Woman's wrapper (kente),

20th century

Asante Kente cloths are made by stitching together strips of woven fabric that alternate warp- and weft-faced weave, resulting in a checkered effect. Innovated by the Asantehene’s royal weavers in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, colorful kente cloths were once woven and worn according to an elaborate status-based hierarchy. Today, kente is worn as a prestigious dress item by anyone able to afford it. Kente is draped around the body without fasteners, requiring constant readjustment or “dancing” of the cloth, allowing its patterns to be seen in constant movement. Both whole cloths and smaller patterns are named for proverbs, objects, and people. Lacking the complicated weft-faced patterns generally concentrated at either end of a high-quality cloth, this example was likely made by a less skilled weaver.