Fashion on Currency: Analysis of the 1977 – 1986 Millinery Fashion in Post-independence Ghana

Abstract

This article showed interest in millinery displayed pictorially on the currencies as well as the significance of those fashion representations in Ghana’s fashion culture. The article specifically analysed the millinery fashion that featured on currency notes of 1977 and 1986 and the Yaa Asantewaa’s imagery on the currency note of 1984. Three Ghanaian currencies purposively sampled for the study were the Five Cedis note issued on July 4, 1977; the Fifty Cedis note issued on 15th July 1986; and the Twenty Cedis note issued on 15th May 1984. These currency notes were released within nine years interval, that is, between 1977 and 1986. Content analysis of visual images, and social semiotics methods of visual data analysis constituted the method of analysis for the study focusing on the dominant feminine figures on the currency accessorised with millineries. The study put forward those feminine images represented on the Five Cedis, Fifty Cedis, and Twenty Cedis currency notes issued on July 4, 1977, 15th July 1986, and 15th May 1984 respectively that displayed the repertoire of straw-woven and the Akan militaristic millinery fashion in post-independence Ghana. The millinery practices depicted on the currencies embodied historical allusions to Ghanaian women irrespective of economic background and ingrained in the memory of the citizenry the fashioned feminine identities constructed through millinery fashion in relation to the popular culture of twentieth-century Ghana. The selected indigenous millinery-inspired visuals also celebrated female vitality and brought to the fore the visibility of women in the public sphere and represented the epitome of independent women of twentieth-century Ghana who contributed to national development. It also made a strong socio-political fashion statement about the indigenous classic millinery fashion consciousness of Ghanaians and the millinery structural design in use in the post-independence era.