Applause erupted from The Perch as the African Caribbean Student Association (ACSA) kicked off their annual fashion show April 21. The club hosts the event every year to celebrate and showcase African and Caribbean students’ creativity.
“This is to highlight African students and Caribbean students because we have a lot of different cultures, we have a lot of different views and points,” ACSA publicist Jasmine Davila ’24 said. “We want to highlight a special group of people. And this fashion show highlights all the beauty we have, all the different cultures and showcases it to a school like SJU.”
Samira Touré ’23, vice president of ACSA, has been a member of the club since her freshman year. Her family is from the Ivory Coast, or Côte d’Ivoire, in West Africa.
“Initially when I came in, I immediately wanted to be involved in some way that had the same kind of culture that I do,” Touré said. She said she was enticed by the many events ACSA hosts, like Island Tings, the African and Caribbean tasting event.
This year’s fashion show was displayed as a video, produced by Dub Films, where students in the club brought the six themes to life through expressive clothing and eccentric sets. The themes were Urban Outfitters, into the wild, Barbie-core, girls will be boys, dripping in gold, and we are the world.
Davila said the themes loosely translate to different time periods, where the Urban Outfitters theme is meant to represent modern streetwear style and the Barbie-core theme gives off 2000s vibes. The girls will be boys theme is a modern spin on genderless business casual wear.
“For me, I chose dripping in gold and into the wild,” Davila said about her segments in the video. “Think prehistoric, but then I made it modern with animal print and fierceness. And then dripping in gold is one of our last categories that is going to be futuristic.”
The event has occurred annually since 2019. It was previously held as a catwalk fashion show, but has recently shifted into a video to be displayed on the big screen due to the pandemic. Touré said this gave a chance for more members to be a part of the production, especially those who were shy about walking in a live fashion show.
The grand finale of the video was the we are the world theme where all the members of the club joined together in vibrant traditional garments and waved each of their respective flags around Hawk Hill.
After the video played, Culture Shock, a dance group on the University City campus, took to the stage and made it their own with perfectly synchronized upbeat moves that had the crowd roaring.
Taliya Drummond-Cofer ’26 joined Culture Shock during the fall 2022 semester.
“I like the friendship and the connections you build [being on the team],” Drummond-Cofer said. “I was really nervous coming in, but they make you feel so welcomed. It felt like a sisterhood.”
ACSA is always looking for new members and welcomes any student who is interested in joining, according to Maliha Sadaf ’24, ASCA secretary.
“Just because our club is called African Caribbean Student Association doesn’t mean that anyone that’s not African or Caribbean can’t join it, we’re very inclusive when it comes to that,” Sadaf said. “This fashion show is really fun, because even if it’s hectic, it’s fun because everyone just comes together. They’re on the runway, they’re expressing themselves. Beauty comes in all different shapes and sizes.”
