From cotton fields to creative futures, Teju Adisa-Farrar is helping lead a movement that reframes how we understand Black textile history and its future. As founder of the Black Fiber & Textile Network, she is working alongside farmers, dyers, designers, and artisans across the African Diaspora to reconnect material practice with cultural memory.
For Teju Adisa-Farrar, the current moment is not simply a trend cycle. It is a revival grounded in lineage.
“Right now Black textile communities are reclaiming and reconnecting the fiber and dye practices of our ancestors,” she explains. “In the diaspora we are recognizing that our relationship to textiles goes back much further than slavery, to our roots in West and Central Africa.”
That distinction matters. Too often, conversations about cotton and cloth begin with bondage. Adisa-Farrar challenges that limitation by pointing to a much older history of agricultural science, loom weaving, indigo dyeing, and design innovation across the African continent. What we are witnessing now, she says, is “a sort of renaissance and revival of making and designing textiles with the quality, care, and the environmental aptitude of the past while bringing in the cultural influences and innovation of the present.”
Scroll through social platforms and you can see it unfold in real time. West African weavers move rhythmically at traditional looms. Caribbean designers pair crochet dresses and mesh tanks with reggae soundtracks. The aesthetics feel contemporary, but the techniques are ancestral.
Teju Adisa-Farrar is clear that these practices were never just trades. “Creating textiles from the plants in our environments is incredibly specific and nuanced knowledge,” she says. Cotton cultivation required agricultural expertise. Indigo fermentation required chemical precision. Harvesting cycles depended on climate awareness and, in some cases, astronomy. “These were lifeways,” she adds, grounded in both science and spiritual connection to land.
Through the Black Fiber & Textile Network, she and other members are committed to reclaiming and archiving those knowledge systems. The urgency is environmental and cultural. Plant-based fibers and natural dyes offer climate-mitigating benefits, but they also offer something less tangible and equally powerful. “They are incredibly creative ways to connect to nature, reconnect with ourselves, and to commune with our ancestors,” she says.
The story of cotton in America remains deeply entangled with exploitation. Enslaved Africans were forced to cultivate cotton, sugar, rice, indigo, tobacco, and more, building empires they did not own. Yet Adisa-Farrar reminds us that Black relationships to cotton predate that violence by centuries. Evidence of cotton cultivation in Africa dates back to at least the 10th century.
“Today, Black designers are recognizing that growing, cultivating, and using cotton is our legacy and birthright,” she says. The shift now is toward ownership. By sourcing from Black farmers and investing in community-based production, designers can “hold onto and own the value of cotton that our ancestors were stripped from having access to.” Owning the cotton value chain transforms the narrative from extraction to agency.
For Teju Adisa-Farrar, a true renaissance cannot stop at aesthetics. It must be structural. “A true Black Textile Renaissance looks like creating our textiles, fashion and decor through regenerative networks made up of Black farmers, natural dyers, manufacturers, designers and artists,” she says. “From seed to final product, working with Black folks at every level of production and conception is truly what a Black Renaissance can look like.”
This model challenges mainstream fashion’s hierarchy. Rather than waiting for access within corporate systems that were never built with them in mind, Black designers can cultivate smaller scale, community-rooted production. “Rather than waiting on the mainstream industry to make space or accept us, Black designers can work within our community to create their collections and products on a smaller scale,” she explains. The result is often higher quality, more sustainable, and more bespoke.
Sustainability is not a buzzword in this movement. It is survival. Traditional textile systems were inherently circular, relying on local fibers and repair rather than disposal. Meanwhile, Black communities across the globe face disproportionate environmental harm, from textile waste washing onto Ghana’s shores to pollution concentrated in Black and Brown neighborhoods.
“Using natural, earth based materials is about health, survival, reclamation, and longevity,” Teju Adisa-Farrar says. “For our clothes and decor, but also for ourselves.”
Across Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas, textile traditions continue to inform one another in this revival. Designers are revitalizing West African patterns and materials. Caribbean makers are embracing bold color palettes and crochet techniques long embedded in island culture. Woven textures and basketry are appearing in contemporary collections across the Diaspora. These are not fleeting trends. They are continuations of memory shaped by migration.
Central to this work is collaboration over competition. The Black Fiber & Textile Network functions as a collective where members share resources and build together. “Across the diaspora Black folks have created collectives, groups, tribes based on working together and cooperativism rather than competition,” she says. “We know that we can go further together and for longer, rather than going faster alone and isolated.”
For young Black creatives entering textile design or fiber arts, reclamation begins with curiosity and intention. “Learn about the natural materials that grow in your region,” Teju Adisa-Farrar advises. Study sourcing practices. Understand supply chains. Seek regenerative networks. Research indigenous textile histories and the skills artisans were using a century ago.
Reclaiming material culture is not abstract. It is practical. It is investigative. It is communal.
And according to Teju Adisa-Farrar, it is already happening. From seed to stitch, from loom to label, a Black textile future is being woven with clarity and control. This time, we are not only remembered as labor within the fabric of history. We are recognized as innovators, owners, and authors of what comes next.
Photography Credit: Paige Green
