Dressmaking is huge in Ghana with seamstresses easy to find. While ready-made garments are popular, many people still turn to seamstresses to sew everyday outfits as well as outfits for special occasions. Of course, all seamstresses are not created equal and pairing up with the wrong seamstress can lead to disastrous creations that never see daylight. Nonetheless, seamstresses are widely sought after, with some being minor celebrities with elite clientele. Their creations, including kaba and slits, can land the wearer on magazine covers and garner thousands of Instagram likes. They are an important part of the social fabric and my novel, “His Only Wife”, offers a window into their work.
“His Only Wife” is a novel about many things, including love, heartbreak, desire, rebellion, class divides, and trying to fit in. Afi, who is from a humble background, is married to the wealthy Eli. But Eli is in a relationship with Muna, a woman of whom his family does not approve. Afi is determined to make things work with Eli and has the backing of his mother and his siblings. Throughout the novel, clothes and fashion play an important role in Afi’s efforts to build a life with Eli and to remove Muna from the picture. This is evident in two main ways.
First, Afi is a seamstress, who has apprenticed in Ho, her hometown. She has ambitions of becoming a designer with her own fashion house, and a boutique with a large display window and a white leather couch on which her customers can lounge. She realises that to achieve this dream, she first needs to upgrade her training. Upgrading her training becomes even more important after she marries into the wealthy Ganyo family.
A second way in which clothes and fashion matter is that Afi’s wardrobe marks her as an outsider when she gets married. This is because after moving to Accra to join her new husband, she suddenly finds herself thrust into a world of expensive restaurants, dinner parties, and night clubs for which she’s not prepared. She is soon unhappy with her wardrobe of second-hand clothes and batik dresses that she made herself and wants a makeover.
Therefore, clothing and fashion are important in Afi’s new life as she tries to become a fashion designer and to remake herself so that she fits into Eli’s world of weekend getaways at luxury resorts and garden parties with dignitaries. And one piece of clothing that features heavily in Afi’s transformation is the kaba and slit, a staple of Ghanaian fashion.
It is what she wears to her wedding. This two-piece outfit, sometimes paired with a head-tie and a yard or so of fabric to tie over the slit, has historically featured in every area of Ghanaian life, even though the style and usage has greatly changed over time. Images from a few decades ago show mostly simple styles, kabas with round or square necklines and unadorned bodices and straight or flared slits. These were commonly made from wax-print or batik, and from kente for outfits worn on special occasions.
However, over time, the styles have changed significantly. The slits have been patterned into a variety of silhouettes and the kabas often comes with adornments, including embroidery, lace, and beading. Wax print and kente remain popular fabric choices.
And it is these types of kaba and slit that Afi yearns to design and sew. Indeed, she describes the styles she has in mind: “…the strapless kind and the kind with wires threaded through the fabric so that it formed every shape imaginable on the human body, or the ones where they cut patterns out of the fabric to create floral arrangements on the bodice or on the skirt.”
In wanting to design and wear these new styles, Afi reflects how fashion is evolving in Ghana and how, similar to many places in the world, it is an important marker of status and class. Furthermore, her experiences show how even as designs have become more elaborate and sophisticated, the kaba and slit and other traditional attires have become less commonly used in the everyday, particularly by young people in urban areas.
Therefore, one is more likely to see kaba and slit worn at a traditional wedding ceremony in Accra than at a lunch meeting. The National Friday Wear initiative, which encourages workers to wear made-in-Ghana garments on Fridays with the goal of promoting the consumption of locally products, has created an opportunity for Ghanaians to wear kaba and slit and other traditional styles more often. “His Only Wife” captures these dynamics of fashion and style in Ghana and shows how they can be a tool for independence and self-actualization.
