LAST MONTH was about celebrating Black History, and children in primary schools were introduced to African fashion through parades of African dress. One person happy to see this is Ghanaian fashion designer Esinam Austin.
Esinam came to Barbados from the Volta region of Ghana six years ago, and she has been working steadily to make a tangible impact on the local fashion scene, seeking to infuse African fashion into the culture.
“Here in Barbados, the demand for African design is low,” she says, even as she notices more Barbadians are turning up at her studio at White Hall, St Michael to select her creations and to ask for advice on African dress.
Because of the growing interest, she expects things will change in the years ahead.
As Esinam Kudzordzi, she met and married Barbadian Wendell Austin, a solar technician, while he was working in Accra. Since coming to Barbados, she has thrown herself into her fashion designing career.
It was her livelihood in Ghana where she still owns a design studio and continues to dress women in her community.
“When I was young, from around ten years old, I liked creating my own clothes,” she said.
At secondary school she chose to do home economics because clothing and textile fell within that curriculum. She then went onto Fashion Africa, a fashion design school in Accra.
Neatly set out in her Barbados studio are yards and yards of boldly patterned fabric she buys regularly from her trips to Ghana. Hanging on the studio walls are calendars with dress designs from which some of her growing clientele choose their styles, while others rely on her to make the choice for them.
“I know a lot of people depend on pattern cutting. I just look at the style and it just comes naturally,” says Esinam. “Once I see the style that you are describing or you can point out the style from the different calendars, when you get your outfit is handed to you it is what you ordered.”
Esinam believes the older Barbadian has a role in helping the youth to appreciate their African heritage.
“Seniors must be the example. They have to start the rope for us and we will finish weaving it. They should help us by wearing it too and the children will also get that confidence from them. That is how we came up. If my parents are not using it they do not expect me to use it.”
“I am not telling anybody not to wear their European dress, but sometimes you need to bring some change,” the dress designer argued, but she believes a change in trend will come with the younger generation, more of whom she is seeing coming into her studio.
Esinam points to the African woman’s full, curvaceous figure and she says women of African descent in Barbados should be proud of it too, and should feel comfortable wearing African fashion that is specifically designed for that figure type.
In selecting African styles, the Barbadian woman should be delighted first of all with the fabric – 100 per cent cotton that breathes in this humid climate but more significantly “brings out the beauty of the wearer” – according to the fashion designer.
She maintains a keen eye for characteristics such as this when she first makes an assessment of a client. “You look at the person who is going to wear the clothes, the structure of that person, the style you are going to create for that person.”
She notes a big difference between the appearance of the African woman in European clothes and the African woman in African clothes.
“I think black people just have that mentality that their identity has changed, so they go to wherever their identity or their destiny has put them. But at the same time we still have a history. We still have a place that we have come from.”
“We are black. Nothing will change us.”
Esinam has gone to schools’ career showcase days and been bombarded with questions from schoolchildren whose reality of being black is far from what she knows. She has found their knowledge of Africa to be limited.
“They ask me, ‘Do you live in trees?’”
“No, we don’t sleep in trees. Africa is a big continent with many very big countries and I am from one of those countries,” she has found herself explaining to schoolchildren.
There is an attractive range of children’s clothing on display in her shop, with one-piece outfits designed for children under 12, and two separate pieces for children over 12, as is the custom in Ghana.
Esinam travels back to her shop in Ghana every six or eight months. This is where the more intricate heavy embroidery designs characteristic of African style are done by her staff of four.
Shoes, handbags and an appropriate headpiece complete the African woman’s outfit.
The hairpiece is very important, Esinam explains, “because our parents will tell you your hair is your beauty and they believe that it is only your husband who should enjoy that beauty, so when you are going out you need to tie it, so it becomes something like a culture to us that anything we wear it goes with”.
An impressive headdress like the Gele is mandatory church headgear for most Ghanaians.
“We wear it for church. You can’t just leave your hair open. Whether you do your hair or not you still have to cover it.”
The Gele is that piece of clothing which also tells the Ghanaian man whether or not a young woman is available. A married woman’s knot is on the right side. Tied on the left side, the knot says she is not.
“When the men see it on the right side they know you are telling them something.”
