Lifestyle & Culture

Love of Africa Reflected in Designers’ Wares

Through the eyes of Ghanian-born and -reared fashion designer Kwabena Ofosu Ware, plain T-shirts and polo shirts look better when embroidered with symbols of West Africa.

That belief, personal taste and ancestral pride, he said, are what underlay Quabs Couture, his year-old business.

“I started by making the clothing for myself, and then every time I would wear it, my friends would give me compliments like I ‘look hot,’ and that I ‘look classy,'” Ware said. “So I made a business out of it.”

He is not the only designer drawing influences from Africa. A walk through an open-air market in Cameroon in 2005 sowed the seed for what now is Maya Gorgoni’s’Africa-influenced line of clothing, home accessories and furnishings.

The two dream-chasing designers view their respective businesses as a means of making money but, more than that, as a means of helping their customers stand out in a crowd.

“No two women had the same type of material on,” said Gorgoni, remembering what she saw in Cameroon. “They couldn’t say ‘Oh she’s wearing my shirt!’ … Everyone has their own style, own fabric and so on.”

Gorgoni began her business in February of 2011. The first one of her items to really take off in terms of sales, she said, were men’s and boy’s shorts made of what’s known as ankara, a type of vibrantly colored West African fabric.

Her most popular sellers, however, are dresses made of ankara. “My favorite time period was the ’50s to the ’60s because everyone was well put together and polished,” said Gorgoni, adding that her dresses tend to be form-fitting and tailored like they were back then in certain parts of the Western world.

Currently, Gorgoni, daughter of an African American mom and Italian dad, said she is now is experimenting with textiles made using an indigo dye indigenous to Mali and Zanzibar.

Just as Gorgoni is determined to have a distinct signature as a designer, so is Ware (pronounced wa-ray, which means “to marry” in Twi).

Quabs Couture features clothing and handbags in African prints, including Ghanaian kente, once the fabric exclusviely worn by royalty of that country. Ware also manufactures accessories and jewelry .

His signature item is an embroidered T-shirt–he buys then transforms the plain ones from H&M–embellished along the neckline and chest with traditional African swirls.

“I decided, Ware said, “to build my own dream instead of helping somebody else to build theirs.”