One day, I was blessed to meet mud cloth. From day one, I became fascinated with mud cloth. I could hear my ancestors calling to me through the mud cloth. Something said, “give away all of your present clothes and only wear Mud Cloth” officially changed your name, and your African roots will find you. Over a certain amount…
I started a clothing line to bring me into further consciousness about who I am as a so-called Black man in America. It turned out that the clothing line for me and many others seems to be a “gateway to consciousness” about who we are which will let us to know where to go. I am pleased to introduce you…
I was a baby born on June the 19th, which is celebrated as “Juneteenth”. Most folks know that for so-called black Americans, Juneteenth represented the last day that a group of our ancestors found out that they were no longer considered slaves. What some folks don’t know is that on Juneteenth, one of the first things that some of the formerly enslaved people did was to go to their enslavers’ abandoned plantations and put on their clothing. Then some of them took their slave clothes to the lake or the river and threw their slave clothes into the lake or the river. You see, enslaved people were not allowed to chose their clothing. Part of their liberation was removing their slave clothing and choosing what they would wear. This was very significant to me because I had spent so much money on clothes over the years that were made by other people and dictated by Western culture. All that money left my community; it didn’t help my community at all.
Once I was introduced to the mudcloth, all the thoughts about myself began to change. There was something about the mudcloth that let me know that it was original, that it was still being made by hand, and I could smell like the love that went into the cloth from the people that produced it – and those people just happened to look like me.
In 2017, The Doc Bongo debuted Bogo L ani Bogo L Fashions (Mud to Mud Fashions) by The Doc Bongo® to an enthusiastic audience of new supporters, the press, and fellow designers. Since then, his work has been applauded on runways, social media, and at fashion conventions. The Doc Bongo is a national and local community synergist with a Masters…
As a product of the Cooley High days (A movie produced to depict inner-city youth growing up in an urban environment around the 60,s), I was very familiar with the garments of the country boy and inner-city adult man since I was a little boy. I felt comfortable mimicking my…