This dissertation explores apparent contradictions in contemporary 'traditional' West African dress, the most significant everyday art form in West Africa. Essentially modern, imported fashion elements are closely associated with prestigious traditional dress. The cosmopolitan styles are not ethnic, not national, but have elements of those imaginaries embedded in their use and meanings. Based on field research in Mali, Senegal, and France, my analysis of contemporary dress is framed by a self-described cultural dynamic among Mande people of being at once open to the world and closed among themselves. I argue that this tension structures Mande aesthetic experience and the commercial, technical, and performance contexts that produce West Africans' spectacular cosmopolitan styles. I show that while artists are technologically open-minded, they are also constrained by a body of enduring values and tastes to which new materials must be adapted. Even as the meanings of traditions are widely contested, a Mande aesthetic approach links contemporary dress to older art practices that have produced some of the most celebrated sculptures in African art history. In commerce and in use, I show how merchants and clients discursively create and promulgate identities tied to ethnicity, nationality, and Islamic faith. These dialogues, thick with local resonances, occur within larger regional and global networks of power, meaning, and commerce. Such networks are inscribed onto the bodies of men and women when they dress with intention and skill.