovine describes a “craft-centered nostalgia” in interwar France and how textiles were, ironically, “recreated” in West Africa and sold in the big Parisian department store Galeries Lafayette, as “pure craft” because “[colonial administrators blamed] West African artisans [to be] responsible for the corruption of their own work.” Rovine, Vitoria L. “Crafting Colonial Power: Weaving and Empire in France and French West Africa” In Rhapsodic Objects: Art, Agency, and Materiality (1700–2000). Ed. Yaelle Biro and Noemie Etienne. Leiden: De Gruyter Brill. 2022. p. 180. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110757668-009 (accessed 2023-10-23). ↑
  8. Raby Diop and Galandou Diouf are described in their Parisian apartment filled with birds, which they imported with them from Senegal. See Villiers, Noël, ‘La Propagande des oiseaux’. Le Monde Illustré, 4 February 1939. Available at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6201724t/f12.image.r=galandou?rk=214593;2 (accessed 2025-10-13). ↑
  9. Diop, Birago. A Rebrousse-Temps. Paris: Présence Africaine. 2000 [1982]. pp. 29–30. ↑
  10. See Mémoires de Paulette Nardal, Nardal recounts her encounter with one of Galandou Diouf’s “concubines” (perhaps Raby?) during which they shared a dish with shrimps in Saint-Louis. Grollemund, Philippe, Fiertés de femme noire: Entretiens / Mémoires de Paulette Nardal. Paris: L’Harmattan. 2019. https://doi.org/10.4000/clio.17569. ↑
  11. Botanist and chemist Michel Garcia is renowned for making indigo dyeing accessible through his signature 1-2-3 method. At his atelier in Brittany, France, he hosts workshops in which participants learn techniques such as making dye from dried leaves and preparing an ancient indigo compost vat. I was introduced to this practice in 2023 by Lieve Jacobs (Lieve Bluefingers) during an indigo and Shibori workshop in Flobecq. ↑
  12. On 12 January 1920, the vessel Africa sank en route from Bordeaux to Dakar. The disaster resulted in the deaths of 570 passengers, among them 192 African infantrymen known as Tirailleurs. Today, some of these soldiers’ graves can still be found in Sables-d’Olonne, France. See Mornet, Roland. La Trégédie du paquebot Afrique. Paris: Geste. 2006 ; and Corlouër, Jean-Luc. Le Bosco de Kerpalud. Paris: Ramsey. 2015. Also listen to the podcast “Les oubliés du paquebot Afrique”. France Culture. 20 August 2022. Available at https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/une-histoire-particuliere-un-recit-documentaire-en-deux-parties/les-oublies-du-paquebot-afrique-3985031 (accessed 2026-05-16). ↑
  13. Stoler, Ann Laura. “The Rot Remains: From Ruins to Ruination”. In Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination. Ed. Ann Laura Sloter. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2013. p. 5. ↑
  14. Azoulay, The Jewelers of the Ummah, p. 112. ↑
  15. A photograph in the February 1939 issue of Vu: Journal de la semaine depicts Raby Diop enveloped in her sky-blue cape, the image clearly showing the shiny, textured quality of the velvet. Available at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bd6t521305628/f2.item.r=galandou (accessed 2025-10-09). ↑