This research is part of an ongoing study of the role African exoticisms had on fashion during the ‘Africana’ craze of the 1920s when avant-garde interest in African sculpture, textiles, and jewelry blended with the popularity of jazz music played by African Americans to influence fashionable dress. A survey of French and American fashion magazines, the popular press, fur-trade journals, and editorial coverage of safaris in East Africa, as well as advertisements for travel there, revealed striking uses of furs and prints. African animals were more popular than anything else about Africa presented in these publications. The fashion industry exoticized Africa by using the fur from African animals, and textile prints and embroideries imitating fur patterns. Images of African animals were used in fashion illustrations and photography. Wearing fur patterns from African animals reflected international design movements, colonialism, and racism while playing a role in the presentation and perception of the flapper, and ultimately supporting the evolution of the new category of clothing called sportswear.