ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 provides an in-depth exploration of the career and creations of Juliana “Chez Julie” Kweifio-Okai, Ghana’s first fashion designer. A product of the Independence era, her designs reflect the cosmopolitan, nationalist fashions that became an integral part of the capital’s fashion culture. In addition to a synopsis of her life and formal training, the chapter focuses on the innovativeness of her designs, highlighting previously undiscovered garments that illustrate her expansive, Pan-Africanist influences. Her earliest surviving ensembles – a kente kaba and her female “Akwadzan” – are emphasized as particularly innovative and transformative. Her kente kaba is the earliest-known designer fashion to be sewn from kente cloth, while her “Akwadzan” transformed a historically significant form of men’s dress into a wearable and stylish fashion for women. Kweifio-Okai’s challenging of established, gendered forms of dressing is explored through additional garments, including a revolutionary wedding pant suit. Kweifio-Okai’s designs function as the ultimate indicator of nationalist, cosmopolitan fashions: garments informed by French construction and inspired by globally popular silhouettes, while championing and reimagining distinctly Ghanaian materials and forms of dressing.
