House
From Kente to the Global Runway
Long before Paris meant couture, cloth in Africa already spoke. From Bonwire looms to the global runway — and what it will take for Accra to become unmistakably Accra.
Ghana's Place in the Story of African Fashion
Long before Paris became synonymous with couture and Milan with luxury, Africa was already communicating through clothing.
Across the continent, cloth has carried meaning far beyond covering the body. It has communicated identity, royalty, community, spirituality, wealth, resistance and celebration. From West African strip-woven textiles to Mali's bogolan, Nigeria's aso-oke, East African kanga and the extraordinary textile traditions found across the continent, African fashion did not begin when the international fashion industry discovered Africa.
We have always had fashion. What has changed is the world's attention.
And Ghana occupies an important place in that story.
Ghana: Where Cloth Speaks
Perhaps no Ghanaian textile demonstrates the relationship between clothing and identity more powerfully than Kente.
Traditionally associated particularly with Asante and Ewe weaving traditions, Kente is constructed from narrow woven strips assembled into larger cloths. Its colours, patterns and even names can communicate ideas, histories and social meanings. In 2024, UNESCO inscribed the craftsmanship of traditional woven Kente on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity — international recognition of something Ghanaians have understood for generations: this is not simply colourful fabric. It is cultural knowledge woven into cloth.
But Ghanaian fashion extends far beyond Kente.
There is Fugu, or the northern smock, with its distinctive strip-woven construction. There are beads, batik, tie-dye, wax prints, embroidery and generations of tailors and seamstresses whose workshops have effectively served as Ghana's neighbourhood couture houses.
Fashion here has traditionally been personal.
You buy your fabric. You discuss your design. Your measurements are taken. The garment is created specifically for you.
That culture of bespoke dressing remains one of Ghana's great, sometimes underestimated, fashion assets.
Independence Changed the Meaning of What We Wore
The story became even more significant around independence.
Across postcolonial Africa, clothing became one way newly independent societies could reclaim cultural identity while negotiating modernity. UNESCO's study of the African fashion sector describes the post-independence period as an ongoing interplay between reaffirming heritage and participating in global fashion.
Ghana experienced that tension too.
How could we become modern without believing that modernity required us to look European?
That question helped create space for designers who could take Ghanaian and African aesthetics and reinterpret them for contemporary life.
Among those who answered it were some remarkable pioneers.
Kofi Ansah: Making African Design Contemporary
The late Kofi Ansah remains one of the defining figures of modern Ghanaian fashion.
Trained at London's Chelsea School of Art, Ansah developed a design language that could incorporate African textiles and references without making them feel trapped in the past. His work helped demonstrate that African heritage could participate confidently in contemporary high fashion.
But perhaps his greater contribution was his belief in an industry, not merely his own label.
Ansah supported emerging talent, was involved in initiatives to develop Ghana's fashion ecosystem and played an important role in promoting the National Friday Wear programme, which encouraged Ghanaians to bring locally made textiles and clothing into everyday professional life.
His legacy raises an important principle for today's designers:
A great fashion designer creates clothes. A great fashion pioneer helps create an industry.
Joyce Ababio: Designing Designers
If Kofi Ansah helped demonstrate what Ghanaian fashion could look like, Joyce Ababio helped build the people who would take it forward.
After studying fashion design in the United States and working there, she returned to Ghana and established the Vogue Style School of Fashion and Design in 1995. It began with only five students. The institution evolved into what is today JACCD Design Institute Africa.
Her contribution is therefore bigger than the garments she designed.
She helped professionalise fashion education.
At a time when fashion and dressmaking could unfairly be treated as careers for people who had failed academically, Ababio insisted that design required education, discipline, technical ability and entrepreneurship. Her training ecosystem has been associated with designers who subsequently built significant Ghanaian brands.
That is legacy.
You know you have influenced an industry when your students eventually become your industry's leaders.
Mawuli Kofi Okudzeto: Fashion, Youth and Culture
Then there is Mawuli Kofi Okudzeto, whose contribution reminds us that fashion does not live only in formalwear and ceremonial clothing.
Academic writing on Ghana's fashion industry identifies Okudzeto among Ghanaian designers who incorporated African values into their work. His career also extended across menswear, womenswear, accessories and street-influenced fashion.
His MKO.GH identity became particularly connected with youth culture and Ghana's emerging music scene, including the generation shaped by hiplife.
That matters.
Because fashion becomes culturally powerful when musicians want to wear it, young people identify with it and the streets begin to adopt it.
Okudzeto demonstrated that Ghanaian fashion could be young, urban and culturally confident without abandoning its African identity.
Africa Is No Longer Asking to Be Invited
Today, something extraordinary is happening.
African designers are increasingly being seen internationally not merely as producers of "African print," but as serious creative voices in global fashion.
And the economics suggest that this is much more than a cultural conversation.
UNESCO's first continent-wide report on the sector described African fashion as booming, with fashion weeks operating across 32 African countries. It reported annual African textile, clothing and footwear exports of about US$15.5 billion and noted that roughly 90% of businesses in the sector are small and medium-sized enterprises.
But we should resist celebrating too quickly.
Africa possesses extraordinary creativity while still capturing too little of fashion's global economic value.
Ghana illustrates the contradiction painfully well.
We have designers. We have artisans. We have textiles. We have cultural stories the world cannot replicate.
Yet Ghana's domestic textile production has suffered dramatic decline over the decades, while imported garments, cheap textile imitations and enormous volumes of second-hand clothing compete with local production.
Creativity alone will not make Ghana a global fashion powerhouse.
We must build businesses around the creativity.
The Next Generation Must Build Fashion Houses, Not Just Labels
This may be the great assignment for Ghana's emerging fashion houses.
The pioneers opened the door.
The next generation must build institutions capable of walking through it.
That means moving beyond simply sewing beautiful garments.
Ghana needs fashion businesses with distinctive brand identities, exceptional finishing, reliable production systems, strong e-commerce, international-standard photography, disciplined customer service, intelligent pricing and the ability to deliver consistently.
We must train more pattern cutters, textile specialists, production managers, merchandisers, fashion marketers, stylists and artisans.
We must also stop assuming that anything made locally deserves international patronage merely because it is African.
Global consumers will admire our story — but they will pay repeatedly for our quality.
That distinction matters.
Ghana's Next Fashion Story
Ghana does not need to become another Paris.
Neither should Accra try to become another Milan.
The opportunity is far more exciting:
Accra can become unmistakably Accra.
A place where ancient textile knowledge meets contemporary design.
Where Kente can sit beside minimalist tailoring.
Where the northern smock can inspire luxury outerwear.
Where African craftsmanship can meet technology, e-commerce and world-class customer experience.
Where a garment made in Ghana can be recognised not simply because it looks "African," but because its construction, finishing, storytelling and design are exceptional.
That is the space the next generation of Ghanaian fashion houses — including REGALIA by June & Co. — must aspire to occupy.
We inherit a remarkable foundation from pioneers such as Kofi Ansah, Joyce Ababio, Mawuli Kofi Okudzeto and many others.
Our responsibility is not merely to celebrate them.
It is to build on what they started.
Because perhaps the next chapter of African fashion is not about finally getting the world's attention.
We already have it.
The real question is: What will we do with it?
REGALIA by June & Co. Rooted in Africa. Designed for the World.