Decolonising Ghana Fashion Education and Training History

Abstract

Fashion is universal to all cultures whether ethnic, regional, national or continental. This manifest in the broad base definition of what fashion entails in contemporary times. Fashion remains inseparable from life. One of the key problems in studying fashion is that it eludes clarity about what it is and what it is not (Hopkins, 2012; Kennedy, Stoehrer & Calderin, 2013). Looking at the evidence, Hopkins (2012) theorised that fashion may be understood in the context of wider contemporary phenomena and human behaviour. Rovine (2010, p. 134) added that "Fashion is difficult to define in a global context, requiring a negotiation of the slippery territory between practices classified as 'African' and categories associated with the Western cultures." In whichever way one may view it, fashion, is not a preserve of a specific race or continent. All cultures practise it and have their respective histories that may tell its development across time. But to denigrate the artistic doings of Africa, the Encyclopedia Britannica (1910, p.326) wrote that "… with the exception of the lower Nile valley and what is known as Roman Africa …, is, so far as its native inhabitants are concerned, a continent practically without a history, and possessing no records from which such a history might be reconstructed." The early Western scholars who made attempt on researching into African fashion approached it from anthropological or ethnographical standpoint creating a complete boundary of what Rovine (2010) describes as Western and non-Western dress. Painting such a picture retarded progressive fashion research in the Continent and relented on exploring specific local and international markets for African designers. The non-Western fashion history, especially in the case of Africa, were viewed as "objects of ethnographic inquiry" (Allman, 2004, p. 2), an approach which Nkrumah (1963) insists was devised to retard social progress and prolong colonial domination over Africa.The decolonisation of fashion education and training history, in this context, means that independent Ghana must break her academic silence on the historicity of her fashion design education and training in debunking apperception that her fashion art and practice is inferior as portrayed in the case of non-Western fashion. The decolonisation process could be done through adequate study, rewriting and reorienting her peoples about her past and present fashion cultures. Due to the absence of adequate written documentation on the history of fashion in Africa, her fashion history is seldomly told. Telling the history of evolving fashion of African countries is therefore inevitable. This would help in appreciating their contribution towards global fashion in one way or the other.The world must learn about the historical antecedents of Ghana's fashion education and training. The study, therefore, traces the art-historical accounts of fashion design and fashion education in Ghana from precolonial, colonial to contemporary times with emphasis on 1920 to present. Tracing Ghana's ...

Decolonising Ghanaian Parliamentary Dress Code

“…Studies corroborate that Nkrumah's regular adornment of Ghanaian kente, and smock fashion (Figure 1 & 2) for national and international public occasions, turned such textiles into national and Pan-African symbols of freedom and independence which contributed significantly to the Ghanaian dress decolonisation agenda (Spencer, 1999; as cited in Warritay, 2017;Essel & Amissah 2015;Akwetey, 2007;Allman, 2004). "The main reason behind Nkrumah's advocacy for a dress cultural advancement for Ghana was premised on the case that clothing was one of the means through which the British used to colonise Ghana and as a measure of civilization" (Allman, 2004;Essel, 2019a;2019b;as cited in Essel, Navei & deGraft-Yankson, 2021, p. 36). Nkrumah felt that the use of indigenous Ghanaian dress fashion by Ghanaian top leadership for public occasions (Figure 2) would significantly help in decolonising the minds of Ghanaians as such actions signify a break away from the shackles of colonialism, serves as a dress cultural visual aesthetic order for Ghanaians and promote the use of made in Ghana clothing (Botwe-Asamoah, 2005;Essel, 2014;Essel & Amissah, 2015;Essel et al, 2021).…”

“…In tracing the historical background of indigenous African fashion to the era of pre-colonialism, scholars report that the African dress fashion system was once robust before colonialism but got relegated by European colonialists who, myopically, understood dressing mostly as a marker of civility or savagery (Rutayisire, 2021;Wolff, 2021;Essel, 2019a;Howard, Sarpong & Amankwah, 2012;Sarpong, Howard & Osei-Ntiri, 2011;Akwetey, 2007). It is rather unfortunate that the colonialists have succeeded in altering Africans' collective understanding of their rich indigenous dress fashion repertoires, and now, Africans themselves have since helped to reproduce, market, and/or promote Western clothes to the decline of theirs.…”

“…However, Africans (Ghanaians) can bounce back to their dress cultural roots if only those in national leadership positions decolonise their dress fashion choice for the emulation of the Ghanaian masses. On another breath, African nations, for instance, Ghana, should take more deliberate and enthusiastic steps in ensuring dress fashion decolonisation through massive education, training, and research to debunk the colonial perception held in and outside Africa that Africa's (Ghana's) fashion art and practice is inferior as compared to that of Western dress fashion (Essel, 2019a).…”

Conflicting Tensions in Decolonising Proscribed Afrocentric Hair Beauty Culture Standards in Ghanaian Senior High Schools

“…Precolonial Ghana had its own well-established form of education, evolved by the people themselves (Sampson, 1932;Essel, 2019) before their encounter with the colonialists. They trained the young ones through a rigorous enculturation process and apprenticeship system.…”

“…They trained the young ones through a rigorous enculturation process and apprenticeship system. They passed on the artistic culture and way of life from generation to generation through the robust apprenticeship system which is formal education and training (Essel, 2019 I propose that we replace her [Africa's] old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Africans think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose self-esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.…”